crafty conveyance, brainless brawling, false forswearing; which good fellows will soon take a man by the sleeve and cause him take his inn, some with beggary, some with gout and dropsy, some with theft and robbery, and seldom they will leave a man before he come either to hanging or else some other extreme misery. To make an end, how shooting by all men's laws hath been allowed, carding and dicing by all men's judgements condemned, I need not show, the matter is so plain.

Therefore, when the Lydians shall invent better things than Apollo, when sloth and idleness shall increase virtue more than labour, when the night and lurking corners giveth less occasion to unthriftiness than light day and openness, then shall shooting and such gaming be in some comparison like. Yet even as I do not show all the goodness which is in shooting, when I prove it standeth by the same things that virtue itself standeth by, as brought in by gods or god-like men, fostered by labour, committed to the safeguard of light and openness, accompanied with provision and diligence, loved and allowed by every good man's sentence: even likewise do I not open half the naughtiness which is in carding and dicing, when I show how they are born of a desperate mother, nourished in idleness, increased by licence of night and corners, accompanied with fortune, chance, deceit, and craftiness; condemned and banished by all laws and judgements.

For if I would enter to describe the monstrousness of it, I should rather wander in it, it is so broad, than have any ready passage to the end of the matter; whose horribleness is so large, that it passed the eloquence of our English Homer to compass it; yet because I ever thought his sayings to have as much authority as either Sophocles or Euripides in Greek, therefore gladly do I remember these verses of his :

Hasardry is very mother of lesings,

And of deceit, and cursed forswearings;

Blasphemy of Christ, manslaughter, and waste also

Of cattle, of time, of other things mo.

*

Mother of lesings.] True it may be called so, if a man consider how many ways and how many things he

* I doubt whether our author has not mistaken the sense of Chaucer: I rather take lesings to be lies than losses.

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loseth thereby; for first, he loseth his goods, he loseth his time, he loseth quickness of wit, and all good lust to other things; he loseth honest company, he loseth his good name and estimation, and at last, if he leave it not, loseth God and heaven and all; and, instead of these things, winneth at length either hanging or hell.

And of deceit.] I trow, if I should not lie, there is not half so much craft used in no one thing in the world as in this cursed thing. What false dice use they? As dice stopped with quicksilver and hairs, dice of vantage, flats, gourds to chop and change when they list; to let the true dice fall under the table and so take up the false; and if they be true dice, what shift will they make to set the one of them with sliding, with cogging, with foisting, with quoiting as they call it? How will they use these shifts when they get a plain man that cannot skill of them? How will they go about if they perceive an honest man have money, which list not play, to provoke him to play? They will seek his company, they will let him pay nought, yea, and as I heard a man once say that he did, they will send for him to some house and spend perchance a crown on him, and, at last, will one begin to say: What, my masters, what shall we do? shall every man play his twelve-pence whilst an apple roast in the fire, and then we will drink and depart? Nay, will another say (as false as he), you cannot leave when you begin, and

therefore I will not play; but if you will gage that every

man, as he hath lost his twelve-pence, shall sit down, I am content; for surely I would win no man's money here, but even as much as would pay for my supper. Then speaketh the third to the honest man that thought not to play, What! will you play your twelve-pence? If he excuse him; Tush man, will the other say, stick not in honest company for twelve-pence; I will bear your half, and here is my money.

Now all this is to make him to begin, for they know if he be once in, and be a loser, that he will not stick at his twelve-pence, but hopeth ever to get it again, while perhaps he lose all. Then every one of them setteth his shifts abroach, some with false dice, some with settling of dice, some with having outlandish silver coins gilded to put away at a time for good gold. Then, if there come a thing in controversy, must you be judged by the table, and then farewell the honest man's part, for he is borne down on every side.

Now, Sir, beside all these things, they have certain terms

(as a man would say) appropriate to their playing; whereby they will draw a man's money but pay none, which they call bars, that surely he that knoweth them not may soon be debarred of all that ever he hath, before he learn them. If a plain man lose, as he shall do ever, or else it is a wonder, then the game is so devilish that he can never leave; for vain hope (which hope, saith Euripides, destroyeth many a man and city) driveth him on so far, that he can never return back until he be so light that he need fear no thieves by the way. Now if a simple man happen once in his life to win of such players, then will they either entreat him to keep them company whilst he hath lost all again, or else they will use the most devilish fashion of all, for one of the players that standeth next him shall have a pair of false dice and cast them out upon the board, the honest man shall take them and cast them as he did the other, the third shall espy them to be false dice, and shall cry out hard, with all the oaths under God, that he hath falsely won their money, and then there is nothing but hold thy throat from my dagger; every man layeth hand on the simple man and taketh all their money from him, and his own also, thinking himself well that he escapeth with his life.

