Title: English Travellers of the Renaissance
Author: Clare Howard
Release date: September 9, 2004 [eBook #13403]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Kevin Handy, John Hagerson and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
This essay was written in 1908-1910 while I was studying at Oxford as Fellow of the Society of American Women in London. Material on the subject of travel in any century is apparently inexhaustible, and one could write many books on the subject without duplicating sources. The following aims no further than to describe one phase of Renaissance travel in clear and sharp outline, with sufficient illustration to embellish but not to clog the main ideas.
In the preparation of this book I incurred many debts of gratitude. I would thank the staff of the Bodleian, especially Mr W.H.B. Somerset, for their kindness during the two years I was working in the library of Oxford University; and Dr Perlbach, Abteilungsdirektor of the Königliche Bibliothek at Berlin, who forwarded to me some helpful information concerning the early German books of instructions for travellers; and Professor Clark S. Northup, of Cornell University, for similar aid. To Mr George Whale I am indebted for the use of his transcript of Sloane MS. 1813, and to my friend Miss M.E. Marshall, of the Board of Trade, for the generous gift of her leisure hours in reading for me in the British Museum after the sea had divided me from that treasure-house of information.
I would like to acknowledge with thanks the kind advice of Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Sidney Lee, whose generosity in giving time and scholarship many students besides myself are in a position to appreciate. Mr L. Pearsall Smith, from whose work on the Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton I have drawn copiously, gave me also courteous personal assistance.
To the Faculty of the English Department at Columbia University I owe the gratitude of one who has received her earliest inclination to scholarship from their teachings. I am under heavy obligations to Professor A.H. Thorndike and Professor G.P. Krapp for their corrections and suggestions in the proof-sheets of this book, and to Professor W.P. Trent for continued help and encouragement throughout my studies at Columbia and elsewhere.
Above all, I wish to emphasize the aid of Professor C.H. Firth, of Oxford University, whose sympathy and comprehension of the difficulties of a beginner in the field he so nobly commands can be understood only by those, like myself, who come to Oxford aspiring and alone. I wish this essay were a more worthy result of his influence.
CLARE HOWARD
BARNARD COLLEGE, NEW YORK
Among the many didactic books which flooded England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were certain essays on travel. Some of these have never been brought to light since their publication more than three hundred years ago, or been mentioned by the few writers who have interested themselves in the literature of this subject. In the collections of voyages and explorations, so often garnered, these have found no place. Most of them are very rare, and have never been reprinted. Yet they do not deserve to be thus overlooked, and in several ways this survey of them will, I think, be useful for students of literature.
They reveal a widespread custom among Elizabethan and Jacobean gentlemen, of completing their education by travel. There are scattered allusions to this practice, in contemporary social documents: Anthony à Wood frequently explains how such an Oxonian "travelled beyond seas and returned a compleat Person,"--but nowhere is this ideal of a cosmopolitan education so explicitly set forth as it is in these essays. Addressed to the intending tourist, they are in no sense to be confused with guide-books or itineraries. They are discussions of the benefits of travel, admonitions and warnings, arranged to put the traveller in the proper attitude of mind towards his great task of self-development. Taken in chronological order they outline for us the life of the travelling student.
Beginning with the end of the sixteenth century when travel became the fashion, as the only means of acquiring modern languages and modern history, as well as those physical accomplishments and social graces by which a young man won his way at Court, they trace his evolution up to the time when it had no longer any serious motive; that is, when the chairs of modern history and modern languages were founded at the English universities, and when, with the fall of the Stuarts, the Court ceased to be the arbiter of men's fortunes. In the course of this evolution they show us many phases of continental influence in England; how Italian immorality infected young imaginations, how the Jesuits won travellers to their religion, how France became the model of deportment, what were the origins of the Grand Tour, and so forth.
That these directions for travel were not isolated oddities of literature, but were the expression of a widespread ideal of the English gentry, I have tried to show in the following study. The essays can hardly be appreciated without support from biography and history, and for that reason I have introduced some concrete illustrations of the sort of traveller to whom the books were addressed. If I have not always quoted the "Instructions" fully, it is because they repeat one another on some points. My plan has been to comment on whatever in each book was new, or showed the evolution of travel for study's sake.
The result, I hope, will serve to show something of the cosmopolitanism of English society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; of the closer contact which held between England and the Continent, while England was not yet great and self-sufficient; of times when her soldiers of low and high degree went to seek their fortunes in the Low Countries, and her merchants journeyed in person to conduct business with Italy; when a steady stream of Roman Catholics and exiles for political reasons trooped to France or Flanders for years together.
These discussions of the art of travel are relics of an age when Englishmen, next to the Germans, were known for the greatest travellers among all nations. In the same boat-load with merchants, spies, exiles, and diplomats from England sailed the young gentleman fresh from his university, to complete his education by a look at the most civilized countries of the world. He approached the Continent with an inquiring, open mind, eager to learn, quick to imitate the refinements and ideas of countries older than his own. For the same purpose that now takes American students to England, or Japanese students to America, the English striplings once journeyed to France, comparing governments and manners, watching everything, noting everything, and coming home to benefit their country by new ideas.
I hope, also, that a review of these forgotten volumes may lend an added pleasure to the reading of books greater than themselves in Elizabethan literature. One cannot fully appreciate the satire of Amorphus's claim to be "so sublimated and refined by travel," and to have "drunk in the spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen princes' courts where I have resided,"[1] unless one has read of the benefits of travel as expounded by the current Instructions for Travellers; nor the dialogues between Sir Politick-Would-be and Peregrine in Volpone, or the Fox. Shakespeare, too, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, has taken bodily the arguments of the Elizabethan orations in praise of travel:
"Some to the warres, to try their fortune there;
Some, to discover Islands farre away;
Some, to the studious Universities;
For any, or for all these exercises,
He said, thou Proteus, your sonne was meet;
And did request me, to importune you
To let him spend his time no more at home;
Which would be great impeachment to his age,
In having knowne no travaile in his youth.
(Antonio) Nor need'st thou much importune me to that
Whereon, this month I have been hamering,
I have considered well, his losse of time,
And how he cannot be a perfect man,
Not being tryed, and tutored in the world;
Experience is by industry atchiev'd,
And perfected by the swift course of time."
(Act I. Sc. iii.)
THE BEGINNINGS OF TRAVEL FOR CULTURE
Pilgrimages at the close of the Middle Ages--New objects for travel in the fifteenth century--Humanism--Diplomatic ambition--Linguistic acquirement.
THE HIGH PURPOSE OF THE ELIZABETHAN TRAVELLER
Development of the individual--Benefit to the Commonwealth--First books addressed to travellers.
SOME CYNICAL ASPERSIONS UPON THE BENEFITS OF TRAVEL
The Italianate Englishman.
PERILS FOR PROTESTANT TRAVELLERS
The Inquisition--The Jesuits--Penalties of recusancy.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMIES
France the arbiter of manners in the seventeenth century--Riding the great horse--Attempts to establish academies in England--Why travellers neglected Spain.
THE GRAND TOUR
Origin of the term--Governors for young travellers--Expenses of travel.
THE DECADENCE OF THE GRAND TOUR
The decline of the courtier--Foundation of chairs of Modern History and Modern Languages at Oxford and Cambridge--Englishmen become self-sufficient--Books of travel become common--Advent of the Romantic traveller who travels for scenery.
Of the many social impulses that were influenced by the Renaissance, by that "new lernynge which runnythe all the world over now-a-days," the love of travel received a notable modification. This very old instinct to go far, far away had in the Middle Ages found sanction, dignity and justification in the performance of pilgrimages. It is open to doubt whether the number of the truly pious would ever have filled so many ships to Port Jaffa had not their ranks been swelled by the restless, the adventurous, the wanderers of all classes.
Towards the sixteenth century, when curiosity about things human was an ever stronger undercurrent in England, pilgrimages were particularly popular. In 1434, Henry VI. granted licences to 2433 pilgrims to the shrine of St James of Compostella alone.[2] The numbers were so large that the control of their transportation became a coveted business enterprise. "Pilgrims at this time were really an article of exportation," says Sir Henry Ellis, in commenting on a letter of the Earl of Oxford to Henry VI., asking for a licence for a ship of which he was owner, to carry pilgrims. "Ships were every year loaded from different ports with cargoes of these deluded wanderers, who carried with them large sums of money to defray the expenses of their journey."[3]
Among the earliest books printed in England was Informacon for Pylgrymes unto the Holy Londe, by Wynkin de Worde, one which ran to three editions,[4] an almost exact copy of William Wey's "prevysyoun" (provision) for a journey eastwards.[5] The tone and content of this Informacon differ very little from the later Directions for Travellers which are the subject of our study. The advice given shows that the ordinary pilgrim thought, not of the ascetic advantages of the voyage, or of simply arriving in safety at his holy destination, but of making the trip in the highest possible degree of personal comfort and pleasure. He is advised to take with him two barrels of wine ("For yf ye wolde geve xx dukates for a barrel ye shall none have after that ye passe moche Venyse"); to buy orange-ginger, almonds, rice, figs, cloves, maces and loaf sugar also, to eke out the fare the ship will provide. And this although he is to make the patron swear, before the pilgrim sets foot in the galley, that he will serve "hote meete twice at two meals a day." He whom we are wont to think of as a poor wanderer, with no possessions but his grey cloak and his staff, is warned not to embark for the Holy Land without carrying with him "a lytell cawdron, a fryenge panne, dysshes, platers, cuppes of glasse ... a fether bed, a matrasse, a pylawe, two payre sheets and a quylte" ... a cage for half a dozen of hens or chickens to have with you in the ship, and finally, half a bushel of "myle sede" to feed the chickens. Far from being encouraged to exercise a humble and abnegatory spirit on the voyage, he is to be at pains to secure a berth in the middle of the ship, and not to mind paying fifty ducats for to be in a good honest place, "to have your ease in the galey and also to be cherysshed." Still more unchristian are the injunctions to run ahead of one's fellows, on landing, in order to get the best quarters at the inn, and first turn at the dinner provided; and above all, at Port Jaffa, to secure the best ass, "for ye shall paye no more for the best than for the worste."
But while this book was being published, new forces were at hand which were to strip the thin disguise of piety from pilgrims of this sort. The Colloquies of Erasmus appeared before the third edition of Informacon for Pylgrymes, and exploded the idea that it was the height of piety to have seen Jerusalem. It was nothing but the love of change, Erasmus declared, that made old bishops run over huge spaces of sea and land to reach Jerusalem. The noblemen who flocked thither had better be looking after their estates, and married men after their wives. Young men and women travelled "non sine gravi discrimine morum et integritatis." Pilgrimages were a dissipation. Some people went again and again and did nothing else all their lives long.[6] The only satisfaction they looked for or received was entertainment to themselves and their friends by their remarkable adventures, and ability to shine at dinner-tables by recounting their travels.[7] There was no harm in going sometimes, but it was not pious. And people could spend their time, money and pains on something which was truly pious.[8]
It was only a few years after this that that pupil of Erasmus and his friends, King Henry the Eighth, who startled Europe by the way he not only received new ideas but acted upon them, swept away the shrines, burned our Lady of Walsingham and prosecuted "the holy blisful martyr" Thomas à Becket for fraudulent pretensions.[9]
But a new object for travel was springing up and filling the leading minds of the sixteenth century--the desire of learning, at first hand, the best that was being thought and said in the world. Humanism was the new power, the new channel into which men were turning in the days when "our naturell, yong, lusty and coragious prynce and sovrayne lord King Herre the Eighth entered into the flower of pleasaunt youthe."[10] And as the scientific spirit or the socialistic spirit can give to the permanent instincts of the world a new zest, so the Renaissance passion for self-expansion and for education gave to the old road a new mirage.
All through the fifteenth century the universities of Italy, pre-eminent since their foundation for secular studies, had been gaining reputation by their offer of a wider education than the threadbare discussions of the schoolmen. The discovery and revival in the fifteenth century of Greek literature, which had stirred Italian society so profoundly, gave to the universities a northward-spreading fame. Northern scholars, like Rudolf Agricola, hurried south to find congenial air at the centre of intellectual life. That professional humanists could not do without the stamp of true culture which an Italian degree gave to them, Erasmus, observer of all things, notes in the year 1500 to the Lady of Veer:
"Two things, I feel, are very necessary: one that I go to Italy, to gain for my poor learning some authority from the celebrity of the place; the other, that I take the degree of Doctor; both senseless, to be sure. For people do not straightway change their minds because they cross the sea, as Horace says, nor will the shadow of an impressive name make me a whit more learned ... but we must put on the lion's skin to prove our ability to those who judge a man by his title and not by his books, which in truth they do not understand."[11]
Although Erasmus despised degree-hunting, it is well known that he felt the power of Italy. He was tempted to remain in Rome for ever, by reason of the company he found there. "What a sky and fields, what libraries and pleasant walks and sweet confabulation with the learned ..."[12] he exclaims, in afterwards recalling that paradise of scholars. There was, for instance, the Cardinal Grimani, who begged Erasmus to share his life ... and books.[13] And there was Aldus Manutius. We get a glimpse of the Venetian printing-house when Aldus and Erasmus worked together: Erasmus sitting writing regardless of the noise of printers, while Aldus breathlessly reads proof, admiring every word. "We were so busy," says Erasmus, "we scarce had time to scratch our ears."[14]
It was this charm of intellectual companionship which started the whole stream of travel animi causa. Whoever had keen wits, an agile mind, imagination, yearned for Italy. There enlightened spirits struck sparks from one another. Young and ardent minds in England and in Germany found an escape from the dull and melancholy grimness of their uneducated elders--purely practical fighting-men, whose ideals were fixed on a petrified code of life.
I need not explain how Englishmen first felt this charm of urbane civilization. The travels of Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, of Gunthorpe, Flemming, Grey and Free, have been recently described by Mr Einstein in The Italian Renaissance in England. As for Italian journeys of Selling, Grocyn, Latimer, Tunstall, Colet and Lily, of that extraordinary group of scholars who transformed Oxford by the introduction of Greek ideals and gave to it the peculiar distinction which is still shining, I mention them only to suggest that they are the source of the Renaissance respect for a foreign education, and the founders of the fashion which, in its popular spreadings, we will attempt to trace. They all studied in Italy, and brought home nothing but good. For to scholarship they joined a native force of character which gave a most felicitous introduction to England of the fine things of the mind which they brought home with them. By their example they gave an impetus to travel for education's sake which lesser men could never have done.
Though through Grocyn, Linacre and Tunstall, Greek was better taught in England than in Italy, according to Erasmus,[15] at the time Henry VIII. came to the throne, the idea of Italy as the goal of scholars persisted. Rich churchmen, patrons of letters, launched promising students on to the Continent to give them a complete education; as Richard Fox, Founder of Corpus Christi, sent Edward Wotton to Padua, "to improve his learning and chiefly to learn Greek,"[16] or Thomas Langton, Bishop of Winchester, supported Richard Pace at the same university.[17] To Reginald Pole, the scholar's life in Italy made so strong an appeal that he could never be reclaimed by Henry VIII. Shunning all implication in the tumult of the political world, he slipped back to Padua, and there surrounded himself with friends,--"singular fellows, such as ever absented themselves from the court, desiring to live holily."[18] To his household at Padua gravitated other English students fond of "good company and the love of learned men"; Thomas Lupset,[19] the confidant of Erasmus and Richard Pace; Thomas Winter,[20] Wolsey's reputed natural son; Thomas Starkey,[21] the historian; George Lily,[22] son of the grammarian; Michael Throgmorton, and Richard Morison,[23] ambassador-to-be.
There were other elements that contributed to the growth of travel besides the desire to become exquisitely learned. The ambition of Henry VIII. to be a power in European politics opened the liveliest intercourse with the Continent. It was soon found that a special combination of qualities was needed in the ambassadors to carry out his aspirations. Churchmen, like the ungrateful Pole, for whose education he had generously subscribed, were often unpliable to his views of the Pope; a good old English gentleman, though devoted, might be like Sir Robert Wingfield, simple, unsophisticated, and the laughingstock of foreigners.[24] A courtier, such as Lord Rochford, who could play tennis, make verses, and become "intime" at the court of Francis I., could not hold his own in disputes of papal authority with highly educated ecclesiastics.[25] Hence it came about that the choice of an ambassador fell more and more upon men of sound education who also knew something of foreign countries: such as Sir Thomas Wyatt, or Sir Richard Wingfield, of Cambridge and Gray's Inn, who had studied at Ferrara[26]; Sir Nicholas Wotton, who had lived in Perugia, and graduated doctor of civil and canon law[27]; or Anthony St Lieger, who, according to Lloyd, "when twelve years of age was sent for his grammar learning with his tutor into France, for his carriage into Italy, for his philosophy to Cambridge, for his law to Gray's Inn: and for that which completed all, the government of himself, to court; where his debonairness and freedom took with the king, as his solidity and wisdom with the Cardinal."[28] Sometimes Henry was even at pains to pick out and send abroad promising university students with a view to training them especially for diplomacy. On one of his visits to Oxford he was impressed with the comely presence and flowing expression of John Mason, who, though the son of a cowherd, was notable at the university for his "polite and majestick speaking."
