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]
It was necessary also to warn the traveller against those more harmless
sins which we have already mentioned:
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