312 WILD FLOWERS. 



keep their heads warm after cutting their haire ; 

 which they use in sicknesse ; besides their thicke 

 folded linnen shirts, theire long-sleived coates," &c., 

 and inveighs (with that conscience-obscuring bitter- 

 ness which seems to take possession of all who are 

 determined to regard the ordinary and unimportant 

 actions and habits of an adversary as so many aggra- 

 vations, or intentional causes, of offence) against 

 the whole nation on account of their considering 

 " this preciseness in reformation of apparall not to 

 be materiall, or greatlie pertinent/' When we re- 

 member the quantity which Campion asserts to be 

 required for one shirt we may reasonably conclude 

 that, though not mentioned by name, these folded 

 linen shirts were included in the poet's further in- 

 vective against loose " mantles " of the people, in 

 the uttering of which he is carried away by his 

 hatred in a manner which may furnish us, not un- 

 reasonably, with considerable amusement.* 



While nations which considered themselves, and 

 which, in reality were, farther advanced in civiliza- 

 tion, were thus suffering their minds to be agitated 

 by the extravagance of the "barbarous" Irish in 

 the article of linen, it is, at least, consolatory to 

 know that they were consistent in their practice, as 

 we may conclude them to have been, when we learn 

 that the queen of Charles VII., of France, the con- 

 temporary of our Henry VI., rejoiced in the posses- 

 sion of no more than two linen shifts, a scantiness 

 of supply which might have satisfied the most pre- 

 judiced politicians of the day, or the greatest 

 * See his " View of the State of Ireland." 