King Henry disposed of him in foreign parts, to add practical experience to his speculative studies, and paid for his education out of the king's Privy Purse, as we see by the royal expenses for September 1530. Among such items as "£8, 18s. to Hanybell Zinzano, for drinks and other medicines for the King's Horses"; and, "20s. to the fellow with the dancing dog," is the entry of "a year's exhibition to Mason, the King's scholar at Paris, £3, 6s. 8d."[29]
Another educational investment of the King's was Thomas Smith, afterwards as excellent an ambassador as Mason, whom he supported at Cambridge, and according to Camden, at riper years made choice of to be sent into Italy. "For even till our days," says Camden under the year 1577, "certain young men of promising hopes, out of both Universities, have been maintained in foreign countries, at the King's charge, for the more complete polishing of their Parts and Studies."[30] The diplomatic career thus opened to young courtiers, if they proved themselves fit for service by experience in foreign countries, was therefore as strong a motive for travel as the desire to reach the source of humanism.
This again merged into the pursuit of a still more informal education--the sort which comes from "seeing the world." The marriage of Mary Tudor to Louis XII., and later the subtle bond of humanism and high spirits which existed between Francis I. and his "very dear and well-beloved good brother, cousin and gossip, perpetual ally and perfect friend," Henry the Eighth, led a good many of Henry's courtiers to attend the French court at one time or another--particularly the most dashing favourites, and leaders of fashion, the "friskers," as Andrew Boorde calls them,[31] such as Charles Brandon, George Boleyn, Francis Bryan, Nicholas Carew, or Henry Fitzroy. With any ambassador went a bevy of young gentlemen, who on their return diffused a certain mysterious sophistication which was the envy of home-keeping youth. According to Hall, when they came back to England they were "all French in eating and drinking and apparel, yea, and in the French vices and brags: so that all the estates of England were by them laughed at, the ladies and gentlewomen were dispraised, and nothing by them was praised, but if it were after the French turn."[32] From this time on young courtiers pressed into the train of an ambassador in order to see the world and become like Ann Boleyn's captivating brother, or Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Oxford, or whatever gallant was conspicuous at court for foreign graces.
There was still another contributory element to the growth of travel, one which touched diplomats, scholars, and courtiers--the necessity of learning modern languages. By the middle of the sixteenth century Latin was no longer sufficient for intercourse between educated people. In the most civilized countries the vernacular had been elevated to the dignity of the classical tongues by being made the literary vehicle of such poets as Politian and Bembo, Ronsard and Du Bellay. A vernacular literature of great beauty, too important to be overlooked, began to spring up on all sides. One could no longer keep abreast of the best thought without a knowledge of modern languages. More powerful than any academic leanings was the Renaissance curiosity about man, which could not be satisfied through the knowledge of Latin only. Hardly anyone but churchmen talked Latin in familiar conversation with one. When a man visited foreign courts and wished to enter into social intercourse with ladies and fashionables, or move freely among soldiers, or settle a bill with an innkeeper, he found that he sorely needed the language of the country. So by the time we reach the reign of Edward VI., we find Thomas Hoby, a typical young gentleman of the period, making in his diary entries such as these: "Removed to the middes of Italy, to have a better knowledge of ye tongue and to see Tuscany." "Went to Sicily both to have a sight of the country and also to absent myself for a while out of Englishmenne's companie for the tung's sake."[33] Roger Ascham a year or two later writes from Germany that one of the chief advantages of being at a foreign court was the ease with which one learned German, French, and Italian, whether he would or not. "I am almost an Italian myself and never looks on it." He went so far as to say that such advantages were worth ten fellowships at St John's.[34]
EDWARD DE VERE, SEVENTEENTH EARL OF OXFORD From an
engraving by J. Brown after G.P. Harding. This favourite of Queen
Elizabeth introduced many Italian fashions to her Court.
We have noted how Italy came to be the lode-stone of scholars, and how courtiers sought the grace which France bestowed, but we have not yet accounted for the attraction of Germany. Germany, as a centre of travel, was especially popular in the reign of Edward the Sixth. France went temporarily out of fashion with those men of whom we have most record. For in Edward's reign the temper of the leading spirits in England was notably at variance with the court of France. It was to Germany that Edward's circle of Protestant politicians, schoolmasters, and chaplains felt most drawn--to the country where the tides of the Reformation were running high, and men were in a ferment over things of the spirit; to the country of Sturm and Bucer, and Fagius and Ursinus--the doctrinalists and educators so revered by Cambridge. Cranmer, who gathered under his roof as many German savants as could survive in the climate of England,[35] kept the current of understanding and sympathy flowing between Cambridge and Germany, and since Cambridge, not Oxford, dominated the scholarly and political world of Edward the Sixth, from that time on Germany, in the minds of the St John's men, such as Burleigh, Ascham and Hoby, was the place where one might meet the best learned of the day.
We have perhaps said enough to indicate roughly the sources of the Renaissance fashion for travel which gave rise to the essays we are about to discuss. The scholar's desire to specialize at a foreign university, in Greek, in medicine, or in law; the courtier's ambition to acquire modern languages, study foreign governments, and generally fit himself for the service of the State, were dignified aims which in men of character produced very happy results. It was natural that others should follow their example. In Elizabethan times the vogue of travelling to become a "compleat person" was fully established. And though in mean and trivial men the ideal took on such odd shapes and produced such dubious results that in every generation there were critics who questioned the benefits of travel, the ideal persisted. There was always something, certainly, to be learned abroad, for men of every calibre. Those who did not profit by the study of international law learned new tricks of the rapier. And because experience of foreign countries was expensive and hard to come at, the acquirement of it gave prestige to a young man.
Besides, underneath worldly ambition was the old curiosity to see the world and know all sorts of men--to be tried and tested. More powerful than any theory of education was the yearning for far-off, foreign things, and the magic of the sea.
The love of travel, we all know, flourished exceedingly in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. All classes felt the desire to go beyond seas upon
"Such wind as scatters young men through the world,
To seeke their fortunes farther than at home,
Where small experience growes."[36]
The explorer and the poet, the adventurer, the prodigal and the earl's son, longed alike for foreign shores. What Ben Jonson said of Coryat might be stretched to describe the average Elizabethan: "The mere superscription of a letter from Zurich sets him up like a top: Basil or Heidelberg makes him spinne. And at seeing the word Frankford, or Venice, though but in the title of a Booke, he is readie to breake doublet, cracke elbowes, and overflowe the roome with his murmure."[37] Happy was an obscure gentleman like Fynes Moryson, who could roam for ten years through the "twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerand, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turkey, France, England, Scotland and Ireland" and not be peremptorily called home by his sovereign. Sad it was to be a court favourite like Fulke Greville, who four times, thirsting for strange lands, was plucked back to England by Elizabeth.
At about the time (1575) when some of the most prominent courtiers--Edward Dyer, Gilbert Talbot, the Earl of Hertford, and more especially Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Philip Sidney--had just returned from abroad, book-publishers thought it worth while to print books addressed to travellers. At least, there grew up a demand for advice to young men which became a feature of Elizabethan literature, printed and unprinted. It was the convention for a young man about to travel to apply to some experienced or elderly friend, and for that friend to disburden a torrent of maxims after the manner of Polonius. John Florio, who knew the humours of his day, represents this in a dialogue in Second Frutes.[38] So does Robert Greene in Greene's Mourning Garment.[39] What were at first the personal warnings of a wise man to his young friend, such as Cecil's letter to Rutland, grew into a generalized oration for the use of any traveller. Hence arose manuals of instruction--marvellous little books, full of incitements to travel as the duty of man, summaries of the leading characteristics of foreigners, directions for the care of sore feet--and a strange medley of matters.
Among the first essays of this sort are translations from Germanic writers, with whom, if Turler is right, the book of precepts for travel originated. For the Germans, with the English, were the most indefatigable travellers of all nations. Like the English, they suddenly woke up with a start to the idea that they were barbarians on the outskirts of civilization, and like Chicago of the present day, sent their young men "hustling for culture." They took up assiduously not only the Renaissance ideal of travel as a highly educating experience, by which one was made a complete man intellectually, but also the Renaissance conviction that travel was a duty to the State. Since both Germany and England were somewhat removed from the older and more civilized nations, it was necessary for them to make an effort to learn what was going on at the centre of the world. It was therefore the duty of gentlemen, especially of noblemen, to whom the State would look to be directed, to search out the marts of learning, frequent foreign courts, and by knowing men and languages be able to advise their prince at home, after the manner set forth in Il Cortegiano. It must be remembered that in the sixteenth century there were no schools of political economy, of modern history or modern languages at the universities. A sound knowledge of these things had to be obtained by first-hand observation. From this fact arose the importance of improving one's opportunities, and the necessity for methodical, thorough inquiry, which we shall find so insisted upon in these manuals of advice.
Hieronymus Turlerus claims that his De Peregrinatione (Argentorati, 1574) is the first book to be devoted to precepts of travel. It was translated into English and published in London in 1575, under the title of The Traveiler of Jerome Turler, and is, as far as I know, the first book of the sort in England. Not much is known of Turler, save that he was born at Leissnig, in Saxony, in 1550, studied at Padua, became a Doctor of Law, made such extensive travels that he included even England--a rare thing in those days--and after serving as Burgomaster in his native place, died in 1602. His writings, other than De Peregrinatione, are three translations from Machiavelli.[40]
Turler addresses to two young German noblemen his book "written on behalf of such as are desirous to travell, and to see foreine cuntries, and specially of students.... Mee thinkes they do a good deede, and well deserve of al men, that give precepts for traveyl. Which thing, althoughe I perceive that some have done, yet have they done it here and there in sundrie Bookes and not in any one certeine place." A discussion of the advantages of travel had appeared in Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique (1553),[41] and certain practical directions for avoiding ailments to which travellers were susceptible had been printed in Basel in 1561,[42] but Turler's would seem to be the first book devoted to the praise of peregrination. Not only does Turler say so himself, but Theodor Zwinger, who three years later wrote Methodus Apodemica, declares that Turler and Pyrckmair were his only predecessors in this sort of composition.[43]
Pyrckmair was apparently one of those governors, or Hofmeister,[44] who accompanied young German noblemen on their tours through Europe. He drew up a few directions, he declares, as guidance for himself and the Count von Sultz, whom he expected shortly to guide into Italy. He had made a previous journey to Rome, which he enjoyed with the twofold enthusiasm of the humanist and the Roman Catholic, beholding "in a stupor of admiration" the magnificent remnants of classic civilization and the institutions of a benevolent Pope.[45]
From Plantin's shop in Antwerp came in 1587 a narrative by another Hofmeister--Stephen Vinandus Pighius--concerning the life and travels of his princely charge, Charles Frederick, Duke of Cleves, who on his grand tour died in Rome. Pighius discusses at considerable length,[46] in describing the hesitancy of the Duke's guardians about sending him on a tour, the advantages and disadvantages of travel. The expense of it and the diseases you catch, were great deterrents; yet the widening of the mind which judicious travelling insures, so greatly outweighed these and other disadvantages, that it was arranged after much discussion, "not only in the Council but also in the market-place and at the dinner-table," to send young Charles for two years to Austria to the court of his uncle the Emperor Maximilian, and then to Italy, France, and Lower Germany to visit the princess, his relations, and friends, and to see life.
Theodor Zwinger, who was reputed to be the first to reduce the art of travel into a form and give it the appearance of a science,[47] died a Doctor of Medicine at Basel. He had no liking for his father's trade of furrier, but apprenticed himself for three years to a printer at Lyons. Somehow he managed to learn some philosophy from Peter Ramus at Paris, and then studied medicine at Padua, where he met Jerome Turler.[48] As Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine he occupied several successive professorships at Basel.
Even more distinguished in the academic world was the next to carry on the discussion of travel--Justus Lipsius. His elegant letter on the subject,[49] written a year after Zwinger's book was published, was translated into English by Sir John Stradling in 1592.[50] Stradling, however, has so enlarged the original by whatever fancies of his own occurred to him, that it is almost a new composition. Philip Jones took no such liberties with the "Method" of Albert Meier, which he translated two years after it was published in 1587.[51] In his dedication to Sir Francis Drake of "this small but sweete booke of Method for men intending their profit and honor by the experience of the world," Jones declares that he first meant it only to benefit himself, "when pleasure of God, convenient time and good company" should draw him to travel.
The Pervigilium Mercurii of Georgius Loysius, a friend of Scaliger, was never translated into English, but the important virtues of a traveller therein described had their influence on English readers. Loysius compiled two hundred short petty maxims, illustrated by apt classical quotations, bearing on the correct behaviour and duties of a traveller. For instance, he must avoid luxury, as says Seneca; and laziness, as say Horace and Ovid; he must be reticent about his wealth and learning and keep his counsel, like Ulysses. He must observe the morals and religion of others, but not criticise them, for different nations have different religions, and think that their fathers' gods ought to be served diligently. He that disregards these things acts with pious zeal but without consideration for other people's feelings ("nulla ratione cujusque vocationis").[52] James Howell may have read maxim 99 on how to take jokes and how to make them, "joci sine vilitate, risus sine cachinno, vox sine clamore" (let your jokes be free from vulgarity, your laugh not a guffaw, and your voice not a roar).
Loysius reflects the sentiment of his country in his conviction that "Nature herself desires that women should stay at home." "It is true throughout the whole of Germany that no woman unless she is desperately poor or 'rather fast' desires to travel."[53]
Adding to these earliest essays the Oration in Praise of Travel, by Hermann Kirchner,[54] we have a group of instructions sprung from German soil all characterized by an exalted mood and soaring style. They have in common the tendency to rationalize the activities of man, which was so marked a feature of the Renaissance. The simple errant impulse that Chaucer noted as belonging with the songs of birds and coming of spring, is dignified into a philosophy of travel.
Travel, according to our authors, is one of the best ways to gain personal force, social effectiveness--in short, that mysterious "virtù" by which the Renaissance set such great store. It had the negative value of providing artificial trials for young gentlemen with patrimony and no occupation who might otherwise be living idly on their country estates, or dissolutely in London. Knight-errantry, in chivalric society, had provided the hardships and discipline agreeable to youth; travel "for vertues sake, to apply the study of good artes,"[55] was in the Renaissance an excellent way to keep a young man profitably busy. For besides the academic advantages of foreign universities, travel corrected the character. The rude and arrogant young nobleman who had never before left his own country, met salutary opposition and contempt from strangers, and thereby gained modesty. By observing the refinements of the older nations, his uncouthness was softened: the rough barbarian cub was gradually mollified into the civil courtier. And as for giving one prudence and patience, never was such a mentor as travel. The tender, the effeminate, the cowardly, were hardened by contention with unwonted cold or rain or sun, with hard seats, stony pillows, thieves, and highwaymen. Any simple, improvident, and foolish youth would be stirred up to vigilancy by a few experiences with "the subtelty of spies, the wonderful cunning of Inn-keepers and baudes and the great danger of his life."[56] In short, the perils and discomforts of travel made a mild prelude to the real life into which a young man must presently fight his way. Only experience could teach him how to be cunning, wary, and bold; how he might hold his own, at court or at sea, among Elizabeth's adventurers.
However, this development of the individual was only part of the benefit of travel. Far more to be extolled was his increased usefulness to the State. That was the stoutest reason for leaving one's "owne sweete country dwellings" to endure hardships and dangers beyond seas. For a traveller may be of the greatest benefit to his own country by being able to compare its social, economic, and military arrangements with those of other commonwealths. He is wisely warned, therefore, against that fond preference for his own country which leads him to close his eyes to any improvement--"without just cause preferring his native country,"[57] but to use choice and discretion, to see, learn, and diligently mark what in every place is worthy of praise and what ought to be amended, in magistrates, regal courts, schools, churches, armies--all the ways and means pertaining to civil life and the governing of a humane society. For all improvement in society, say our authors, came by travellers bringing home fresh ideas. Examples from the ancients, to complete a Renaissance argument, are cited to prove this.[58] So the Romans sent their children to Marseilles, so Cyrus travelled, though yet but a child, so Plato "purchased the greatest part of his divine wisdome from the very innermost closets of Egypt." Therefore to learn how to serve one's Prince in peace or war, as a soldier, ambassador, or "politicke person," one must, like Ulysses, have known many men and seen many cities; know not only the objective points of foreign countries, such as the fortifications, the fordable rivers, the distances between places, but the more subjective characteristics, such as the "chief force and virtue of the Spanyardes and of the Frenchmen. What is the greatest vice in both nacions? After what manner the subjects in both countries shewe their obedience to their prince, or oppose themselves against him?"[59] Here we see coming into play the newly acquired knowledge of human nature of which the sixteenth century was so proud. An ambassador to Paris must know what was especially pleasing to a Frenchman. Even a captain in war must know the special virtues and vices of the enemy: which nation is ablest to make a sudden sally, which is stouter to entertain the shock in open field, which is subtlest of the contriving of an ambush.
