Alas, our Englishmen are the plainest-dealing souls that ever God put
life in; they are　greedy of news, and love to be fed in their humours and
hear themselves flattered the best　that may be. Even as Philemon, a comic
poet, died with extreme laughter at the conceit　of seeing an ass eat figs,
so have the Italians no such sport as to see poor English asses,　how
soberly they swallow Spanish figs, devour any hook baited for them. He is
not fit to　travel that cannot, with the Candians, live on serpents, make
nourishing food even of　poison. Rats and mice engender by licking one
another; he must lick, he must crouch, he　must cog, lie, and prate, that
either in the court or a foreign country will engender and　come to
preferment. Be his feature what it will, if he be fair-spoken he winneth
friends.