Of the absolute truth of every word in Stubbes’s accounts we have ample corroborative proof. He wrote in real earnest, in true zeal, for the reform of the foolery and extravagance he saw around him, not against imaginary evils. There is ample proof in the writings of his contemporaries—in Shakespere’s comparisons, in Harrison’s sensible _Description of England_, in Tom Coryat’s _Crudities_—and oddities—of the existence of this foolishness and extravagance. There is likewise ample proof in the sumptuary laws of Elizabeth’s day. It would have been the last thing the solemn Stubbes could have liked or have imagined, that he should have afforded important help to future writers upon costume, yet such is the case. For he described the dress of English men and women with as much precision as a modern reporter of the modes. No casual survey of dress could have furnished to him the detail of his description. It required much examination and inquiry, especially as to the minutiae of women’s dress. Therefore when I read his bitter pages (if I can forget the little pet spaniel) I have always a comic picture in my mind of a sour, morose, shocked old Puritan, “a meer, bitter, narrow-sould Puritan” clad in cloak and doublet, with great horn spectacles on nose, and ample note-book, penner, and ink-horn in hand, agonizingly though eagerly surveying the figure of one of his fashion-clad women neighbors, walking around her slowly, asking as he walked the name of this jupe, the price of that pinner, the stuff of this sleeve, the cut of this cap, groaning as he wrote it all down, yet never turning to squire or knight till every detail of her extravagance and “greet cost” is recorded. In spite of all his moralizing his quill pen had too sharp a point, his scowling forehead and fierce eyes too keen a power of vision ever to render to us a dull page; even the author of _Wimples and Crisping Pins_ might envy his powers of perception and description. The bravery of the Jacobean gallant did not differ in the main from his dress under Elizabeth; but in details he found some extravagances. The love-locks became more prominent, and shoe-roses and garters both grew in size. Pomanders were carried by men and women, and “casting-bottles.” Gloves and pockets were perfumed. As musk was the favorite scent this perfume-wearing is not over-alluring. As a preventive of the plague all perfumes were valued.