Evidently, since there is so varied a need for acquaintance with foreign countries, travel is a positive duty. Noah, Aristotle, Solomon, Julius Cæsar, Columbus, and many other people of authority are quoted to prove that "all that ever were of any great knowledge, learning or wisdom since the beginning of the world unto this present, have given themselves to travel: and that there never was man that performed any great thing or achieved any notable exploit, unless he had travelled."[60]
This summary, of course, cannot reproduce the style of each of our authors, and only roughly indicates their method of persuasion. Especially it cannot represent the mode of Zwinger, whose contribution is a treatise of four hundred pages, arranged in outline form, by means of which any single idea is made to wend its tortuous way through folios. Every aspect of the subject is divided and subdivided with meticulous care. He cannot speak of the time for travel without discriminating between natural time, such as years and days, and artificial time, such as festivals and holidays; nor of the means of locomotion without specifying the possibility of being carried through the air by: (I) Mechanical means, such as the wings of Icarus; or (2) Angels, as the Apostle Philip was snatched from Samaria.[61] In this elaborate method he found an imitator in Sir Thomas Palmer.[62] The following, a mere truncated fragment, may serve to illustrate both books:--
"Travelling is either:--
I. Irregular.
II. Regular. Of Regular Travailers some be
A. Non-voluntaries, sent out by the prince,
and employed in matters of
1. Peace (etc.).
2. Warre (etc.).
B. Voluntaries. Voluntary Regular Travailers
are considered
1. As they are moved accidentally.
a. Principally, that afterwards they
may leade a more quiet and contented
life, to the glory of God.
b. Secondarily, regarding ends,
(i) Publicke.
(a) What persons are inhibited
travaile.
(1) Infants, Decrepite persons,
Fools, Women.
(b) What times to travaile in
are not fitte:
(2) When our country is
engaged in warres.
(c) Fitte.
(1) When one may reape
most profit in shortest
time, for that hee aimeth
at.
(2) When the country, into
which we would travaile,
holdeth not ours in jealousie,
etc."
That the idea of travel as a duty to the State had permeated the Elizabethans from the courtier to the common sailor is borne out by contemporary letters of all sorts. Even William Bourne, an innkeeper at Gravesend, who wrote a hand-book of applied mathematics, called it The Treasure for Travellers[63] and prefaced it with an exhortation in the style of Turler. In the correspondence of Lord Burghley, Sir Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville, the Earl of Essex, and Secretary Davison, we see how seriously the aim of travel was inculcated. Here are the same reminders to have the welfare of the commonwealth constantly in mind, to waste no time, to use order and method in observation, and to bring home, if possible, valuable information. Sidney bewails how much he has missed for "want of having directed my course to the right end, and by the right means." But he trusts his brother has imprinted on his mind "the scope and mark you mean by your pains to shoot at. Your purpose is, being a gentleman born, to furnish yourself with the knowledge of such things as may be serviceable to your country."[64]
Davison urges the value of experience, scorning the man who thinks to fit himself by books: "Our sedentary traveller may pass for a wise man as long as he converseth either with dead men by reading, or by writing, with men absent. But let him once enter on the stage of public employment, and he will soon find, if he can but be sensible of contempt, that he is unfit for action. For ability to treat with men of several humours, factions and countries; duly to comply with them, or stand off, as occasion shall require, is not gotten only by reading of books, but rather by studying of men: yet this is ever held true. The best scholar is fittest for a traveller, as being able to make the most useful observations: experience added to learning makes a perfect man."[65]
Both Essex and Fulke Greville are full of warnings against superficial and showy knowledge of foreign countries: "The true end of knowledge is clearness and strength of judgment, and not ostentation, or ability to discourse, which I do rather put your Lordship in mind of, because the most part of noblemen and gentlemen of our time have no other use nor end of their learning but their table-talk. But God knoweth they have gotten little that have only this discoursing gift: for, though like empty vessels they sound loud when a man knocks upon their outsides, yet if you pierce into them, you shall find that they are full of nothing but wind."[66]
Lord Burghley, wasting not a breath, tersely instructs the Earl of Rutland in things worthy of observation. Among these are frontier towns, with what size garrison they are maintained, etc.; what noblemen live in each province, by what trade each city is supported. At Court, what are the natural dispositions of the king and his brothers and sisters, what is the king's diet, etc. "Particularly for yourself, being a nobleman, how noblemen do keep their wives, their children, their estates; how they provide for their younger children; how they keep the household for diet," and so on.[67]
So much for the attitude of the first "Subsidium Peregrinantibus." It will be seen that it was something of a trial and an opportunity to be a traveller in Elizabethan times. But biography is not lacking in evidence that the recipients of these directions did take their travels seriously and try to make them profitable to the commonwealth. Among the Rutland papers[68] is a plan of fortifications and some notes made by the Edward Manners to whom Cecil wrote the above letter of advice. Sir Thomas Bodley tells how full he was of patriotic intent: "I waxed desirous to travel beyond the seas, for attaining to the knowledge of some special modern tongues, and for the increase of my experience in the managing of affairs, being wholly then addicted to employ myself, and all my cares, in the public service of the state."[69] Assurances of their object in travelling are written from abroad by Sir John Harington and the third Earl of Essex to their friend Prince Henry. Essex says: "Being now entered into my travels, and intending the end thereof to attain to true knowledge and to better my experience, I hope God will so bless me in my endeavours, that I shall return an acceptable servant unto your Highness."[70] And Harington in the same vein hopes that by his travels and experience in foreign countries he shall sometime or other be more fit to carry out the commands of his Highness.[71]
One of the particular ways of serving one's country was the writing of "Observations on his Travels." This was the first exercise of a young man who aspired to be a "politicke person." Harington promises to send to Prince Henry whatever notes he can make of various countries. Henry Wotton offers Lord Zouche "A View of all the present Almagne princes."[72] The keeping of a journal is insisted upon in almost all the "Directions." "It is good," says Lord Burghley to Edward Manners, "that you make a booke of paper wherein you may dayly or at least weekly insert all things occurent to you,"[73] the reason being that such observations, when contemporary history was scarce, were of value. They were also a guarantee that the tourist had been virtuously employed. The Earl of Salisbury writes severely to his son abroad:
FRANCIS
MANNERS, SIXTH EARL OF RUTLAND Abroad in 1598. One of a family of
Elizabethan travellers. Edward, third Earl of Rutland, received a letter of
instruction from Lord Burleigh concerning what to observe in France in
1570. Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, was directed by Bacon as to his travels
in 1596.
"I find every week, in the Prince's hand, a letter from Sir John Harington, full of the news of the place where he is, and the countries as he passeth, and all occurents: which is an argument, that he doth read and observe such things as are remarkable."
This narrative was one of the chief burdens of a traveller. Gilbert Talbot is no sooner landed in Padua than he must write to his impatient parents and excuse himself for the lack of that "Relation." "We fulfil your honour's commaundement in wrytynge the discourse of our travayle which we would have sent with thes letres but it could not be caryed so conveniently with them, as it may be with the next letres we wryte."[74] Francis Davison, the Secretary's son, could not get on, somehow, with his "Relation of Tuscany." He had been ill, he writes at first; his tutor says that the diet of Italy--"roots, salads, cheese and such like cheap dishes"--"Mr Francis can in no wise digest," and after that, he is too worried by poverty. In reply to his father's complaints of his extravagance, he declares: "My promised relation of Tuscany your last letter hath so dashed, as I am resolved not to proceed withal."[75] The journal of Richard Smith, Gentleman, who accompanied Sir Edward Unton into Italy in 1563, shows how even an ordinary man, not inclined to writing, conscientiously tried to note the fortifications and fertility of each province, whether it was "marvellous barren" or "stood chiefly upon vines"; the principal commodities, and the nature of the inhabitants: "The people (on the Rhine) are very paynefull and not so paynefull as rude and sluttyshe." "They are well faced women in most places of this land, and as ill-bodied."[76]
Besides writing his observations, the traveller laboured earnestly at modern languages. Many and severe were the letters Cecil wrote to his son Thomas in Paris on the subject of settling to his French. For Thomas's tutor had difficulties in keeping his pupil from dog-fights, horses and worse amusements in company of the Earl of Hertford, who was a great hindrance to Thomas's progress in the language.[77] Francis Davison hints that his tour was by no means a pleasure trip, what with studying Italian, reading history and policy, observing and writing his "Relation." Indeed, as Lipsius pointed out, it was not easy to combine the life of a traveller with that of a scholar, "the one being of necessitie in continual motion, care and business, the other naturally affecting ease, safety and quietness,"[78] but still, by avoiding Englishmen, according to our "Directions," and by doggedly conversing with the natives, one might achieve something.
To live in the household of a learned foreigner, as Robert Sidney did with Sturm, or Henry Wotton with Hugo Blotz, was of course especially desirable. For there were still, in the Elizabethans, remnants of that ardent sociability among humanists which made Englishmen traverse dire distances of sea and land to talk with some scholar on the Rhine--that fraternizing spirit which made Cranmer fill Lambeth Palace with Martin Bucers; and Bishop Gardiner, meanwhile, complain from the Tower not only of "want of books to relieve my mind, but want of good company--the only solace in this world."[79] It was still as much of a treat to see a wise man as it was when Ascham loitered in every city through which he passed, to hear lectures, or argue about the proper pronunciation of Greek; until he missed his dinner, or found that his party had ridden out of town.[80] Advice to travellers is full of this enthusiasm. Essex tells Rutland "your Lordship should rather go an hundred miles to speake with one wise man, than five miles to see a fair town." Stradling, translating Lipsius, urges the Earl of Bedford to "shame not or disdaine not to intrude yourself into their familiarity." "Talk with learned men, we unconsciously imitate them, even as they that walke in the sun only for their recreation, are colored therewith and sunburnt; or rather and better as they that staying a while in the Apothecarie shop, til their confections be made, carrie away the smell of the sweet spices even in their garments."[81]
There are signs that the learned men were not always willing to shine upon admiring strangers who burst in upon them. The renowned Doctor Zacharias Ursinus at Heidelberg marked on his doorway these words: "My friend, whoever you are, if you come here, please either go away again, or give me some help in my studies."[82] Sidney foresees the difficulty his brother may have: "How shall I get excellent men to take paines to speake with me? Truly, in few words: either much expense or much humbleness."[83]
If one had not the means to live with famous scholars, it was a good plan to take up lodgings with an eminent bookseller. For statesmen, advocates and other sorts of great men came to the shop, from whose talk much could be learned. By and by some occasion would arise for insinuating oneself into familarity and acquaintance with these personages, and perhaps, if some one of them, "non indoctus," intended journeying to another city, he might allow you to attach yourself to him.[84]
Of course, for observation and experience, there was no place so advantageous as the household of an ambassador, if one was fortunate enough to win an entry there. The English Ambassador in France generally had a burden of young gentlemen more or less under his care. Sometimes they were lodged independently in Paris, but many belonged to his train, and had meat and drink for themselves, their servants and their horses, at the ambassador's expense.
Sir Amias Paulet's Letter-Book of 1577-8 testifies that an ambassador's cares were considerably augmented by writing reports to parents. Mr Speake is assured that "although I dwell far from Paris, yet I am not unacquainted with your sonne's doing in Paris, and cannot commend him enough to you as well for his diligence in study as for his honest and quiet behaviour, and I dare assure you that you may be bold to trust him as well for the order of his expenses, as for his government otherwise."[85] Mr Argall, whose brother could not be taken into Paulet's house, has to be soothed as well as may be by a letter.[86] Mr Throckmorton, after questionable behaviour, is sent home to his mother under excuse of being bearer of a letter to England. "His mother prayeth that his coming over may seeme to proceed of his owne request, because the Queen shall not be offended with it." His mother "hath promised to gett him lycence to travil into Italie." But, says Paulet, "He may not goe into Italie withoute the companie of some honest and wyse man, and so I have tould him, and in manie other things have dealt very playnely with him."[87]
Among these troublesome charges of Paulet's was Francis Bacon. But to his father, the Lord Keeper, Paulet writes only that all is well, and that his son's servant is particularly honest, diligent, discreet and faithful, and that Paulet is thankful for his "good and quiet behaviour in my house"--a fact which appears exceptional.
Sir Dudley Carleton, as Ambassador to Venice, was also pursued by ambitious fathers.[88] Sir Rowland Lytton Chamberlain writes to Carleton, begs only "that his son might be in your house, and that you would a little train him and fashion him to business. For I perceive he means to make him a statesman, and is very well persuaded of him, ... like a very indulgent father.... If you can do it conveniently, it will be a favour; but I know what a business it is to have the breaking of such colts, and therefore will urge no more than may be to your liking."[89]
Besides gaining an apprenticeship in diplomacy, another advantage of travelling with an ambassador was the participation in ambassadorial immunities. It might have fared ill with Sir Philip Sidney, in Paris at the time of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, if he had not belonged to the household of Sir Francis Walsingham. Many other young men not so glorious to posterity, but quite as much so to their mothers, were saved then by the same means. When news of the massacre had reached England, Sir Thomas Smith wrote to Walsingham: "I am glad yet that in these tumults and bloody proscriptions you did escape, and the young gentlemen that be there with you.... Yet we hear say that he that was sent by my Lord Chamberlain to be schoolmaster to young Wharton, being come the day before, was then slain. Alas! he was acquainted with nobody, nor could be partaker of any evil dealing. How fearful and careful the mothers and parents be here of such young gentlemen as be there, you may easily guess by my Lady Lane, who prayeth very earnestly that her son may be sent home with as much speed as may be."[90]
The dangers of travel were of a nature to alarm mothers. As well as Catholics, there were shipwrecks, pirates, and highway robbers. Moors and Turks lay waiting "in a little port under the hill," to take passenger vessels that went between Rome and Naples. "If we had come by daye as we did by night, we had bin all taken slaves."[91] In dark strait ways up the sides of mountains, or on some great heath in Prussia, one was likely to meet a horseman "well furnyshed with daggs (pistols), who myght well be called a Swarte Ritter--his face was as black as a devill in a playe."[92] Inns were death-traps. A man dared not make any display of money for fear of being murdered in the night.[93] It was wiser to disguise himself as a humble country boy and gall his feet by carrying all his gold in his boots. Even if by these means he escaped common desperadoes, he might easily offend the deadly University students, as did the eldest son of Sir Julius Cæsar, slain in a brawl in Padua,[94] or like the Admirable Crichton, stabbed by his noble pupil in a dark street, bleed away his life in lonely lodgings.[95] Still more dangerous were less romantic ills, resulting from strange diet and the uncleanliness of inns. It was a rare treat to have a bed to oneself. More probably the traveller was obliged to share it with a stranger of disagreeable appearance, if not of disposition.[96] At German ordinaries "every travyler must syt at the ordinary table both master and servant," so that often they were driven to sit with such "slaves" that in the rush to get the best pieces from the common dish in the middle of the table, "a man wold abhor to se such fylthye hands in his dish."[97] Many an eager tourist lay down with small-pox before he had seen anything of the world worth mentioning, or if he gained home, brought a broken constitution with him. The third Lord North was ill for life because of the immoderate quantities of hot treacle he consumed in Italy, to avoid the plague.[98]
DUDLEY NORTH, THIRD BARON NORTH From a print of an original
picture in the Collection of the Earl of Guildford In 1602 he narrowly
escaped the plague in Venice by drinking immoderate doses of hot treacle,
to which he ascribed his life-long ill-health.
But it was not really the low material dangers of small-pox, quartain ague, or robbers which troubled the Elizabethan. Such considerations were beneath his heroical temper. Sir Edward Winsor, warned against the piratical Gulf of Malta, writes: "And for that it should not be said an Englishman to come so far to see Malta, and to have turned backe againe, I determined rather making my sepulker of that Golfe."[99] It was the sort of danger that weakened character which made people doubt the benefits of travel. So far we have not mentioned in our description of the books addressed to travellers any of the reminders of the trials of Ulysses, and dark warnings against the "Siren-songs of Italy." Since they were written at the same time with the glowing orations in praise of travel, it might be well to consider them before we go farther.
