2 Book XI.
20 J: LEADERS OF THE REFORMATION.
keen an eye for the comic aspect of stupidity. He had
been an auditor of the friar's, and taken note of such points
for future use. Soon after, he is the preacher and the friar
a listener among "a great multitude, as well o£the univer-
sity as of the town, met with great expectation to hear
what he would say." The arguments of the friar were
dallied with in a manner that must have touched the quick
even beneath his thick conceit ; such figures of speech,
the preacher said, were no worse to be understood than
the most common representation of painters, such as they
paint on walls and on houses. " As, for example," he con-
tinued, casting a meaning glance at the friar, who sat op-
posite him, " when they paint a fox preaching out of a
friar's cowl, none is so mad to take this to be a fox that
preacheth, but know well enough the meaning of the mat-
ter, which is to point out unto us what hypocrisy, craft, and
subtle dissimulation lieth hid many times in these friars'
cowls, willing us thereby to beware of them." "Friar
Buckenham," the chronicler adds, was so "dashed with
this sermoB, that he never after durst peep out of the pulpit
against Master Latimer."

This year of 1529, which presents to us Latimer in hot
:• conflict with his popish adversaries in the university of
Cambridge, was a memorable one in English history.
