He Need Not Attend Many Lectures,
For, As Thomas Hoby Explains, After A Scholar Has Been Elected By The
Rectors,
"He is by his scholarship bound to no lectures, nor nothing
elles but what he lyst himselfe to go to.
"[111] So being a gentleman and
not a clerk, he was more likely to apply himself to fencing or riding:
For at Padua "there passeth no shrof-tide without rennyng at the tilte,
tourneiyng, fighting at the barriers and other like feates of armes,
handled and furnisshed after the best sort: the greatest dooers wherof
are scholers."[112]
Then, too, the scholar diversified his labours by excursions to Venice,
in one of those passenger boats which plied daily from Padua, of which
was said "that the boat shall bee drowned, when it carries neither
Monke, nor Student, nor Curtesan.... the passengers being for the most
part of these kinds"[113] and, as Moryson points out, if he did not, by
giving offence, receive a dagger in his ribs from a fellow-student, he
was likely to have pleasant discourse on the way.[114] Hoby took several
trips from Padua to Venice to see such things as the "lustie yong Duke
of Ferrandin, well accompanied with noble menn and gentlemen ... running
at the ring with faire Turks and cowrsars, being in a maskerie after the
Turkishe maner, and on foote casting of eggs into the wyndowes among the
ladies full of sweete waters and damaske Poulders," or like the Latin
Quarter students who frequent "La Morgue," went to view the body of a
gentleman slain in a feud, laid out in state in his house - "to be seen
of all men."[115] In the outlandish mixture of nations swarming at
Venice, a student could spend all day watching mountebanks, and bloody
street fights, and processions. In the renowned freedom of that city
where "no man marketh anothers dooynges, or meddleth with another mans
livyng,"[116] it was no wonder if a young man fresh from an English
university and away from those who knew him, was sometimes "enticed by
lewd persons:" and, once having lost his innocence, outdid even the
students of Padua. For, as Greene says, "as our wits be as ripe as any,
so our willes are more ready than they all, to put into effect any of
their licentious abuses."[117] Thus arose the famous proverb, "An
Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate."
Hence the warnings against Circes by even those authors most loud in
praise of travel. Lipsius bids his noble pupil beware of Italian women:
" ... inter faeminas, formae conspicuae, sed lascivae et procaces."[118]
Turler must acknowledge "an auntient complaint made by many that our
countrymen usually bring three thinges with them out of Italye: a
naughty conscience, an empty purse, and a weak stomache: and many times
it chaunceth so indeede." For since "youth and flourishing yeeres are
most commonly employed in traveill, which of their owne course and
condicion are inclined unto vice, and much more earnestly imbrace the
same if it be enticed thereto," ... "many a time pleasures make a man
not thinke on his returne," ... but he is caught by the songs of
Mermaids, "so to returne home with shame and shame enough."[119]
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