There was a saying on the Continent that “England is a paradise for women, a prison for servants, and a hell or purgatory for horses.”  The society was very simple compared with the complex condition of ours, and yet it had more striking contrasts, and was a singular mixture of downrightness and artificiality; plainness and rudeness of speech went with the utmost artificiality of dress and manner.  It is curious to note the insular, not to say provincial, character of the people even three centuries ago.  When the Londoners saw a foreigner very well made or particularly handsome, they were accustomed to say, “It is a pity he is not an Englishman.”  It is pleasant, I say, to trace this “certain condescension” in the good old times.  Jacob Rathgeb (1592) says the English are magnificently dressed, and extremely proud and overbearing; the merchants, who seldom go unto other countries, scoff at foreigners, who are liable to be ill-used by street boys and apprentices, who collect in immense crowds and stop the way.  Of course Cassandra Stubbes, whose mind was set upon a better country, has little good to say of his countrymen.

“As concerning the nature, propertie, and disposition of the people they be desirous of new fangles, praising things past, contemning things present, and coveting after things to come.  Ambitious, proud, light, and unstable, ready to be carried away with every blast of wind.”  The French paid back with scorn the traditional hatred of the English for the French.  Perlin (1558) finds the people “proud and seditious, with bad consciences and unfaithful to their word in war unfortunate, in peace unfaithful”; and there was a Spanish or Italian proverb:  “England, good land, bad people.”  But even Perlin likes the appearance of the people:  “The men are handsome, rosy, large, and dexterous, usually fair-skinned; the women are esteemed the most beautiful in the world, white as alabaster, and give place neither to Italian, Flemish, nor German; they are joyous, courteous, and hospitable (de bon recueil).”  He thinks their manners, however, little civilized:  for one thing, they have an unpleasant habit of eructation at the table (car iceux routent a la table sans honte & ignominie); which recalls Chaucer’s description of the Trumpington miller’s wife and daughter: 

        “Men might her rowtyng hearen a forlong,
        The wenche routeth eek par companye.”

Another inference as to the table manners of the period is found in Coryat’s “Crudities” (1611).  He saw in Italy generally a curious custom of using a little fork for meat, and whoever should take the meat out of the dish with his fingers—­would give offense.  And he accounts for this peculiarity quite naturally:  “The reason of this their curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike cleane.”  Coryat found the use of the fork nowhere else in Christendom,