impression of
agility that would hardly now be considered in the best taste.

[Sidenote: Manners]

The veneer of courtesy was thin. True, humanists, {501} publicists and
authors composed for each other eulogies that would have been
hyperboles if addressed to the morning stars singing at the dawn of
creation, but once a quarrel had been started among the touchy race of
writers and a spouting geyser of inconceivable scurrility burst forth.
No imagery was too nasty, no epithet too strong, no charge too base to
bring against an opponent. The heroic examples of Greek and Roman
invective paled before the inexhaustible resources of learned
billingsgate stored in the minds of the humanists and theologians. To
accuse an enemy of atheism and heresy was a matter of course; to add
charges of unnatural vice or, if he were dead, stories of suicide and
of the devils hovering greedily over his deathbed, was extremely
common. Even crowned heads exchanged similar amenities.

Withal, there was growing up a strong appreciation of the merits of
courtesy. Was not Bayard, the captain in the army of Francis I a
"knight without fear and without reproach"? Did not Sir Philip Sidney
do one of the perfect deeds of gentleness when, dying on the battle
field and tortured with thirst, he passed his cup of water to a common
soldier with the simple words, "Thy need is greater than mine"? One of
the most justly famous and most popular books of the sixteenth century
was Baldessare Castiglione's _Book of the Courtier_, called by Dr.
Johnson the best treatise on good breeding ever written. Published in
Italian in 1528, it was translated into Spanish in 1534, into French in
1537, into English and Latin in 1561, and finally into German in 1566.
There have been of it more than 140 editions. It sets forth an ideal
of a Prince Charming, a man of noble birth, expert in games and in war,
brave, modest, unaffected, witty, an elegant speaker, a good dancer,
familiar with literature and accomplished in music, as well as a man of
honor {502} and courtesy. It is significant that this ideal appealed
to the time, though it must be confessed it was rarely reached.
Ariosto, to whom the first book was dedicated by the author, depicts,
as his ideals, knights in whom the sense of honor has completely
replaced all Christian virtues. They were always fighting each other
about their loves, much like the bulls, lions, rams and dogs to whom
the poet continually com