No doubt, these statements of two professional musicians contradictory to each other, as to the cultivation of music by English gentlemen towards the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, must not be taken literally, but rather as what the authors thought an ingenious and elegant manner of proving that their works supplied a want. Thus, Thomas Morley teaching vocal music, maintains that every young gentleman is expected to be a singer; and Thomas Robinson, teaching the lute and the cither, expresses his dissatisfaction that many gentlemen know nothing about musical instruments,--indeed, nothing of music. Moreover, Thomas Robinson is a "Student in all the liberall Sciences;" we know this from his own statement on the title-page of his 'New Citharen Lessons,' London, 1609; and being a learned man, he considers it impossible to be a good musician without being versed in "all the seauen liberall Sciences." The fact that there is no English book dating from the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth century, which contains descriptions with illustrations of the different musical instruments formerly in use in England, while a considerable number of such books were published on the continent, sufficiently proves, if other testimony were wanting, that instrumental music was not so much cultivated in England as on the continent. The English books of instruction for certain instruments were generally but poor compilations got up by the publishers themselves. The illustrations of musical instruments given in Hawkins's 'History of Music' have most of them been copied from Luscinius and Mersenne. Hawkins appears to have been unaware that these instruments, of which he gives descriptions derived from foreign sources, were formerly also in use in England. At any rate, he mentions several of them by their German names, without giving their English names. Some English musicians who at the time of James I. visited the continent, Italianised their names, a rather unpatriotic act to which they probably would not have thought of resorting, had they not become convinced of the superiority of the continental music. John Cooper called himself Giovanni Coperario; and Peter Phillips, who lived for a time in the Netherlands, altered his name into Pietro Philippi.