The traveller newly returned from foreign lands was a great butt for the satirists. In Elizabethan times his bows and tremendous politeness, his close-fitting black clothes from Venice, his French accent, his finicky refinements, such as perfumes and pick-tooths, were highly offensive to the plain Englishman. One was always sure of an appreciative audience if he railed at the "disguised garments and desperate hats" of the "affectate traveller" how; his attire spoke French or Italian, and his gait cried "behold me!" how he spoke his own language with shame and loathing.[100] "You shall see a dapper Jacke, that hath beene but over at Deepe,[101] wring his face round about, as a man would stir up a mustard-pot, and talke English through the teeth, like ... Monsieur Mingo de Moustrap."[102] Nash was one of the best at describing some who had lived in France for half-a-dozen years, "and when they came home, they have hyd a little wéerish leane face under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coyle with the dust in the stréete in their long cloaks of gray paper, and spoke English strangely. Naught else have they profited by their travell, save learnt to distinguish of the true Burdeaux Grape, and know a cup of neate Gascoygne wine from wine of Orleance; yea, and peradventure this also, to esteeme of the poxe as a pimple, to weare a velvet patch on their face, and walke melancholy with their armes folded."[103]
The Frenchified traveller came in for a good share of satire, but darker things were said of the Italianate Englishman. He was an atheist--a creature hitherto unknown in England--who boldly laughed to scorn both Protestant and Papist. He mocked the Pope, railed on Luther, and liked none, but only himself.[104] "I care not," he said, "what you talk to me of God, so as I may have the prince and the laws of the realm on my side."[105] In politics he allied himself with the Papists, they being more of his way of living than the Puritans, but he was faithless to all parties.[106] In private life he was vicious, and practised "such villainy as is abominable to declare," for in Italy he had served Circes, who turns men into beasts.[107] "But I am afraid," says Ascham, "that over many of our travellers unto Italy do not eschew the way to Circe's Court: but go and ryde and runne and flie thether, they make great hast to cum to her; they make great sute to serve her: yea, I could point out some with my finger that never had gone out of England, but onlie to serve Circes in Italie. Vanitie and vice and any licence to ill living in England was counted stale and rude unto them."[108]
It is likely that some of these accusations were true. Italy more than any other country charmed the Elizabethan Englishman, partly because the climate and the people and the look of things were so unlike his own grey home. Particularly Venice enchanted him. The sun, the sea, the comely streets, "so clean that you can walk in a Silk Stockin and Sattin Slippes,"[109] the tall palaces with marble balconies, and golden-haired women, the flagellants flogging themselves, the mountebanks, the Turks, the stately black-gowned gentlemen, were new and strange, and satisfied his sense of romance. Besides, the University of Padua was still one of the greatest universities in Europe. Students from all nations crowded to it. William Thomas describes the "infinite resorte of all nacions that continually is seen there. And I thinke verilie, that in one region of all the worlde againe, are not halfe so many straungers as in Italie; specially of gentilmen, whose resorte thither is principallie under pretence of studie ... all kyndes of vertue maie there be learned: and therfore are those places accordyngly furnisshed: not of suche students alone, as moste commonly are brought up in our universitees (meane mens children set to schole in hope to live upon hyred learnyng) but for the more parte of noble mens sonnes, and of the best gentilmen: that studie more for knowledge and pleasure than for curiositee or luker: ... This last wynter living in Padoa, with diligent serche I learned, that the noumbre of scholers there was little lesse than fiftene hundreth; whereof I dare saie, a thousande at the lest were gentilmen."[110]
The life of a student at Padua was much livelier than the monastic seclusion of an English university. He need not attend many lectures, for, as Thomas Hoby explains, after a scholar has been elected by the rectors, "He is by his scholarship bound to no lectures, nor nothing elles but what he lyst himselfe to go to."[111] So being a gentleman and not a clerk, he was more likely to apply himself to fencing or riding: For at Padua "there passeth no shrof-tide without rennyng at the tilte, tourneiyng, fighting at the barriers and other like feates of armes, handled and furnisshed after the best sort: the greatest dooers wherof are scholers."[112]
Then, too, the scholar diversified his labours by excursions to Venice, in one of those passenger boats which plied daily from Padua, of which was said "that the boat shall bee drowned, when it carries neither Monke, nor Student, nor Curtesan.... the passengers being for the most part of these kinds"[113] and, as Moryson points out, if he did not, by giving offence, receive a dagger in his ribs from a fellow-student, he was likely to have pleasant discourse on the way.[114] Hoby took several trips from Padua to Venice to see such things as the "lustie yong Duke of Ferrandin, well accompanied with noble menn and gentlemen ... running at the ring with faire Turks and cowrsars, being in a maskerie after the Turkishe maner, and on foote casting of eggs into the wyndowes among the ladies full of sweete waters and damaske Poulders," or like the Latin Quarter students who frequent "La Morgue," went to view the body of a gentleman slain in a feud, laid out in state in his house--"to be seen of all men."[115] In the outlandish mixture of nations swarming at Venice, a student could spend all day watching mountebanks, and bloody street fights, and processions. In the renowned freedom of that city where "no man marketh anothers dooynges, or meddleth with another mans livyng,"[116] it was no wonder if a young man fresh from an English university and away from those who knew him, was sometimes "enticed by lewd persons:" and, once having lost his innocence, outdid even the students of Padua. For, as Greene says, "as our wits be as ripe as any, so our willes are more ready than they all, to put into effect any of their licentious abuses."[117] Thus arose the famous proverb, "An Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate."
Hence the warnings against Circes by even those authors most loud in praise of travel. Lipsius bids his noble pupil beware of Italian women: " ... inter fæminas, formæ conspicuæ, sed lascivæ et procaces."[118] Turler must acknowledge "an auntient complaint made by many that our countrymen usually bring three thinges with them out of Italye: a naughty conscience, an empty purse, and a weak stomache: and many times it chaunceth so indeede." For since "youth and flourishing yeeres are most commonly employed in traveill, which of their owne course and condicion are inclined unto vice, and much more earnestly imbrace the same if it be enticed thereto," ... "many a time pleasures make a man not thinke on his returne," ... but he is caught by the songs of Mermaids, "so to returne home with shame and shame enough."[119]
It was necessary also to warn the traveller against those more harmless sins which we have already mentioned: against an arrogant bearing on his return to his native land, or a vanity which prompted him at all times to show that he had been abroad, and was not like the common herd. 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 certain sort.
Hall, apparently, was one of those gallants who ruffled about Elizabethan London and used
"To loove to play at Dice
To sware his blood and hart
To face it with a Ruffins look
And set his Hat athwart."[123]
The humorists throw a good deal of light on such "yong Jyntelmen." So does Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, to whom they used to run when they were arrested for debt, or for killing a carman, making as their only apology, "I am a Jyntelman, and being a Jyntelman, I am not thus to be used at a slave and a colion's hands."[124] Hall, writing in the third person, in the assumed character of a friend, describes himself as "a man not wholly unlearned, with a smacke of the knowledge of diverse tongues ... furious when he is contraried ... as yourselfe is witnesse of his dealings at Rome, at Florence, in the way between that and Bollonia ... so implacable if he conceyve an injurie, as Sylla will rather be pleased with Marius, than he with his equals, in a maner for offences grown of tryffles.... Also spending more tyme in sportes, and following the same, than is any way commendable, and the lesse, bycause, I warrant you, the summes be great are dealte for." [125]
This terrible person, on the 16th of December 1573, at Lothbury, in London, at a table of twelve pence a meal, supped with some merchants and a certain Melchisedech Mallerie. Dice were thrown on the board, and in the course of play Mallerie "gave the lye with harde wordes in heate to one of the players." "Hall sware (as he will not sticke to lende you an othe or two), to throw Mallerie out at the window. Here Etna smoked, daggers were a-drawing ... but the goodman lamented the case for the slaunder, that a quarrel should be in his house, ... so ... the matter was ended for this fitte."
But a certain Master Richard Drake, attending on my Lord of Leicester, took pains first to warn Hall to take heed of Mallerie at play, and then to tell Mallerie that Hall said he used "lewde practices at cards." The next day at "Poules"[126] came Mallerie to Hall and "charged him very hotly, that he had reported him to be a cousiner of folkes at Mawe." Hall, far from showing that fury which he described as his characteristic, denied the charge with meekness. He said he was patient because he was bound to keep the peace for dark disturbances in the past. Mallerie said it was because he was a coward.
Mallerie continued to say so for months, until before a crowd of gentlemen at the "ordinary" of one Wormes, his taunts were so unbearable that Hall crept up behind him and tried to stab him in the back. There was a general scuffle, some one held down Hall, the house grew full in a moment with Lord Zouche, gentlemen, and others, while "Mallerie with a great shreke ranne with all speede out of the doores, up a paire of stayres, and there aloft used most harde wordes againste Mr Hall."
Hall, who had cut himself--and nobody else--nursed his wound indoors for some days, during which time friends brought word that Mallerie would "shewe him an Italian tricke, intending thereby to do him some secret and unlooked for mischief." Then, with "a mufle half over his face," Hall took post-horses to his home in Lincolnshire. Business called him, he tells the reader. There was no ground whatever for Mallerie to say he fled in disguise.
After six months, he ventured to return to London and be gay again. He dined at "James Lumelies--the son, as it is said, of old M. Dominicke, born at Genoa, of the losse of whose nose there goes divers tales,"--and coming by a familiar gaming-house on his way back to his lodgings, he "fell to with the rest."
But there is no peace for him. In comes Mallerie--and with insufferably haughty gait and countenance, brushes by. Hall tries a pleasant saunter around Poules with his friend Master Woodhouse: "comes Mallerie again, passing twice or thrice by Hall, with great lookes and extraordinary rubbing him on the elbowes, and spurning three or four times a Spaniel of Mr Woodhouses following his master and Master Hall." Hall mutters to his servants, "Jesus can you not knocke the boyes head and the wall together, sith he runnes a-bragging thus?" His three servants go out of the church by the west door: when Mallerie stalks forth they set upon him and cut him down the cheek.
We will not follow the narrative through the subsequent lawsuit brought by Mallerie against Hall's servants, the trial presided over by Recorder Fleetwood, the death of Mallerie, who "departed well leanyng to the olde Father of Rome, a dad whome I have heard some say Mr Hall doth not hate" or Hall's subsequent expulsion from Parliament. This is enough to show the sort of harmless, vain braggarts some of these "Italianates" were, and how easily they acquired the reputation of being desperate fellows. Mallerie's lawyer at the trial charged Hall with "following the revenge with an Italian minde learned at Rome."
Among other Italianified Cambridge men whom Ascham might well have noticed were George Acworth and William Barker. Acworth had lived abroad during Mary's reign, studying civil law in France and Italy. When Elizabeth came to the throne he was elected public orator of the University of Cambridge, but through being idle, dissolute, and a drunkard, he lost all his preferments in England.[127] Barker, or Bercher, who was educated at St John's or Christ's, was abroad at the same time as Ascham, who may have met him as Hoby did in Italy.[128] Barker seems to have been an idle person--he says that after travels "my former fancye of professenge nothinge partycularly was verye muche encreased"[129]--and a papistical one, for on the accession of Mary he came home to serve the Duke of Norfolk, whose Catholic plots he betrayed, under torture, in 1571. It was then that the Duke bitterly dubbed him an "Italianfyd Inglyschemane," equal in faithlessness to "a schamlesse Scote";[130] i.e. the Bishop of Ross, another witness.
Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, famous for his rude behaviour to Sir Philip Sidney, whom he subsequently tried to dispatch with hired assassins after the Italian manner,[131] might well have been one of the rising generation of courtiers whom Ascham so deplored. In Ascham's lifetime he was already a conspicuous gallant, and by 1571, at the age of twenty-two, he was the court favourite. The friends of the Earl of Rutland, keeping him informed of the news while he was fulfilling in Paris those heavy duties of observation which Cecil mapped out for him, announce that "There is no man of life and agility in every respect in Court, but the Earl of Oxford."[132] And a month afterwards, "Th' Erle of Oxenforde hath gotten hym a wyffe--or at the leste a wyffe hath caught hym--that is Mrs Anne Cycille, whearunto the Queen hath gyven her consent, the which hathe causyd great wypping, waling, and sorowful chere, of those that hoped to have hade that golden daye."[133] Ascham did not live to see the development of this favorite into an Italianate Englishman, but Harrison's invective against the going of noblemen's sons into Italy coincides with the return of the Earl from a foreign tour which seems to have been ill-spent.
At the very time when the Queen "delighted more in his personage and his dancing and valiantness than any other,"[134] Oxford betook himself to Flanders--without licence. Though his father-in-law Burghley had him brought back to the indignant Elizabeth, the next year he set forth again and made for Italy. From Siena, on January 3rd, 1574-5, he writes to ask Burghley to sell some of his land so as to disburden him of his debts, and in reply to some warning of Burghley's that his affairs in England need attention, replies that since his troubles are so many at home, he has resolved to continue his travels.[135] Eight months afterwards, from Italy, he begs Burghley's influence to procure him a licence to continue his travels a year longer, stating as his reason an exemplary wish to see more of Germany. (In another letter also[136] he assures Cecil that he means to acquaint himself with Sturmius--that educator of youth so highly approved of by Ascham.) "As to Italy, he is glad he has seen it, but cares not ever to see it again, unless to serve his prince or country." The reason they have not heard from him this past summer is that his letters were sent back because of the plague in the passage. He did not know this till his late return to Venice. He has been grieved with a fever. The letter concludes with a mention that he has taken up of Baptista Nigrone 500 crowns, which he desires repaid from the sale of his lands, and a curt thanks for the news of his wife's delivery.[137]
From Paris, after an interval of six months, he declares his pleasure at the news of his being a father, but makes no offer to return to England. Rather he intends to go back to Venice. He "may pass two or three months in seeing Constantinople and some part of Greece."[138]
However, Burghley says, "I wrote to Pariss to hym to hasten hym homewards," and in April 1576, he landed at Dover in an exceedingly sulky mood. He refused to see his wife, and told Burghley he might take his daughter into his own house again, for he was resolved "to be rid of the cumber."[139] He accused his father-in-law of holding back money due to him, although Burghley states that Oxford had in one year £5700.[140] Considering that Robert Sidney, afterwards Earl of Leicester, had only £1OO a year for a tour abroad,[141] and that Sir Robert Dallington declares £200 to be quite enough for a gentleman studying in France or Italy--including pay for a servant--and that any more would be "superfluous and to his hurte,"[142] it will be seen that the Earl of Oxford had £5500 "to his hurte."
Certain results of his travel were pleasing to his sovereign, however. For he was the first person to import to England "gloves, sweete bagges, a perfumed leather Jerkin, and other pleasant things."[143] The Queen was so proud of his present of a pair of perfumed gloves, trimmed with "foure Tufts or Roses of coloured Silk" that she was "pictured with those Gloves upon her hands, and for many yeeres after, it was called the Earle of Oxford's perfume."[144] His own foreign and fashionable apparel was ridiculed by Gabriel Harvey, in the much-quoted description of an Italianate Englishman, beginning:
"A little apish hat couched faste to the pate, like an oyster."[145]
Arthur Hall and the Earl of Oxford will perhaps serve to show that many young men pointed out as having returned the worse for their liberty to see the world, were those who would have been very poor props to society had they never left their native land. Weak and vain striplings of entirely English growth escaped the comment attracted by a sinner with strange garments and new oaths. For in those garments themselves lay an offence to the commonwealth. I need only refer to the well-known jealousy, among English haberdashers and milliners, of the superior craft of Continental workmen, behind whom English weavers lagged: Henry the Eighth used to have to wear hose cut out of pieces of cloth--on that leg of which he was so proud--unless "by great chance there came a paire of Spanish silke stockings from Spaine."[146] Knit worsted stockings were not made in England till 1554, when an apprentice "chanced to see a pair of knit worsted stockings in the lodging of an Italian merchant that came from Mantua."[147] Harrison's description of England breathes an animosity to foreign clothes, plainly founded on commercial jealousy: "Neither was it ever merrier in England than when an Englishman was known abroad by his own cloth, and contented himself at home with his fine carsey hosen, and a mean slop: his coat, gown, and cloak of brown, blue, or puke, with some pretty furniture of velvet or of fur, and a doublet of sad tawny, or black velvet, or other comely silk, without such cuts and garish colours, as are worn in these days, and never brought in but by the consent of the French, who think themselves the gayest men when they have most diversities of rags and change of colours about them."[148]
Wrapped up with economic acrimony there was a good deal of the hearty old English hatred of a Frenchman, or a Spaniard, or any foreigner, which was always finding expression. Either it was the 'prentices who rioted, or some rude fellow who pulls up beside the carriage of the Spanish ambassador, snatches the ambassador's hat off his head and "rides away with it up the street as fast as he could, the people going on and laughing at it,"[149] or it was the Smithfield officers deputed to cut swords of improper length, who pounced upon the French ambassador because his sword was longer than the statutes allowed. "He was in a great fury.... Her Majestie is greatly offended with the officers, in that they wanted judgement."[150]
There was also a dislike of the whole new order of things, of which the fashion for travel was only a phase: dislike of the new courtier who scorned to live in the country, surrounded by a huge band of family servants, but preferred to occupy small lodgings in London, and join in the pleasures of metropolitan life. The theatre, the gambling resorts, the fence-schools, the bowling alleys, and above all the glamor of the streets and the crowd were charms only beginning to assert themselves in Elizabethan England. But the popular voice was loud against the nobles who preferred to spend their money on such things instead of on improving their estates, and who squandered on fine clothes what used to be spent on roast beef for their retainers. Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier parodies what the new and refined Englishman would say:--
"The worlds are chaungde, and men are growne to more wit, and their minds to aspire after more honourable thoughts: they were dunces in diebus illis, they had not the true use of gentility, and therefore they lived meanely and died obscurely: but now mennes capacities are refined. Time hath set a new edge on gentlemen's humours and they show them as they should be: not like gluttons as their fathers did, in chines of beefe and almes to the poore, but in velvets, satins, cloth of gold, pearle: yea, pearle lace, which scarce Caligula wore on his birthday."[151]
On the whole, we may say that the objections to foreign travel rose from a variety of motives. Ascham doubtless knew genuine cases of young men spoiled by too much liberty, and there were surely many obnoxious boys who bragged of their "foreign vices." Insular prejudice, jealousy and conservatism, hating foreign influence, drew attention to these bad examples. Lastly, there was another element in the protest against foreign travel, which grew more and more strong towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of James the First's, the hatred of Italy as the stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church, and fear of the Inquisition. Warnings against the Jesuits are a striking feature of the next group of Instructions to Travellers.
