Perhaps it was an intellectual affectation of atheism or a cultivated
taste for Machiavelli with which he was inclined to startle his
old-fashioned countrymen. Almost the only book Sir Edward Unton seems to
have brought back with him from Venice was the _Historie of Nicolo
Machiavelli_, Venice, 1537. On the title page he has written:
"Macchavelli Maxima / Qui nescit dissimulare / nescit vivere / Vive et
vivas / Edw. Unton. /"[120] Perhaps it was only his display of Italian
clothes--"civil, because black, and comely because fitted to the
body,"[121] or daintier table manners than Englishmen used which called
down upon him the ridicule of his enemies. No doubt there was in the
returned traveller a certain degree of condescension which made him
disagreeable--especially if he happened to be a proud and insolent
courtier, who attracted the Queen's notice by his sharpened wits and
novelties of discourse, or if he were a vain boy of the sort that
cumbered the streets of London with their rufflings and struttings.

In making surmises as to whom Ascham had in his mind's eye when he said
that he knew men who came back from Italy with "less learning and worse
manners," I guessed that one might be Arthur Hall, the first translator
of Homer into English. Hall was a promising Grecian at Cambridge, and
began his translation with Ascham's encouragement.[122] Between 1563 and
1568, when Ascham was writing _The Scolemaster_, Hall, without finishing
for a degree, or completing the Homer, went to Italy. It would have
irritated Ascham to have a member of St John's throw over his task and
his degree to go gadding. Certainly Hall's after life bore out Ascham's
forebodings as to the value of foreign travel. On his return he spent a
notorious existence in London until the consequences of a tavern brawl
turned him out of Parliament. I might dwell for a moment on Hall's
curious account of this latter affair, because it is one of the few
utterances we have by an acknowledged Italianate Englishman--of a