All these considerations make me fall into the wonder and complaint
of Columella, how it should come to pass that all arts or Sciences
(for the dispute, which is an art and which is a science, does not
belong to the curiosity of us husbandmen), metaphysic, physic,
morality, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, etc., which are all, I
grant, good and useful faculties, except only metaphysic, which I do
not know whether it be anything or no, but even vaulting, fencing,
dancing, attiring, cookery, carving, and such like vanities, should
all have public schools and masters; and yet that we should never
see or hear of any man who took upon him the profession of teaching
this so pleasant, so virtuous, so profitable, so honourable, so
necessary art.
A man would think, when he's in serious humour, that it were but a
vain, irrational, and ridiculous thing for a great company of men
and women to run up and down in a room together, in a hundred
several postures and figures, to no purpose, and with no design; and
therefore dancing was invented first, and only practised anciently,
in the ceremonies of the heathen religion, which consisted all in
mummery and madness; the latter being the chief glory of the
worship, and accounted divine inspiration.
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