Cursed forswearings, Blasphemy of Christ.] These half verses Chaucer, in another place, more at large doth well set out and very lively express, saying,

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By Goddes precious heart and by his nails,
And by the blood of Christ, that is in Hailes,
Seven is my chance, and thine is cinque and trey,
By Goddes armes, if thou falsely play,
This dagger shall thorough thine heart go."
This fruit cometh of the becched bones two,
Forswearing, ire, falseness, and homicide.

Though these verses be very earnestly written, yet they do not half so grisly set out the horribleness of blasphemy which such gamers use, as it is indeed, and as I have heard myself. For no man can write a thing so earnestly, as when it is spoken with gesture, as learned men, you know, do say. How will you think that such furiousness, with wood countenance, and brenning eyes, with staring and bragging, with heart ready to leap out of the belly for swelling, can be expressed the tenth part to the uttermost. Two men I heard myself, whose sayings be far more grisly than Chaucer's

verses. One, when he had lost his money, swore me God from top to the toe with one breath, that he had lost all his money for lack of swearing; the other losing his money and heaping oaths upon oaths one in another's neck, most horri. ble, and not speakable, was rebuked of an honest man which stood by for so doing; he, by and by, staring him in the face, and clapping his fist with all his money he had upon the board, swore me by the flesh of God, that, if swearing would help him but one ace, he would not leave one piece of God unsworn, neither within nor without. The remembrance of this blasphemy, Philologus, doth make me quake at the heart, and therefore I will speak no more of it.

And so to conclude with such gaming, I think there be no ungraciousness in all this world that carrieth a man so far from God as this fault doth. And if there were any so desperate a person that would begin his hell in earth, I trow he should not find hell more like hell itself, than the life of those men is which daily haunt and use such ungracious games.

Phi. You handle this gere indeed; and I suppose, if you had been apprentice at such games, you could not have said more of them than you have done, and by like you have had somewhat to do with them.

Tox. Indeed, you may honestly gather that I hate them greatly, in that I speak against them; not that I have used them greatly, in that I speak of them. For things be known divers ways, as Socrates (you know) doth prove in Alcibiades. And if every man should be that, that he speaketh or writeth upon, then should Homer have been the best captain, most coward, hardy, hasty, wise and wood, sage and simple; and Terence an old man and a young, an honest man and a bawd; with such like. Surely every man ought to pray to God daily to keep them from such unthriftiness, and especially all the youth of England; for what youth doth begin, a man will follow commonly, even to his dying day; which thing Adrastus, in Euripides, prettily doth express, saying,

What thing a man in tender age hath most in ure,
That same to death always to keep he shall be sure.
Therefore in age who greatly longs good fruit to mow,
In youth he must himself apply good seed to sow.

For the foundation of youth well set (as Plato doth say), the whole body of the commonwealth shall flourish there

after. If the young tree grow crooked, when it is old a man shall rather break it than straight it. And I think there is no one thing that crooks youth more than such unlawful games. Nor let no man say, if they be honestly used they do no harm. For how can that pastime which neither exerciseth the body with any honest labour, nor yet the mind with any honest thinking, have any honesty joined with it? Nor let no man assure himself that he can use it honestly; for if he stand therein he may fortune have a fall, the thing is more slippery than he knoweth of. A man may (I grant) sit on a brant hill side, but if he give never so little forward, he cannot stop, though he would never so fain, but he must needs run headlong, he knoweth not how far. What honest pretences vain pleasure layeth daily (as it were enticements or baits to pull men forward withal) Homer doth well show by the Sirens and Circe. And amongst all in that ship, there was but one Ulysses, and yet he had done too as the other did, if a goddess had not taught him; and so likewise, I think, they be easy to number which pass by playing honestly, except the grace of God save and keep them. Therefore they that will not go too far in playing, let them follow this counsel of the poet :

Stop the beginnings.

Phi. Well, or you go any further, I pray you tell me this one thing: Do you speak against mean men's playing only, or against great men's playing too, or put you any difference betwixt them?

Tox. If I should excuse myself herein, and say that I spake of the one and not of the other, I fear lest I should as fondly excuse myself, as a certain preacher did, whom I heard upon a time speak against many abuses (as he said), and, at last, he spake against candles, and then, he fearing lest some men would have been angry and offended with him, Nay, saith he, you must take me as I mean: I speak not against great candles, but against little candles, for they be not all one (quoth he), I promise you: and so every man laughed him to scorn.

Indeed, as for great men, and great men's matters, I list not greatly to meddle. Yet this I would wish, that all great men in England had read over diligently the Pardoner's Tale in Chaucer, and there they should perceive and see how