The quickening of animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the last quarter of the sixteenth century had a good deal to do with the censure of travel which we have been describing. In their fear and hatred of the Roman Catholic countries, Englishmen viewed with alarm any attractions, intellectual or otherwise, which the Continent had for their sons. They had rather have them forego the advantages of a liberal education than run the risk of falling body and soul into the hands of the Papists. The intense, fierce patriotism which flared up to meet the Spanish Armada almost blighted the genial impulse of travel for study's sake. It divided the nations again, and took away the common admiration for Italy which had made the young men of the north all rush together there. We can no longer imagine an Englishman like Selling coming to the great Politian at Bologna and grappling him to his heart--"arctissima sibi conjunxit amicum familiaritate,"[152] as the warm humanistic phrase has it. In the seventeenth century Politian would be a "contagious Papist," using his charm to convert men to Romanism, and Selling would be a "true son of the Church of England," railing at Politian for his "debauch'd and Popish principles." The Renaissance had set men travelling to Italy as to the flower of the world. They had scarcely started before the Reformation called it a place of abomination. Lord Burghley, who in Elizabeth's early days had been so bent on a foreign education for his eldest son, had drilled him in languages and pressed him to go to Italy,[153] at the end of his long life left instructions to his children: "Suffer not thy sonnes to pass the Alps, for they shall learn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism. And if by travel they get a few broken languages, that shall profit them nothing more than to have one meat served on divers dishes."[154]
The mother of Francis Bacon affords a good example of the Puritan distrust of going "beyond seas." She could by no means sympathize with her son Anthony's determination to become versed in foreign affairs, for that led him into intimacy with Roman Catholics. All through his prolonged stay abroad she chafed and fretted, while Anthony perversely remained in France, gaining that acquaintance with valuable correspondents, spies, and intelligencers which later made him one of the greatest authorities in England on continental politics. He had a confidential servant, a Catholic named Lawson, whom he sent over to deliver some important secret news to Lord Burghley. Lady Bacon, in her fear lest Lawson's company should pervert her son's religion and morals, had the man arrested and detained in England. His anxious master sent another man to plead with his mother for Lawson's release; but in vain. The letter of this messenger to Anthony will serve to show the vehemence of anti-Catholic feelings in a British matron in 1589.
"Upon my arrival at Godombery my Lady used me courteously until such time I began to move her for Mr Lawson; and, to say the truth, for yourself; being so much transported with your abode there that she let not to say that you are a traitor to God and your country; you have undone her; you seek her death; and when you have that you seek for, you shall have but a hundred pounds more than you have now.
"She is resolved to procure Her Majesty's letter to force you to return; and when that should be, if Her Majesty give you your right or desert, she should clap you up in prison. She cannot abide to hear of you, as she saith, nor of the other especially, and told me plainly she should be the worse this month for my coming without you, and axed me why you could not have come from thence as well as myself.
"She saith you are hated of all the chiefest on that side and cursed of God in all your actions, since Mr Lawson's being with you....
"When you have received your provision, make your repair home again, lest you be a means to shorten her days, for she told me the grief of mind received daily by your stay will be her end; also saith her jewels be spent for you, and that she borrowed the last money of seven several persons.
"Thus much I must confess unto you for a conclusion, that I have never seen nor never shall see a wise Lady, an honourable woman, a mother, more perplexed for her son's absence than I have seen that honourable dame for yours."[155]
It was not only a general hatred of Roman Catholics which made staunch Protestants anxious to detain their sons from foreign travel towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, but a very lively and well-grounded fear of the Inquisition and the Jesuits. When England was at war with Spain, any Englishman caught on Spanish territory was a lawful prisoner for ransom; and since Spanish territory meant Sicily, Naples, and Milan, and Rome was the territory of Spain's patron, the Pope, Italy was far from safe for Englishmen and Protestants. Even when peace with Spain was declared, on the accession of James I., the spies of the Inquisition were everywhere on the alert to find some slight pretext for arresting travellers and to lure them into the dilemma of renouncing their faith, or being imprisoned and tortured. There is a letter, for instance, to Salisbury from one of his agents on the Continent, concerning overtures made to him by the Pope's nuncio, to decoy some Englishman of note--young Lord Roos or Lord Cranborne--into papal dominions, where he might be seized and detained, in hope of procuring a release for Baldwin the Jesuit.[156] William Bedell, about to go to Italy as chaplain to Sir Henry Wotton, the Ambassador to Venice, very anxiously asks a friend what route is best to Italy. "For it is told me that the Inquisition is in Millaine, and that if a man duck not low at every Cross, he may be cast in prison.... Send me, I pray you, a note of the chief towns to be passed through. I care not for seeing places, but to go thither the shortest and safest way."[157]
Bedell's fears were not without reason, for the very next year occurred the arrest of the unfortunate Mr Mole, whose case was one of the sensations of the day. Fuller, in his Church History, under the year 1607, records how--
"About this time Mr Molle, Governour to the Lord Ross in his travails, began his unhappy journey beyond the Seas.... He was appointed by Thomas, Earl of Exeter, to be Governour in Travail to his Grandchilde, the Lord Ross, undertaking the charge with much reluctance (as a presage of ill successe) and with a profession, and a resolution not to passe the Alpes.
"But a Vagari took the Lord Ross to go to Rome, though some conceive this notion had its root in more mischievous brains. In vain doth Mr Molle dissuade him, grown now so wilfull, he would in some sort govern his Governour. What should this good man doe? To leave him were to desert his trust, to goe along with him were to endanger his own life. At last his affections to his charge so prevailed against his judgment, that unwillingly willing he went with him. Now, at what rate soever they rode to Rome, the fame of their coming came thither before them; so that no sooner had they entered their Inne, but Officers asked for Mr Molle, took and carried him to the Inquisition-House, where he remained a prisoner whilest the Lord Ross was daily feasted, favoured, entertained: so that some will not stick to say, That here he changed no Religion for a bad one."[158]
No threats could persuade Mr Mole to renounce his heresy, and though many attempts were made to exchange him for some Jesuits caught in England, he lay for thirty years in the prison of the Inquisition, and died there, at the age of eighty-one.
It was part of the policy of the Jesuits, according to Sir Henry Wotton, to thus separate their tutors from young men, and then ply the pupils with attentions and flattery, with a view to persuading them into the Church of Rome. Not long after the capture of Mole, Wotton writes to Salisbury of another case of the same sort.
"My Lord Wentworthe[159] on the 18th of May coming towards Venice ... accompanied with his brother-in-law Mr Henry Crafts, one Edward Lichefeld, their governor, and some two or three other English, through Bologna, as they were there together at supper the very night of their arrival, came up two Dominican Friars, with the sergeants of the town, and carried thence the foresaid Lichefeld, with all his papers, into the prison of the Inquisition where he yet remaineth.[160] Thus standeth this accident in the bare circumstances thereof, not different, save only in place, from that of Mr Mole at Rome. And doubtlessly (as we collect now upon the matter) if Sir John Harington[161] had either gone the Roman Journey, or taken the ordinary way in his remove thitherwards out of Tuscany, the like would have befallen his director also, a gentleman of singular sufficiency;[162] for it appeareth a new piece of council (infused into the Pope by his artisans the Jesuits) to separate by some device their guides from our young noblemen (about whom they are busiest) and afterwards to use themselves (for aught I can yet hear) with much kindness and security, but yet with restraint (when they come to Rome) of departing thence without leave; which form was held both with the Lords Rosse and St Jhons, and with this Lord Wentworthe and his brother-in-law at their being there. And we have at the present also a like example or two in Barons of the Almaign nation of our religion, whose governors are imprisoned, at Rome and Ferrara; so as the matter seemeth to pass into a rule. And albeit thitherto those before named of our own be escaped out of that Babylon (as far as I can penetrate) without any bad impressions, yet surely it appeareth very dangerous to leave our travellers in this contingency; especially being dispersed in the middle towns of Italy (whither the language doth most draw them) certain nimble pleasant wits in quality of interceptors, who deliver over to their correspondents at Rome the dispositions of gentlemen before they arrive, and so subject them both to attraction by argument, and attraction by humour."[163]
JOHN HARINGTON, SECOND BARON HARINGTON OF
EXTON His letters during his travels in 1604 were considered exemplary
Wotton did not overrate the persuasiveness of the Jesuits. Lord Roos became a papist.[164]
Wotton's own nephew, Pickering, had been converted in Spain, on his death-bed, although he had been, according to the Jesuit records, "most tenacious of the corrupt religion which from his tender youth he had imbibed."[165] In his travels "through the greater part of France, Italy, Spain and Germany for the purpose of learning both the languages and the manners, an ancient custom among northern nations, ... he conferred much upon matters of faith with many persons, led either by inclination or curiosity, and being a clever man would omit no opportunity of gaining information."[166] Through this curiosity he made friends with Father Walpole of the Jesuit College at Valladolid, and falling into a mortal sickness in that city, Walpole had come to comfort him.
Another conversion of the same sort had been made by Father Walpole at Valladolid, the year before. Sir Thomas Palmer came to Spain both for the purpose of learning the language and seeing the country. "Visiting the English College, he treated familiarly with the Fathers, and began to entertain thoughts in his heart of the Catholic religion." While cogitating, he was "overtaken by a sudden and mortal sickness. Therefore, perceiving himself to be in danger of death, he set to work to reconcile himself with the Catholic Church. Having received all the last Sacraments he died, and was honourably interred with Catholic rites, to the great amazement also of the English Protestants, who in great numbers were in the city, and attended the funeral."[167]
There is nothing surprising in these death-bed conversions, when we think of the pressure brought to bear on a traveller in a strange land. As soon as he fell sick, the host of his inn sent for a priest, and if the invalid refused to see a ghostly comforter that fact discovered his Protestantism. Whereupon the physician and apothecary, the very kitchen servants, were forbidden by the priest to help him, unless he renounced his odious Reformed Religion and accepted Confession, the Sacrament, and Extreme Unction. If he died without these his body was not allowed in consecrated ground, but was buried in the highway like a very dog. It is no wonder if sometimes there was a conversion of an Englishman, lonely and dying, with no one to cling to.[168]
We must remember, also, how many reputed Protestants had only outwardly conformed to the Church of England for worldly reasons. They could not enter any profession or hold any public office unless they did. But their hearts were still in the old faith, and they counted on returning to it at the very end.[169] Sometimes the most sincere of Protestants in sickness "relapsed into papistry." For the Protestant religion was new, but the Roman Church was the Church of their fathers. In the hour of death men turn to old affections. And so in several ways one can account for Sir Francis Cottington, Ambassador to Spain, who fell ill, confessed himself a Catholic; and when he recovered, once more became a Protestant.[170]
The mere force of environment, according to Sir Charles Cornwallis, Ambassador to Spain from 1605-9, was enough to change the religion of impressionable spirits. His reports to England show a constant struggle to keep his train of young gentlemen true to their national Church.[171]
The Spanish Court was then at Valladolid, in which city flourished an especially strong College of Jesuits. Thence Walpole, and other dangerous persuaders, made sallies upon Cornwallis's fold. At first the Ambassador was hopeful:--
"Much hath that Creswell and others of that Societie" (the Jesuits) "bestir'd themselves here in Conference and Persuasion with the Gentlemen that came to attend his Excellencie[172] and do secretly bragg of their much prevailinge. Two of myne own Followers I have found corrupted, the one in such sorte as he refused to come to Prayers, whom I presently discharged; the other being an honest and sober young Gentleman, and one that denieth not to be present both at Prayers and Preachinge, I continue still, having good hope that I shall in time reduce him."[173]
But within a month he has to report the conversion of Sir Thomas Palmer, and within another month, the loss of even his own chaplain. "Were God pleased that onlie young and weak ones did waver, it were more tollerable," he laments, "but I am put in some doubte of my Chaplaine himself." He had given the chaplain--one Wadesworth, a good Cambridge Protestant--leave of absence to visit the University of Salamanca. In a week the chaplain wrote for a prolongation of his stay, making discourse of "a strange Tempest that came upon him in the way, of visible Fire that fell both before and behind him, of an Expectation of present Death, and of a Vowe he made in that time of Danger." This manner of writing, and reports from others that he has been a secret visitor to the College of the Jesuits, make Cornwallis fear the worst. "I should think him borne in a most unfortunate hower," he wails, "to become the occasion of such a Scandall."[174] But his fears were realized. The chaplain never came back. He had turned Romanist.
The reasons for the headway of Catholicism in the reign of James I. do not concern us here. To explain the agitated mood of our Precepts for Travellers, it is necessary only to call attention to the fact that Protestantism was just then losing ground, through the devoted energy of the Jesuits. Even in England, they were able to strike admiration into the mind of youth, and to turn its ardour to their own purposes. But in Spain and in Italy, backed by their impressive environment and surrounded by the visible power of the Roman Church, they were much more potent. The English Jesuits in Rome--Oxford scholars, many of them--engaged the attentions of such of their university friends or their countrymen who came to see Italy, offering to show them the antiquities, to be guides and interpreters.[175] By some such means the traveller was lured into the company of these winning companions, till their spiritual and intellectual power made an indelible impression on him.[176]
How much the English Government feared the influence of the Jesuits upon young men abroad may be seen by the increasing strictness of licences for travellers. The ordinary licence which everyone but a known merchant was obliged to obtain from a magistrate before he could leave England, in 1595 gave permission with the condition that the traveller "do not haunte or resorte unto the territories or dominions of any foreine prince or potentate not being with us in league or amitie, nor yet wittinglie kepe companie with any parson or parsons evell affected to our State."[177] But the attempt to keep Englishmen out of Italy was generally fruitless, and the proviso was too frequently disregarded. Lord Zouche grumbled exceedingly at the limitations of his licence. "I cannot tell," he writes to Burghley in 1591, "whether I shall do well or no to touch that part of the licence which prohibiteth me in general to travel in some countries, and companioning divers persons.... This restraint is truly as an imprisonment, for I know not how to carry myself; I know not whether I may pass upon the Lords of Venis, and the Duke of Florens' territories, because I know not if they have league with her Majesty or no."[178] Doubtless Bishop Hall was right when he declared that travellers commonly neglected the cautions about the king's enemies, and that a limited licence was only a verbal formality.[179] King James had occasion to remark that "many of the Gentry, and others of Our Kingdom, under pretence of travel for their experience, do pass the Alps, and not contenting themselves to remain in Lombardy or Tuscany, to gain the language there, do daily flock to Rome, out of vanity and curiosity to see the Antiquities of that City; where falling into the company of Priests and Jesuits ... return again into their countries, both averse to Religion and ill-affected to Our State and Government."[180]
To come to our Instructions for Travellers, as given in the reign of James I., they abound, as we would expect, in warnings against the Inquisition and the Jesuits. Sir Robert Dallington, in his Method for Travell,[181] gives first place to the question of remaining steadfast in one's religion:
"Concerning the Traveliers religion, I teach not what it should be, (being out of my element;) only my hopes are, he be of the religion here established: and my advice is he be therein well settled, and that howsoever his imagination shall be carried in the voluble Sphere of divers men's discourses; yet his inmost thoughts like lines in a circle shall alwaies concenter in this immoveable point, not to alter his first faith: for that I knowe, that as all innovation is dangerous in a state; so is this change in the little commonwealth of a man. And it is to be feared, that he which is of one religion in his youth, and of another in his manhood, will in his age be of neither....
"I will instance in a Gentleman I knew abroade, of an overt and free nature Zealously forward in the religion hee carried from home, while he was in France, who had not bene twentie dayes in Italy, but he was as farre gone on the contrary Byas, and since his returne is turned againe. Now what should one say of such men but as the Philosopher saith of a friend, 'Amicus omnium, Amicus nullorum,' A professor of both, a believer in neither.[182]
"The next Caveat is, to beware how he heare anything repugnant to his religion: for as I have tyed his tongue; so must I stop his eares, least they be open to the smooth incantations of an insinuating seducer, or the suttle arguments of a sophisticall adversarie. To this effect I must precisely forbid him the fellowship or companie of one sort of people in generall: these are the Jesuites, underminders and inveiglers of greene wits, seducers of men in matter of faith, and subverters of men in matters of State, making of both a bad christian, and worse subject. These men I would have my Travueller never heare, except in the Pulpit; for[183] being eloquent, they speake excellent language; and being wise, and therefore best knowing how to speake to best purpose, they seldome or never handle matter of controversie."
