Our constant changes of habit were the subject of ridicule at home and
abroad, even at an early period. Witness the ancient limner's jest in 1570,
who, being employed to decorate the gallery of the Lord Admiral Lincoln
with representations of the costumes of the different nations of Europe,
when he came to the English, drew a naked man, with cloth of various
colours lying by him, and a pair of shears held in his hand, as in rueful
suspense and hesitation; or the earlier conceit, to the same effect, of
"Andrew Borde of Physicke Doctor," alias "Andreas Perforatus," who, to the
first chapter of his "Boke of the Instruction of Knowledge," (1542,)
prefixed a naked figure, with these lines:--
"I am an Englishman, and naked I stande here,
Musing in minde what rayment I shal weare:
For nowe I wil weare this, and now I will weare that--
And now I will weare I cannot telle whatt."
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