Wit applied to a woman makes her
dissolve her simpering and discover her teeth with laughter, and this is
surely a purge of love, for the beginning of love is a kind of foolish
melancholy. As for the man that makes his tailor his means, and hopes to
inveigle his love with such a coloured suit, surely the same deeply
hazards the loss of her favour upon every change of his clothes. So
likewise for the other that courts her silently with a good body, let me
certify him, that his clothes depend upon the comeliness of his body,
and so both upon opinion. She that hath been seduced by apparel let me
give her to wit, that men always put off their clothes before they go to
bed. And let her that hath been enamoured of her servant's body
understand, that if she saw him in a skin of cloth, that is, in a suit
made of the pattern of his body, she would see slender cause to love him
ever after. There is no clothes sit so well in a woman's eye as a suit
of steel, though not of the fashion, and no man so soon surpriseth a
woman's affections as he that is the subject of all whispering, and hath
always twenty stories of his own deeds depending upon him. Mistake me
not; I understand not by valour one that never fights but when he is
backed with drink or anger, or hissed on with beholders, nor one that is
desperate, nor one that takes away a serving-man's weapons when
perchance it cost him his quarter's wages, nor yet one that wears a
privy coat of defence and therein is confident, for then such as made
bucklers would be counted the Catilines of the commonwealth.
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