Our best authority in this period of travelling is Fynes Moryson, whose Precepts for Travellers[184] are particularly full. Moryson is well known as one of the most experienced travellers of the late Elizabethan era. On a travelling Fellowship from Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1591-1595 he made a tour of Europe, when the Continent was bristling with dangers for Englishmen. Spain and the Inquisition infected Italy and the Low Countries; France was full of desperate marauding soldiers; Germany nourished robbers and free-booters in every forest. It was the particular delight of Fynes Moryson to run into all these dangers and then devise means of escaping them. He never swerved from seeing whatever his curiosity prompted him to, no matter how forbidden and perilous was the venture. Disguised as a German he successfully viewed the inside of a Spanish fort;[185] in the character of a Frenchman he entered the jaws of the Jesuit College at Rome.[186] He made his way through German robbers by dressing as a poor Bohemian, without cloak or sword, with his hands in his hose, and his countenance servile.[187] His triumphs were due not so much to a dashing and magnificent bravery, as to a nice ingenuity. For instance, when he was plucked bare by the French soldiers of even his inner doublet, in which he had quilted his money, he was by no means left penniless, for he had concealed some gold crowns in a box of "stinking ointment" which the soldiers threw down in disgust.[188]
His Precepts for Travellers are characteristically canny. Never tell anyone you can swim, he advises, because in case of shipwreck "others trusting therein take hold of you, and make you perish with them."[189] Upon duels and resentment of injury in strange lands he throws cold common sense. "I advise young men to moderate their aptnesse to quarrell, lest they perish with it. We are not all like Amadis or Rinalldo, to incounter an hoste of men."[190] Very thoughtful is this paragraph on the night's lodging:
"In all Innes, but especially in suspected places, let him bolt or locke the doore of his chamber: let him take heed of his chamber fellows, and always have his Sword by his side, or by his bed-side; let him lay his purse under his pillow, but always foulded with his garters, or some thing hee first useth in the morning, lest hee forget to put it up before hee goe out of his chamber. And to the end he may leave nothing behind him in his Innes, let the visiting of his chamber, and gathering his things together, be the last thing he doth, before hee put his foote into the stirrup."[191]
The whole of the Precepts is marked by this extensive caution. Since, as Moryson truly remarks, travellers meet with more dangers than pleasures, it is better to travel alone than with a friend. "In places of danger, for difference of Religion or proclaimed warre, whosoever hath his Country-man or friend for his companion doth much increase his danger, as well for the confession of his companion, if they chance to be apprehended, as for other accidents, since he shall be accomptable and drawne into danger, as well as by his companion's words or deeds, as by his owne. And surely there happening many dangers and crosses by the way, many are of such intemperate affections, as they not only diminish the comfort they should have from this consort, but even as Dogs, hurt by a stone, bite him that is next, not him that cast the stone, so they may perhaps out of these crosses grow to bitterness of words betweene themselves."[192] Instead of a companion, therefore, let the traveller have a good book under his pillow, to beguile the irksome solitude of Inns--"alwaies bewaring that it treat not of the Commonwealth, the Religion thereof, or any Subject that may be dangerous to him."[193] Chance companions of the road should not be trusted. Lest the traveller should become too well known to them, let him always declare that he is going no further than the next city. Arrived there, he may give them the slip and start with fresh consorts.
Moryson himself, when forced to travel in company, chose Germans, kindly honest gentlemen, of his own religion. He could speak German well enough to pass as one of them, but in fear lest even a syllable might betray his nationality to the sharp spies at the city gates, he made an agreement with his companions that when he was forced to answer questions they should interrupt him as soon as possible, and take the words out of his mouth, as though in rudeness. If he were discovered they were to say they knew him not, and flee away.[194]
Moryson advised the traveller to see Rome and Naples first, because those cities were the most dangerous. Men who stay in Padua some months, and afterwards try Rome, may be sure that the Jesuits and priests there are informed, not only of their coming, but of their condition and appearance by spies in Padua. It were advisable to change one's dwelling-place often, so to avoid the inquiries of priests. At Easter, in Rome, Moryson found the fullest scope for his genius. A few days before Easter a priest came to his lodgings and took the inmates' names in writing, to the end that they might receive the Sacrament with the host's family. Moryson went from Rome on the Tuesday before Easter, came to Siena on Good Friday, and upon Easter eve "(pretending great business)" darted to Florence for the day. On Monday morning he dodged to Pisa, and on the folowing, back to Siena. "Thus by often changing places I avoyded the Priests inquiring after mee, which is most dangerous about Easter time, when all men receive the Sacrament."[195]
The conception of travel one gathers from Fynes Moryson is that of a very exciting form of sport, a sort of chase across Europe, in which the tourist was the fox, doubling and turning and diving into cover, while his friends in England laid three to one on his death. So dangerous was travel at this time, that wagers on the return of venturous gentlemen became a fashionable form of gambling.[196] The custom emanated from Germany, Moryson explains, and was in England first used at Court and among "very Noble men." Moryson himself put out £100 to receive £300 on his return; but by 1595, when he contemplated a second journey, he would not repeat the wager, because ridiculous voyages were by that time undertaken for insurance money by bankrupts and by men of base conditions.
Sir Henry Wotton was a celebrated product of foreign education in these perilous times. As a student of political economy in 1592 he led a precarious existence, visiting Rome with the greatest secrecy, and in elaborate disguise. For years abroad he drank in tales of subtlety and craft from old Italian courtiers, till he was well able to hold his own in intrigue. By nature imaginative and ingenious, plots and counterplots appealed to his artistic ability, and as English Ambassador to Venice, he was never tired of inventing them himself or attributing them to others. It was this characteristic of Jacobean politicians which Ben Jonson satirized in Sir Politick-Would-be, who divulged his knowledge of secret service to Peregrine in Venice. Greatly excited by the mention of a certain priest in England, Sir Politick explains:
"He has received weekly intelligence
Upon my knowledge, out of the Low Countries,
For all parts of the world, in cabbages;
And these dispensed again to ambassadors,
In oranges, musk-melons, apricocks--,
Lemons, pome-citrons, and such-like: sometimes
In Colchester oysters, and your Selsey cockles."[197]
Later on Sir Politick gives instructions for travellers:
"Some few particulars I have set down,
Only for this meridian, fit to be known
Of your crude traveller....
First, for your garb, it must be grave and serious,
Very reserv'd and lock'd; not tell a secret
On any terms; not to your father: scarce
A fable, but with caution: make sure choice
Both of your company, and discourse; beware
You never speak a truth--
Peregrine. How!
Sir P. Not to strangers,
For those be they you must converse with most;
Others I would not know, sir, but at distance,
So as I still might be a saver in them:
You shall have tricks eke passed upon you hourly.
And then, for your religion, profess none,
But wonder at the diversity of all."[198]
Sir Henry Wotton's letter to Milton must not be left out of account of Jacobean advice to travellers. It is brief, but very characteristic, for it breathes the atmosphere of plots and caution. Admired for his great experience and long sojourn abroad, in his old age, as Provost of Eton, Sir Henry's advice was much sought after by fathers about to send their sons on the Grand Tour. Forty-eight years after he himself set forth beyond seas, he passed on to young John Milton "in procinct of his travels," his favourite bit of wisdom, learned from a Roman courtier well versed in the ways of Italy: "I pensieri stretti e il viso sciolto."[199] Milton did not follow this Machiavellian precept to keep his "thoughts close and his countenance loose," as Wotton translates it,[200] and was soon marked by the Inquisition; but he was proud of being advised by Sir Henry Wotton, and boasted of the "elegant letter" and "exceedingly useful precepts" which the Provost bestowed on him at his departure for Italy.[201]
So much for the admonitory side of instructions for travellers at the opening of the seventeenth century. Italy, we see, was still feared as a training-ground for "green wits." Bishop Hall succeeded Ascham in denouncing the travel of young men who professed "to seek the glory of a perfect breeding, and the perfection of that which we call civility." Allowed to visit the Continent at an early age, "these lapwings, that go from under the wing of their dam with the shell on their heads, run wild." They hasten southwards, where in Italy they view the "proud majesty of pompous ceremonies, wherewith the hearts of children and fools are easily taken."[202] To the persuasive power of the Jesuits Hall devotes several pages, and makes an impassioned plea to the authorities to prevent Englishmen from travelling.
Parents could be easily alarmed by any possibility of their sons' conversion to Romanism. For the penalties of being a Roman Catholic in England were enough to make an ambitious father dread recusancy in his son. Though a gentleman or a nobleman ran no risk of being hanged, quartered, disembowelled and subjected to such punishments as were dealt out to active and dangerous priests, he was regarded as a traitor if he acknowledged himself to be a Romanist. At any moment of anti-Catholic excitement he might be arrested and clapped into prison. Drearier than prison must have been his social isolation. For he was cut off from his generation and had no real part in the life of England. Under the laws of James he was denied any share in the Government, could hold no public office, practise no profession. Neither law nor medicine, nor parliament nor the army, nor the university, was open to him. Banished from London and the Court, shunned by his contemporaries, he lurked in some country house, now miserably lonely, now plagued by officers in search of priests. At last, generally, he went abroad, and wandered out his life, an exile, despised by his countrymen, who met him hanging on at foreign Courts; or else he sought a monastery and was buried there. To be sure, the laws against recusants were not uniformly enforced; papistry in favourites and friends of the king was winked at, and the rich noblemen, who were able to pay fines, did not suffer much. But the fact remains that for the average gentleman to turn Romanist generally meant to drop out of the world. "Mr Lewknor," writes Father Gerard to Father Owen,[203] "growing of late to a full resolution of entering the Society (of Jesus), and being so much known in England and in the Court as he is, so that he could not be concealed in the English College at Rome; and his father, as he considered, being morally sure to lose his place,[204] which is worth unto him £1000 a year, he therefore will come privately to Liege, where I doubt not but to keep him wholly unknown."
The admonitions of their elders did not keep young men from going to Italy, but as the seventeenth century advanced the conditions they found there made that country less attractive than France. The fact that the average Englishman was a Protestant divided him from his compeers in Italy and damped social intercourse. He was received courteously and formally by the Italian princes, perhaps, for the sake of his political uncle or cousin in England, but inner distrust and suspicion blighted any real friendship. Unless the Englishman was one of those who had a secret, half-acknowledged allegiance to Romanism, there could not, in the age of the Puritans, be much comfortable affection between him and the Italians. The beautiful youth, John Milton, as the author of excellent Latin verse, was welcomed into the literary life of Florence, to be sure, and there were other unusual cases, but the typical traveller of Stuart times was the young gentleman who was sent to France to learn the graces, with a view to making his fortune at Court, even as his widowed mother sent George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham. The Englishmen who travelled for "the complete polishing of their parts" continued to visit Italy, to satisfy their curiosity, but it was rather in the mood of the sight-seer. Only malcontents, at odds with their native land, like Bothwell, or the Earl of Arundel, or Leicester's disinherited son, made prolonged residence in Italy. Aspiring youth, seeking a social education, for the most part hurried to France.
For it was not only a sense of being surrounded by enemies which during the seventeenth century somewhat weakened the Englishman's allegiance to Italy, but the increasing attractiveness of another country. By 1616 it was said of France that "Unto no other countrie, so much as unto this, doth swarme and flow yearly from all Christian nations, such a multitude, and concourse of young Gentlemen, Marchants, and other sorts of men: some, drawen from their Parentes bosoms by desire of learning; some, rare Science, or new conceites; some by pleasure; and others allured by lucre and gain.... But among all other Nations, there cometh not such a great multitude to Fraunce from any Country, as doth yearely from this Isle (England), both of Gentlemen, Students, Marchants, and others."[205]
Held in peace by Henry of Navarre, France began to be a happier place than Italy for the Englishman abroad. Germany was impossible, because of the Thirty Years' War; and Spain, for reasons which we shall see later on, was not inviting. Though nominally Roman Catholic, France was in fact half Protestant. Besides, the French Court was great and gay, far outshining those of the impoverished Italian princes. It suited the gallants of the Stuart period, who found the grave courtesy of the Italians rather slow. Learning, for which men once had travelled into Italy, was no longer confined there. Nor did the Cavaliers desire exact classical learning. A knowledge of mythology, culled from French translations, was sufficient. Accomplishments, such as riding, fencing, and dancing, were what chiefly helped them, it appeared, to make their way at Court or at camp. And the best instruction in these accomplishments had shifted from Italy to France.
A change had come over the ideal of a gentleman--a reaction from the Tudor enthusiasm for letters. A long time had gone by since Henry VIII. tried to make his children as learned as Erasmus, and had the most erudite scholars fetched from Oxford and Cambridge to direct the royal nursery. The somewhat moderated esteem in which book-learning was held in the household of Charles I. may be seen in a letter of the Earl of Newcastle, governor to Prince Charles,[206] who writes to his pupil:
"I would not have you too studious, for too much contemplation spoils action, and Virtue consists in that." The Prince's model is to be the Bishop of Chichester, his tutor, who "hath no pedantry in him: his learning he makes right use of, neither to trouble himself with it or his friends: ... reades men as well as books: ... is travell'd, which you shall perceive by his wisdome and fashion more than by his relations; and in a word strives as much discreetly to hide the scholler in him, as other men's follies studies to shew it: and is a right gentleman."[207]
FENCING An indispensable
part of an Englishman's education abroad.
Of pedantry, however, there never seems to have been any danger in Court circles, either in Tudor or Stuart days. It took constant exhortations to make the majority of noblemen's sons learn anything at all out of books. For centuries the marks of a gentleman had been bravery, courtesy and a good seat in the saddle, and it was not to be supposed that a sudden fashionable enthusiasm for literature could change all that. Ascham had declared that the Elizabethan young bloods thought it shameful to be learned because the "Jentlemen of France" were not so.[208] When with the general relaxation of high effort which appeared in so many ways at the Court of James I., the mastery of Greek authors was no longer an ideal of the courtier, the Jacobean gallant was hardly more intellectual than the mediæval page. Henry Peacham, in 1623, described noblemen's flagging faith in a university education. They sent their sons to Oxford or Cambridge at an early age, and if the striplings did not immediately lay hold on philosophy, declared that they had no aptitude for learning, and removed them to a dancing school. "These young things," as he calls the Oxford students "of twelve, thirteene, or foureteene, that have no more care than to expect the next Carrier, and where to sup on Fridayes and Fasting nights" find "such a disproportion betweene Aristotles Categories, and their childish capacities, that what together with the sweetnesse of libertie, varietie of companie, and so many kinds of recreation in towne and fields abroad," they give over any attempt to understand "the crabbed grounds of Arts." Whereupon, the parents, "if they perceive any wildnesse or unstayednesse in their children, are presently in despaire, and out of all hope of them for ever prooving Schollers, or fit for anything else; neither consider the nature of youth, nor the effect of time, the Physitian of all. But to mend the matter, send them either to the Court to serve as Pages, or into France and Italy to see fashions, and mend their manners, where they become ten times worse."[209]
The influence of France would not be towards books, certainly. Brave, gallant, and magnificent were the Gallic gentlemen; but not learned. Reading made them positively ill: "la tête leur tourne de lire," as Brézé confessed.[210] Scorning an indoor sedentary life, they left all civil offices to the bourgeoisie, and devoted themselves exclusively to war. As the Vicomte D'Avenel has crisply put it:
"It would have seemed as strange to see a person of high rank the Treasurer of France, the Controller of Finance, or the Rector of a University, as it would be to see him a cloth-merchant or maker of crockery.... The poorest younger son of an ancient family, who would not disdain to engage himself as a page to a nobleman, or as a common soldier, would have thought himself debased by accepting the post of secretary to an ambassador."[211]
Brute force was still considered the greatest power in the world, even when Sully was Conseiller d'Etat, though divining spirits like Eustache Deschamps had declared that the day would come when serving-men would rule France by their wits, all because the noblesse would not learn letters.[212] In vain the wise Bras-de-Fer warned his generation that glory and strength of limb were of short duration, while knowledge was the only immortal quality.[213] As long as parents saw that the honours at Court went to handsome horsemen, they thought it mistaken policy to waste money on book-learning for their sons. When a boy came from the university to Court, he found himself eclipsed by young pages, who scarcely knew how to read, but had killed their man in a duel, and danced to perfection.[214] A martial training, with physical accomplishments, was the most effective, apparently.
