“There be many of so gross understanding that they think to confound a gentleman, when they ask of him this question. To whom it may be said that so much grace as Adam our first father, received of God at his creation, so much nobility and gentry he received. And to understand perfectly how and after what demeanor Adam behaved himself, or how he directed the order of his life, the witnesses, I think, in that behalf are far to seek, whose behavior, if it were good and honest, then was he the first gentleman, even so much as the first earthly follower of virtues. But if there were in him no such virtue, then was he the first gentleman in whom virtues and gentle deeds did first appear.” As a training toward excellence, our anonymous author recommends severity of discipline from the cradle upward. “Neither,” he says, “do I mean to allow _any_ liberty to youth, for as liberty is to all eyes hurtful, so is it to youth a present poison;” but he forgets that even poisons are administered in small doses in order to cure certain diseases, and that life would be a disease, even to the young, without some measure of liberty. He is terribly afraid that freedom in childhood will spoil the man, who himself will be no man, with too much liberty, but a “Royster;” “and a ‘Royster,’” he adds, “can not do the office of a gentleman, so long I mean as a Roysterian he doth continue.” He then informs us that there had long been in England a division of classes, under the heads of “Gentle Gentle, Gentle Ungentle, and Ungentle Gentle.” These were not classes of society generally, but classes of the orders of Gentlemen exclusively. The _Gentle Gentle_ are those of noble birth, from dukes’ sons down to esquires, provided they join to their “gentle house, gentle manners, and noble conditions, which is the cause of the addition of the other word called gentle.” This is much such a definition of gentleman as might be now given, with the exception that the question of birth has little to do with the matter, and that gentle manners and noble conditions, as our author calls gentleman-like bearing, scholarly education, and Christian principles, now make of a man a gentleman, let him be of “gentle” house or not. Indeed, the author himself is not indisposed to accept this method of definition, for on proceeding to tell us what “Gentle Ungentle” is, he says that “Gentle Ungentle is that man which is descended of noble parentage, by the which he is commonly called gentle, and hath in him such corrupt and ungentle manners as to the judgment of all men he justly deserveth the name of ungentle.” His remedy again for preventing the gentle becoming ungentle is coercion in youth-time. He thinks that virtue is to be got from the human being like oils or other juices from certain vegetable substances, by ex-pression. Squeeze the human being tightly, press him heavily, he is sure to yield something. No doubt; but after the pressure he is often of little more use than a well-sucked orange.