Note 260 — WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONESELF?

The famous Puritanic writer, Philip Stubbes, who published his “Anatomie of Abuses” in 1593, declares that he “has heard of shirtes that have cost some ten shillings, some twentie, some fortie, some five pound, some twentie nobles, and (which is horrible to heare) some tenne pounde a peece.” His book is filled with similar denunciations of abuses; in which he is followed by other satirists. They appear to have produced little effect in the way of reformation; for in the days of James I, John Taylor, the Water poet, similarly laments the wastefulness of those who—