The martial type which France evolved dazzled other nations, and it is not surprising that under the Stuarts, who had inherited French ways, the English Court was particularly open to French ideals. Our directions for travellers reflect the change from the typical Elizabethan courtier, "somewhat solemn, coy, big and dangerous of look," to the easy manners of the cavalier. A Method for Travell, written while Elizabeth was still on the throne, extols Italian conduct. "I would rather," it says of the traveller, "he should come home Italianate than Frenchified: I speake of both in the better sense: for the French is stirring, bold, respectless, inconstant, suddaine: the Italian stayed, demure, respective, grave, advised."[215] But Instructions for Forreine Travell in 1642 urges one to imitate the French. "For the Gentry of France have a kind of loose, becoming boldness, and forward vivacity in their manners."[216]
The first writer of advice to travellers who assumes that French accomplishments are to be a large part of the traveller's education, is Sir Robert Dallington, whom we have already quoted. His View of France[217] to which the Method for Travel is prefixed, deserves a reprint, for both that and his Survey of Tuscany,[218] though built on the regular model of the Elizabethan traveller's "Relation," being a conscientious account of the chief geographical, economic, architectural, and social features of the country traversed, are more artistic than the usual formal reports. Dallington wrote these Views in 1598, a little before the generation which modelled itself on the French gallants, and his remarks on Frenchmen may well have served as a warning to courtiers not to imitate the foibles, along with the admirable qualities, of their compeers across the Channel. For instance, he is outraged by the effusiveness of the "violent, busy-headed and impatient Frenchman," who "showeth his lightness and inconstancie ... in nothing more than in his familiaritie, with whom a stranger cannot so soone be off his horse, but he will be acquainted: nor so soone in his Chamber, but the other like an Ape will bee on his shoulder: and as suddenly and without cause ye shall love him also. A childish humour, to be wonne with as little as an Apple and lost with lesse than a Nut."[219] The King of France himself is censured for his geniality. Dallington deems Henry of Navarre "more affable and familiar than fits the Majesty of a great King." He might have found in current gossip worse lapses than the two he quotes to show Henry's lack of formality, but it is part of Dallington's worth that he writes of things at first-hand, and gives us only what he himself saw; how at Orleans, when the Italian commedians were to play before him, the king himself, "came whiffling with a small wand to scowre the coast, and make place for the rascall Players,... a thing, me thought, most derogatory to the Majesty of a King of France."
"And lately at Paris (as they tell us) when the Spanish Hostages were to be entertayned, he did Usher it in the great Chamber, as he had done here before; and espying the Chayre not to stand well under the State, mended it handsomely himselfe, and then set him downe to give them audience."[220]
Nor can Dallington conceal his disapproval of foreign food. The sorrows of the beef-eating Englishman among the continentals were always poignant. Dallington is only one of the many travellers who, unable to grasp the fact that warmer climes called for light diet, reproached the Italians especially for their "parsimony and thin feeding." In Henry the Eighth's time there was already a saying among the Italians, "Give the Englishman his beef and mustard,"[221] while the English in turn jibed at the Italians for being "like Nebuchadnezzar,--always picking of sallets." "Herbage," says Dallington scornfully "is the most generall food of the Tuscan ... for every horse-load of flesh eaten, there is ten cart loades of hearbes and rootes, which also their open Markets and private tables doe witnesse, and whereof if one talke with them fasting, he shall have sencible feeling."[222] The whole subject of diet he dismisses in his advice to a traveller as follows: "As for his viands I feare not his surfetting; his provision is never so great, but ye may let him loose to his allowance.... I shall not need to tell him before what his dyet shall be, his appetite will make it better than it is: for he shall be still kept sharpe: only of the difference of dyets, he shall observe thus much: that of Germanie is full or rather fulsome; that of France allowable; that of Italie tolerable; with the Dutch he shall have much meat ill-dressed: with the French lesse, but well handled; with the Italian neither the one nor the other."[223]
Though there is much in Dallington's description of Italy and France to repay attention, our concern is with his Method for Travell,[224] which, though more practical than the earlier Elizabethan essays of the same sort, opens in the usual style of exhortation:
"Plato, one of the day-starres of that knowledge, which then but dawning hath since shone out in clearer brightness, thought nothing better for the bettering our understanding then Travell: as well by having a conference with the wiser sort in all sorts of learning, as by the [Greek: Autopsiaêi]. The eye-sight of those things, which otherwise a man cannot have but by Tradition; A Sandy foundation either in matter of Science, or Conscience. So that a purpose to Travell, if it be not ad voluptatem Solum, sed ad utilitatem, argueth an industrious and generous minde. Base and vulgar spirits hover still about home: those are more noble and divine, that imitate the Heavens, and joy in motion."
After a warning against Jesuits, which we have quoted, he comes at once to definite directions for studying modern languages[225]--advice which though sound is hardly novel. Continual speaking with all sorts of people, insisting that his teacher shall not do all the talking, and avoiding his countrymen are unchangeable rules for him who shall travel for language.[226] But this is the first treatise for travellers which makes note of dancing as an important accomplishment. "There's another exercise to be learned in France, because there are better teachers, and the French fashion is in most request with us, that is, of dancing. This I meane to my Traveller that is young and meanes to follow the Court: otherwise I hold it needelesse, and in some ridiculous."[227] This art was indeed essential to courtiers, and a matter of great earnestness. Chamberlain reports that Sir Henry Bowyer died of the violent exercise he underwent while practising dancing.[228] Henri III. fell into a tearful passion and called the Grand Prieur a liar, a poltroon, and a villain, at a ball, because the Grand Prieur was heard to mutter "Unless you dance better, I would you had your money again that your dancing has cost you." [229] James I. was particularly anxious to have his "Babies" excel in complicated boundings. His copy of Nuove Inventioni di Balli[230] may be seen in the British Museum, with large plates illustrating how to "gettare la gamba," that is, in the words of Chaucer, "with his legges casten to and fro."[231] Prince Henry was skilful in these matters. The Spanish Ambassador reports how "The Prince of Wales was desired by his royal parents to open the ball with a Spanish gallarda: he acquitted himself with much grace and delicacy, introducing some occasional leaps."[232] Prince Charles and Buckingham, during their stay in Spain, are earnestly implored by their "deare Dad and Gossip" not to forget their dancing. "I praye you, my babie, take heade of being hurt if ye runne at tilte, ... I praye you in the meantyme keep your selfis in use of dawncing privatlie, thogh ye showlde quhissell and sing one to another like Jakke and Tom for faulte of better musike." [233]
DANCING An illustration from
'Nuove Inventione di Baili,' an Italian book of instructions in dancing,
much prized by James I
However, Dallington is very much against the saltations of elderly persons. "I remember a countriman of ours, well seene in artes and language, well stricken in yeares, a mourner for his second wife, a father of mariageable children, who with his other booke studies abroade, joyned also the exercise of dancing: it was his hap in an honourable Bal (as they call it) to take a fall, which in mine opinion was not so disgracefull as the dancing it selfe, to a man of his stuffe."[234]
Dallington would have criticized Frenchmen more severely than ever had he known that even Sully gave way in private to a passion for dancing. At least Tallemant des Réaux says that "every evening a valet de chambre of the King played on the lute the dances of the day, and M. de Sully danced all alone, in some sort of extraordinary hat--such as he always wore in his cabinet--while his cronies applauded him, although he was the most awkward man in the world."[235]
Tennis is another courtly exercise in which Dallington urges moderation. "This is dangerous, (if used with too much violence) for the body; and (if followed with too much diligence,) for the purse. A maine point of the Travellers care." He reached France when the rage for tennis was at its height,--when there were two hundred and fifty tennis courts in Paris,[236]--and "two tennis courts for every one Church through France," according to his computation.[237] Everyone was at it;--nobles, artizans, women, and children. The monks had had to be requested not to play--especially, the edict said, "not in public in their shirts."[238] Our Englishman, of course, thought this enthusiasm was beyond bounds. "Ye have seene them play Sets at Tennise in the heat of Summer and height of the day, when others were scarcely able to stirre out of doors." Betting on the game was the ruin of the working-man, who "spendeth that on the Holyday, at Tennis, which hee got the whole weeke, for the keeping of his poore family. A thing more hurtfull then our Ale-houses in England."[239]
"There remains two other exercises," says the Method for Travell, "of use and necessitie, to him that will returne ably quallified for his countries service in warre, and his owne defence in private quarrell. These are Riding and Fencing. His best place for the first (excepting Naples) is in Florence under il Signor Rustico, the great Dukes Cavallerizzo, and for the second (excepting Rome) is in Padua, under il Sordo."[240] Italy, it may be observed, was still the best school for these accomplishments. Pluvinel was soon to make a world-renowned riding academy in Paris, but the art of fencing was more slowly disseminated. One was still obliged, like Captain Bobadil, to make "long travel for knowledge, in that mystery only."[241] Brantome says the fencing masters of Italy kept their secrets in their own hands, giving their services only on the condition that you should never reveal what you had learnt even to your dearest friends. Some instructors would never allow a living soul in the room where they were giving lessons to a pupil. And even then they used to keek everywhere, under the beds, and examine the wall to see if it had any crack or hole through which a person could peer.[242] Dallington makes no further remark on the subject, however, than the above, and after some advice about money matters, which we will mention in another connection, and a warning to the traveller that his apparel must be in fashion--for the fashions change with trying rapidity, and the French were very scornful of anyone who appeared in a last year's suit[243]--he brings to a close one of the pithiest essays in our collection.
When the influence of France over the ideals of a gentleman was well established, James Howell wrote his Instructions for Forreine Travell,[244] and in this book for the first time the traveller is advised to stay at one of the French academies--or riding schools, as they really were.
His is the best known, probably, of all our treatises, partly because it was reprinted a little while ago by Mr Gosse, and partly because of its own merits. Howell had an easier, more indulgent outlook upon the world than Dallington, and could see all nations with equal humour--his own included. Take his comparison of the Frenchman and the Spaniard.
The Frenchman "will dispatch the weightiest affairs as hee walke along in the streets, or at meales, the other upon the least occasion of businesse will retire solemnly to a room, and if a fly chance to hum about him, it will discompose his thoughts and puzzle him: It is a kind of sicknesse for a Frenchman to keep a secret long, and all the drugs of Egypt cannot get it out of a Spaniard.... The Frenchman walks fast, (as if he had a Sergeant always at his heels,) the Spaniard slowly, as if hee were newly come out of some quartan Ague; the French go up and down the streets confusedly in clusters, the Spaniards if they be above three, they go two by two, as if they were going a Procession; etc. etc."[245]
With the same humorous eye he observes the Englishmen returned to London from Paris, "whom their gate and strouting, their bending in the hammes, and shoulders, and looking upon their legs, with frisking and singing do speake them Travellers.... Some make their return in huge monstrous Periwigs, which is the Golden Fleece they bring over with them. Such, I say, are a shame to their Country abroad, and their kinred at home, and to their parents, Benonies, the sons of sorrow: and as Jonas in the Whales belly, travelled much, but saw little."[246]
These are some of the advantages an Englishman will reap from foreign travel:
"One shall learne besides there not to interrupt one in the relation of his tale, or to feed it with odde interlocutions: One shall learne also not to laugh at his own jest, as too many used to do, like a Hen, which cannot lay an egge but she must cackle.
"Moreover, one shall learne not to ride so furiously as they do ordinarily in England, when there is no necessity at all for it; for the Italians have a Proverb, that a galloping horse is an open sepulcher. And the English generally are observed by all other Nations, to ride commonly with that speed as if they rid for a midwife, or a Physitian, or to get a pardon to save one's life as he goeth to execution, when there is no such thing, or any other occasion at all, which makes them call England the Hell of Horses.
"In these hot Countreyes also, one shall learne to give over the habit of an odde custome, peculiar to the English alone, and whereby they are distinguished from other Nations, which is, to make still towards the chimney, though it bee in the Dog-dayes."[247]
We need not comment in detail upon Howell's book since it is so accessible. The passage which chiefly marks the progress of travel for study's sake is this:
"For private Gentlemen and Cadets, there be divers Academies in Paris, Colledge-like, where for 150 pistols a Yeare, which come to about £150 sterling per annum of our money, one may be very well accomodated, with lodging and diet for himself and man, and be taught to Ride, to Fence, to manage Armes, to Dance, Vault, and ply the Mathematiques."[248]
These academies were one of the chief attractions which France had for the gentry of England in the seventeenth century. The first one was founded by Pluvinel, the grand écuyer of Henri IV. Pluvinel, returning from a long apprenticeship to Pignatelli in Naples, made his own riding-school the best in the world, so that the French no longer had to journey to Italian masters. He obtained from the king the basement of the great gallery of the Louvre, and there taught Louis XIII. and other young nobles of the Court--amongst them the Marquis du Chillon, afterwards Cardinal Richelieu--to ride the great horse.[249] Such was the success of his manège that he annexed masters to teach his pupils dancing, vaulting, and swordsmanship, as well as drawing and mathematics, till he had rounded out what was considered a complete education for a chevalier. In imitation of his establishment, many other riding-masters, such as Benjamin, Potrincourt, and Nesmond, set up others of the same sort, which drew pupils from other nations during all the seventeenth century.[250] In the suburb of Pré-aux-clercs, says Malingre in 1640, "are several academies where the nobility learn to ride. The most frequented is that of M. de Mesmon, where there is a prince of Denmark and one of the princes palatine of the Rhine, and a quantity of other foreign gentlemen."[251]
Englishmen found the academies very useful retreats where a boy could learn French accomplishments without incurring the dangers of foreign travel and make the acquaintance of young nobles of his own age. Mr Thomas Lorkin writing from Paris in 1610, outlines to the tutor of the Prince of Wales the routine of his pupil Mr Puckering[252] at such an establishment. The morning began with two hours on horseback, followed by two hours at the French tongue, and one hour in "learning to handle his weapon." Dinner was at twelve o'clock, where the company continued together till two, "either passing the time in discourse or in some honest recreation perteyning to armes." At two the bell rang for dancing, and at three another gong sent the pupil to his own room with his tutor, to study Latin and French for two hours. "After supper a brief survey of all."[253]
It will be seen that there was an exact balance between physical and mental exercise--four hours of each. All in all, academies seemed to be the solution of preparing for life those who were destined to shine at Court. The problem had been felt in England, as well as in France. In 1561, Sir Nicholas Bacon had devised "Articles for the bringing up in virtue and learning of the Queens Majesties Wardes."[254] Lord Burghley is said to have propounded the creation of a school of arms and exercises.[255] In 1570, Sir Humphrey Gilbert drew up an elaborate proposal for an "Academy of philosophy and chivalry,"[256] but none of these plans was carried out. Nor was that of Prince Henry, who had also wanted to establish a Royal Academy or School of Arms, in which all the king's wards and others should be educated and exercised.[257] A certain Sir Francis Kinaston, esquire of the body to Charles I., "more addicted to the superficiall parts of learning--poetry and oratory (wherein he excell'd)--than to logic and philosophy," Wood says, did get a licence to erect an academy in his house in Covent Garden, "which should be for ever a college for the education of the young nobility and others, sons of gentlemen, and should be styled the Musæum Minervæ."[258] But whatever start was made in that direction ended with the Civil War.
However, the idea of setting up in England the sort of academy which was successful in France was such an obvious one that it kept constantly recurring. In 1649 a courtly parasite, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who used to be a miniature painter, an art-critic, and Master of Ceremonies to Charles I., being sadly thrown out of occupation by the Civil War, opened an academy at Bethnal Green. There are still in existence his elaborate advertisements of its attractions, addressed to "All Fathers of Noble Families and Lovers of Vertue," and proposing his school as "a meanes, whereby to free them of such charges as they are at, when they send their children to foreign academies, and to render them more knowing in those languages, without exposing them to the dangers incident to travellers, and to that of evill companies, or of giving to forrain parts the glory of their education."[259] But Gerbier was a flimsy character, and without a Court to support him, or money, his academy dissolved after a gaseous lecture or two. Faubert, however, another French Protestant refugee, was more successful with an academy he managed to set up in London in 1682, "to lessen the vast expense the nation is at yearly by sending children into France to be taught military exercises."[260] Evelyn, who was a patron of this enterprise, describes how he "went with Lord Cornwallis to see the young gallants do their exercise, Mr Faubert having newly railed in a manège, and fitted it for the academy. There were the Dukes of Norfolk and Northumberland, Lord Newburgh, and a nephew of (Duras) Earl of Feversham.... But the Duke of Norfolk told me he had not been at this exercise these twelve years before."[261] However, Faubert's could not have been an important institution, since in 1700, a certain Dr Maidwell tried to get the Government to convert a great house of his near Westminster into a public academy of the French sort, as a greatly needed means of rearing gentlemen.[262]
But all these efforts to educate English boys on the lines of French ones came to nothing, because at the close of the seventeenth century Englishmen began to realize that it was not wise for a gentleman to confine himself to a military life. As to riding as a fine art, his practical mind felt that it was all very well to amuse oneself in Paris by learning to make a war-horse caracole, but there was no use in taking such things too seriously; that in war "a ruder way of riding was more in use, without observing the precise rules of riding the great horse."[263] He could not feel that artistic passion for form in horsemanship which breathes from the pages of Pluvinel's book Le Maneige Royal[264] in which magnificent engravings show Louis XIII. making courbettes, voltes, and "caprioles" around the Louvre, while a circle of grandees gravely discuss the deportment of his charger. Even Sir Philip Sidney made gentle fun of the hippocentric universe of his Italian riding master:
"When the right vertuous Edward Wotton, and I, were at the Emperors Court together, wee gave ourselves to learne horsemanship of John Pietro Pugliano: one that with great commendation had the place of an esquire in his stable. And hee, according to the fertilnes of the Italian wit, did not onely afoord us the demonstration of his practise, but sought to enrich our mindes with the contemplations therein, which hee thought most precious. But with none I remember mine eares were at any time more loden, then when (ether angred with slowe paiment, or mooved with our learner-like admiration,) he exercised his speech in the prayse of his facultie. Hee sayd, Souldiers were the noblest estate of mankinde, and horsemen, the noblest of Souldiours. He sayde, they were the Maistres of warre, and ornaments of peace: speedy goers, and strong abiders, triumphers both in Camps and Courts. Nay, to so unbeleeved a poynt hee proceeded, as that no earthly thing bred such wonder to a Prince, as to be a good horseman. Skill of government, was but a Pedanteria in comparison: then woulde he adde certaine prayses, by telling what a peerlesse beast a horse was. The only serviceable Courtier without flattery, the beast of the most beutie, faithfulness, courage, and such more, that if I had not beene a peece of a Logician before I came to him, I think he would have perswaded mee to have wished my selfe a Horse."[265]
That this was somewhat the spirit of the French academies there seems no doubt. Though they claimed to give an equal amount of physical and mental exercise, they tended to the muscular side of the programme. Pluvinel, says Tallemant des Réaux, "was hardly more intelligent than his horses,"[266] and the academies are supposed to have declined after his death.[267] "All that is to be learned in these Academies," says Clarendon, "is Riding, Dancing, and Fencing, besides some Wickednesses they do not profess to teach. It is true they have men there who teach Arithmetick, which they call Philosophy, and the Art of Fortification, which they call the Mathematicks; but what Learning they had there, I might easily imagine, when he assured me, that in Three years which he had spent in the Academy, he never saw a Latin book nor any Master that taught anything there, who would not have taken it very ill to be suspected to speake or understand Latin."[268] This sort of aspersion was continued by Dr Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Mathematics at Oxford in 1700, who was roused to a fine pitch of indignation by Maidwell's efforts to start an academy in London:[269]
"Of teachers in the academie, scarce any of a higher character than a valet-de-chambre. And, if such an one, who (for instance) hath waited on his master in one or two campagnes, and is able perhaps to copy the draught of a fortification from another paper; this is called mathematicks; and, beyond this (if so much) you are not to expect."
