mend his soul ever to your prayers, and also that we at our departing may depart in such wise." So he is held up as an example of kindliness and learning to all good men and to all sound scholars. Leland, a century after his death, echoes the praise of those who were his friends. Having exhausted the language of flattery, he fears that he may seem somewhat tedious to a hurried reader. "How can I help it?" he cries. "A peerless star such as this must not be robbed of a single ray."

On the other side of the account stands the Butcher of England. And as catchwords govern the world, the Butcher of England has eclipsed in the general memory the amiable scholar and patron. Here is a manifest injustice, since if the two men united in Tiptoft are of equal force and energy, there is no reason why the one should survive the other. And though I would not soften the traits which give colour and interest to the character of the famous Earl of Worcester, it is worth while to ask how it is that so thick a cloud of obloquy has enveloped his name. He was a cruel man, who lived in a cruel age. At a time when a very low value was put upon human life, he sent his adversaries to the gallows without ruth, and went himself without

regret. But he soiled his hands with no more blood than did Warwick and Montague, and so faithfully did he carry out the commands of his King, that he cannot be charged with the satisfaction of private revenge. Why, then, should he hold a place apart as the Butcher of England? I think because he came back to England with the imagined stain of Italy upon him,-because those who suffered from his judgments believed that there was something un-English in his procedure. They suspected, as we have seen, the bias of the Paduan Law. They took their death from Montague with a light heart. He had not wasted his years in foreign travel. While Tiptoft was studying the classics, he had stood, sword in hand, on English battlefields, and had every right to send his countrymen to the gallows. In the very aspect and manner of Tiptoft there was something exotic, and the prisoner of state or his friends resented that sentence should be passed by one who had not the bluff heartiness of his fellows. And then there was the impalement at Southampton. For this no excuse or palliation can be found,wanton outrage for which Tiptoft will be pilloried for all time as the Butcher of England.

Thus, with his nickname to aid, Tiptoft became a kind of bogey. He has been denounced

VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXIX.

as an Italianate Englishman by many whose insular pride ascribes England's virtues to 2 U

her own soil, her vices to benighted countries situate across the Channel. For more than a century after Tiptoft's death a kind of shame hung about those who betook themselves to Italy that they might learn the lessons of life. Though the Italianate Englishman went through several phases, they were all phases of dishonour, and his reproach is a commonplace of the sixteenth century. At first it was the cunning lessons of statecraft which were supposed to disgrace the anxious learner. A false reading of Machiavelli inflamed the public mind. Italy suggested nothing save intrigue, poison, and sudden death. This, the country of Tiptoft's policy, was the country also of such dramatists as Webster and Cyril Tonneur. Nashe apostrophised it in the conventional terms. "O Italy!" he exclaims, "academy of manslaughter, the sporting-place of murder, the apothecary-shop of all nations! How many kinds of weapons hast thou invented for malice!" Even to have sojourned there for a while seemed a danger and a slur. Harvey accused Nashe of travelling to Italy "to fetch him twopenny worth of Tuscanism." And then there came another class which sought instruction in the baleful country. They went in search not of lessons in statecraft, but of Circe's enchantments. It was their purpose to kill their own souls, not to destroy the bodies of others. They were no Tiptofts; they were merely curious lovers of super

stition and debauchery. "Englese Italianato," says Roger Ascham, who has left us the best picture of the kind, "e un diabolo incarnato," and the incarnate devil loses nothing of his hideous aspect when Ascham has finished with him. In a famous passage he sketches him and his paltry ambitions.

"If some yet do not well understand," says he, "what is an Englishman Italianated, I will plainly tell him. He, that by living and travelling in Italy, bringeth home into England out of Italy the Religion, the learning, the policy, the experito say, for Religion, Papistry or ence, the manners of Italy. That is worse for learning, less commonly than they carried out with them: for policy, a factious heart, a discoursing head, a mind to meddle in all men's matters: for experience, plenty of new mischiefs never known in England before: for manners, variety of vanities, and change of filthy lying. These be the enchant

ments of Circe."

And then Ascham passes from a general denunciation to condemn especially the merry books of Italy, which he thinks are no better than the works of chivalry composed in monasteries by idle monks or wanton nuns. The

Morte d'Arthur' he holds to be bad enough, yet ten 'Morte d'Arthurs' do not the tenth part so much harm as one of these books made in Italy by Bandello or Boccaccio, and translated into English. The exaggeration is a clear proof of prejudice, and persuades the reader to think that the enchantments of Circe did not allure young wills and wits so wantonly as Ascham believed.

As the years went on the

charges brought by zealous Englishmen against Italy became more precise and less heinous. Atheism, infidelity, vicious conversation, ambitious and proud behaviour - these are the sins which Harrison observed in the newly-returned Englishman. And presently the Italianate Briton, once a devil incarnate, was whittled down into a mere fop, a thing of frills and furbelows, of antics and gestures, of fantastic speech and affected manners, not unlike the tourist of to-day who comes back from Paris with a flat-brimmed hat on his head and broken English in his mouth. It is a strange chapter in the history of international relations, and it seems not a little stranger when we remember that the Italians were quick to return

the compliment. A Venetian who visited England when Henry VII. was on the throne, was astonished at the lack of affection wherewith English parents regarded their children, and English husbands their wives. In no class could he trace real human nature or the passion of love. Thus are the insults of untravelled Englishmen avenged. Thus is a check given to overhasty condemnation. As for the Italianate Englishman, he seemed a very real monster to three generations of men, and let it not be forgotten that, under whatever guise he presently appeared, he owed his beginning to John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, accomplished scholar, munificent patron of learning, and the Butcher of England.