A certain Mr P. Chester finishes the English condemnation of a school, such as Benjamin's, by declaring that its pretensions to fit men for life was "like the shearing of Hoggs, much Noyse and little Wooll, nothing considerable taught that I know, butt only to fitt a man to be a French chevalier, that is in plain English a Trooper."[270]
These comments are what one expects from Oxford, to be sure, but even M. Jusserand acknowledges that the academies were not centres of intellectual light, and quotes to prove it certain questions asked of a pupil put into the Bastille, at the demand of his father:
"Was it not true that the Sieur Varin, his father, seeing that he had no inclination to study, had put him into the Académie Royale to there learn all sorts of exercises, and had there supported him with much expense?
"He admitted that his father, while his mother was living, had put him into the Académie Royale and had given him for that the necessary means, and paid the ordinary pension, 1600 livres a year.
"Was it not true that after having been some time at the Académie Royale, he was expelled, having disguised girls in boys' clothes to bring them there?
"He denied it. He had never introduced into the school any académiste féminine: he had departed at the summons of his father, having taken proper leave of M. and Mme. de Poix."[271]
However, something of an education had to be provided for Royalist boys at the time of the Civil War, when Oxford was demoralized. Parents wandering homeless on the Continent were glad enough of the academies. Even the Stuarts tried them, though the Duke of Gloucester had to be weaned from the company of some young French gallants, "who, being educated in the same academy, were more familiar with him than was thought convenient."[272] It was a choice between academies or such an education as Edmund Verney endured in a dull provincial city as the sole pupil of an exiled Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. But the effects of being reared in France, and too early thrown into the dissolute Courts of Europe, were evident at the Restoration, when Charles the Second and his friends returned to startle England with their "exceeding wildness." What else could be the effect of a youth spent as the Earl of Chesterfield records:[273] at thirteen years old a courtier at St Germaine: at fourteen, rid of any governor or tutor: at sixteen, at the academy of M. de Veau, he "chanced to have a quarrel with M. Morvay, since Captaine of the French King's Guards, who I hurt and disarmed in a duel." Thereupon he left the academy and took up his abode at the Court of Turin. It was from Italy, De Gramont said, that Chesterfield brought those elaborate manners, and that jealousy about women, for which he was so notorious among the rakes of the Restoration.[274]
Henry Peacham's chapter "Of Travaile"[275] is for the most part built out of Dallington's advice, but it is worthy of note that in The Compleat Gentleman, Spain is pressed upon the traveller's attention for the first time. This is, of course, the natural reflection of an interest in Spain due to the romantic adventures of Prince Charles and Buckingham in that country. James Howell, who was of their train, gives even more space to it in his Instructions for Forreine Travell. Notwithstanding, and though Spain was, after 1605, fairly safe for Englishmen, as a pleasure ground it was not popular. It was a particularly uncomfortable and expensive country; hardly improved from the time--(1537)--when Clenardus, weary with traversing deserts on his way to the University of Salamanca, after a sparse meal of rabbit, sans wine, sans water, composed himself to sleep on the floor of a little hut, with nothing to pillow his head on except his three negro grooms, and exclaimed, "O misera Lusitania, beati qui non viderunt."[276] All civilization was confined to the few large cities, to reach which one was obliged to traverse tedious, hot, barren, and unprofitable wastes, in imminent danger of robbers, and in certainty of the customs officers, who taxed people for everything, even the clothes they had on. None escaped. Henry the Eighth's Ambassador complained loudly and frantically of the outrage to a person in his office.[277] So did Elizabeth's Ambassador. But the officers said grimly "that if Christ or Sanct Fraunces came with all their flock they should not escape."[278] If the preliminary discomforts from customs-officers put travellers into an ill mood at once against Spain, the inns confirmed them in it. "In some places there is but the cask of a House, with a little napery, but sometimes no beds at all for Passengers in the Ventas--or Lodgings on the King's highway, where if passengers meet, they must carry their Knapsacks well provided of what is necessary: otherwise they may go to bed supperless."[279] The Comtesse d'Aunoy grumbles that it was impossible to warm oneself at the kitchen-fire without being choked, for there was no chimney. Besides the room was full of men and women, "blacker than Devils and clad like Beggars ... always some of 'em impudently grating on a sorry Guitar."[280] Even the large cities were not diverting, for though they were handsome enough and could show "certain massie and solid Braveries," yet they had few of the attractions of urban life. The streets were so ill-paved that the horses splashed water into one's carriage at every step.[281] A friend warned Tobie Matthew that "In the Cities you shall find so little of the Italian delicacie for the manner of their buildings, the cleannesse and sweetnesse of their streets, their way of living, their entertainments for recreations by Villas, Gardens, Walks, Fountains, Academies, Arts of Painting, Architecture and the like, that you would rather suspect that they did but live together for fear of wolves."[282]
SKETCHING ON THE SHORES OF LAKE AVERNUS IN
1610
How little the solemnity of the Spanish nobles pleased English courtiers used to the boisterous ways of James I. and his "Steenie," may be gathered from The Perambulation of Spain.[283] "You must know," says the first character in that dialogue, "that there is a great deal of gravity and state in the Catholic Court, but little noise, and few people; so that it may be call'd a Monastery, rather than a Royal Court." The economy in such a place was a great source of grievance. "By this means the King of Spain spends not much," says the second character. "So little," is the reply, "that I dare wager the French King spends more in Pages and Laquays, than he of Spain among all his Court Attendants." Buckingham's train jeered at the abstemious fare they received.[284] It was in such irritating contrast to the lofty airs of those who provided it. "We are still extream poor," writes the English Ambassador about the Court of Madrid, "yet as proud as Divells, yea even as rich Divells."[285] Not only at Court, but everywhere, Spaniards were indifferent to strangers, and not at all interested in pleasing them. Lord Clarendon remarks that in Madrid travellers "will find less delight to reside than in any other Place to which we have before commended them: for that Nation having less Reverence for meer Travellers, who go Abroad, without Business, are not at all solicitous to provide for their Accomodation: and when they complain of the want of many Conveniences, as they have reason to do, they wonder men will come from Home, who will be troubled for those Incommodities."[286]
It is no wonder, therefore, that Spain was considered a rather tedious country for strangers, and that Howell "met more Passengers 'twixt Paris and Orleans, than I found well neer in all the Journey through Spain."[287] Curiosity and a desire to learn the language might carry a man to Madrid for a time, but Englishmen could find little to commend there. Holland, on the other hand, provoked their admiration more and more. Travellers were never done exclaiming at its municipal governments, its reformatories and workhouses, its industry, frugality, and social economy. The neat buildings, elegant streets, and quiet inns, were the subject of many encomiums.[288]
Descartes, who chose Amsterdam as the place in which to think out his philosophy, praised it as the ideal retreat for students, contending that it was far better for them than Italy, with its plagues, heat, unwholesome evenings, murder and robbery.[289] Locke, when he went into voluntary exile in 1684, enjoyed himself with the doctors and men of letters in Amsterdam, attending by special invitation of the principal physician of the city the dissection of a lioness, or discussing knotty problems of theology with the wealthy Quaker merchants.[290] Courtiers were charmed with the sea-shore at Scheveningen, where on the hard sand, admirably contrived by nature for the divertisement of persons of quality, the foreign ambassadors and their ladies, and the society of the Hague, drove in their coaches and six horses.[291] However, Sir William Temple, after some years spent as Ambassador to the Netherlands, decided that Holland was a place where a man would choose rather to travel than to live, because it was a country where there was more sense than wit, more wealth than pleasure, and where one would find more persons to esteem than to love.[292]
Holland was of peculiar delight to the traveller of the seventeenth century because it contained so many curiosities and rareties. To ferret out objects of vertu the Jacobean gentleman would take any journey. People with cabinets of butterflies, miniatures, shells, ivory, or Indian beads, were pestered by tourists asking to see their treasures.[293] No garden was so entrancing to them as one that had "a rupellary nidary"[294] or an aviary with eagles, cranes, storks, bustards, ducks with four wings, or with rabbits of an almost perfect yellow colour.[295] Holland, therefore, where ships brought precious curiosities from all over the world, was a heaven for the virtuoso. Evelyn in Rotterdam hovered between his delight in the brass statue of Erasmus and a pelican, which he carefully describes. The great charm of Dutch inns for Sam Paterson was their hoards of China and Japan ware and the probability you had of meeting a purring marmot, a squeaking guinea-pig, or a tame rabbit with a collar of bells, hopping through the house.[296]
But we have dwelt too long, perhaps, on those who voyaged to see knick-knacks, and to gain accomplishments at French academies. Though the academies were characteristic of the seventeenth century, there were other centres of education sought by Englishmen abroad. The study of medicine, particularly, took many students to Padua or Paris, for the Continent was far ahead of England in scientific work.[297] Sir Thomas Browne's son studied anatomy at Padua with Sir John Finch, who had settled there and was afterwards chosen syndic of the university.[298] At Paris Martin Lister, though in the train of the English Ambassador, principally enjoyed "Mr Bennis in the dissecting-room working by himself upon a dead body," and "took more pleasure to see Monsieur Breman in his white waistcoat digging in the royal physic-garden and sowing his couches, than Mounsieur de Saintot making room for an ambassador": and found himself better disposed and more apt to learn the names and physiognomy of a hundred plants, than of five or six princes.[299]
It was medicine that chiefly interested Nicholas Ferrar, than whom no traveller for study's sake was ever more devoted to the task of self-improvement. At about the same time that the second Earl of Chesterfield was fighting duels at the academy of Monsieur de Veau, Nicholas Ferrar, a grave boy, came from Cambridge to Leipsic and "set himself laboriously to study the originals of the city, the nature of the government, the humors and inclinations of the people." Finding the university too distracting, he retired to a neighbouring village to read the choicest writers on German affairs. He served an apprenticeship of a fortnight at every German trade. He could maintain a dialogue with an architect in his own phrases; he could talk with mariners in their sea terms. Removing to Padua, he attained in a very short time a marvellous proficiency in physic, while his conversation and his charm ennobled the evil students of Padua.[300]
After the Restoration the idea of polishing one's parts by foreign travel received fresh impetus. The friends of Charles the Second, having spent so much of their time abroad, naturally brought back to England a renewed infusion of continental ideals. France was more than ever the arbiter for the "gentry and civiller sort of mankind." Travellers such as Evelyn, who deplored the English gentry's "solitary and unactive lives in the country," the "haughty and boorish Englishman," and the "constrained address of our sullen Nation,"[301] made an impression. It was generally acknowledged that comity and affability had to be fetched from beyond the Seas, for the "meer Englishman" was defective in those qualities. He was "rough in address, not easily acquainted, and blunt even when he obliged."[302]
Even wise and honest Englishmen began to be ashamed of their manners and felt they must try to be not quite so English. "Put on a decent boldness," writes Sir Thomas Browne constantly to his son in France. "Shun pudor rusticus." "Practise an handsome garb and civil boldness which he that learneth not in France, travaileth in vain."[303]
But there was this difference in travel to complete the gentleman during the reign of Charles the Second: that Italy and Germany were again safe and thrown open to travellers, so that Holland, Germany, Italy, and France made a magnificent round of sights; namely, the Grand Tour. It was still usual to spend some time in Paris learning exercises and accomplishments at an academy, but a large proportion of effort went to driving by post-chaise through the principal towns of Europe. Since it was a great deal easier to go sight-seeing than to study governments, write "relations," or even to manage "The Great Horse," the Grand Tour, as a form of education, gained upon society, especially at the end of the century, when even the academies were too much of an exertion for the beaux to attend. To dress well and to be witty superseded martial ambitions. Gentlemen could no longer endure the violence of the Great Horse, but were carried about in sedan chairs. To drive through Europe in a coach suited them very well. It was a form of travel which likewise suited country squires' sons; for with the spread of the fashion from Court to country not only great noblemen and "utter gallants" but plain country gentlemen aspired to send their sons on a quest for the "bel air." Their idea of how this was to be done being rather vague, the services of a governor were hired, who found that the easiest way of dealing with Tony Lumpkin was to convey him over an impressive number of miles and keep him interested with staring at buildings. The whole aim of travel was sadly degenerated from Elizabethan times. Cynical parents like Francis Osborn had not the slightest faith in its good effects, but recommended it solely because it was the fashion. "Some to starch a more serious face upon wanton, impertinent, and dear bought Vanity, cry up 'Travel' as 'the best Accomplisher of Youth and Gentry,' tho' detected by Experience in the generality, for 'the greatest Debaucher' ... yet since it advanceth Opinion in the World, without which Desert is useful to none but itself (Scholars and Travellers being cried up for the highest Graduates in the most universal Judgments) I am not much unwilling to give way to Peregrine motion for a time."[304]
In short, the object of the Grand Tour was to see and be seen. The very term seems to be an extension of usage from the word employed to describe driving in one's coach about the principal streets of a town. The Duchess of Newcastle, in 1656, wrote from Antwerp: "I go sometimes abroad, seldom to visit, but only in my coach about the town, or about some of the streets, which we call here a tour, where all the chief of the town go to see and be seen, likewise all strangers of what quality soever."[305] Evelyn, in 1652, contrasted "making the Tour" with the proper sort of industrious travel; "But he that (instead of making the Tour, as they call it) or, as a late Embassador of ours facetiously, but sharply reproached, (like a Goose swimms down the River) having mastered the Tongue, frequented the Court, looked into their customes, been present at their pleadings, observed their Military Discipline, contracted acquaintance with their Learned men, studied their Arts, and is familiar with their dispositions, makes this accompt of his time."[306] And in another place he says: "It is written of Ulysses, that hee saw many Cities indeed, but withall his Remarks of mens Manners and Customs, was ever preferred to his counting Steeples, and making Tours: It is this Ethicall and Morall part of Travel, which embellisheth a Gentleman."[307] In 1670, Richard Lassels uses the term "Grand Tour" for the first time in an English book for travellers: "The Grand Tour of France and the Giro of Italy."[308] Of course this is only specialized usage of the idea "round" which had long been current, and which still survives in our phrase, "make the round trip." "The Spanish ambassadors," writes Dudley Carleton in 1610, "are at the next Spring to make a perfect round."[309]
TENNIS AS PLAYED IN PARIS IN 1632
In the age of the Grand Tour the governor becomes an important figure. There had always been governors, to be sure, from the very beginnings of travel to become a complete person. Their arguments with fathers as to the expenses of the tour, and their laments at the disagreeable conduct of their charges echo from generation to generation. Now it is Mr Windebanke complaining to Cecil that his son "has utterly no mind nor disposition in him to apply any learning, according to the end you sent him for hither," being carried away by an "inordinate affection towards a young gentlewoman abiding near Paris."[310] Now it is Mr Smythe desiring to be called home unless the allowance for himself and Francis Davison can be increased. "For Mr Francis is now a man, and your son, and not so easily ruled touching expenses, about which we have had more brabblements than I will speak of."[311] Bacon's essay "Of Travel" in 1625 is the first to advise the use of a governor;[312] but governors rose to their full authority only in the middle of the century, when it was the custom to send boys abroad very young, at fourteen or fifteen, because at that age they were more malleable for instruction in foreign languages. At that age they could not generally be trusted by themselves, especially after the protests of a century against the moral and religious dangers of foreign travel. How fearful parents were of the hazards of travel, and what a responsibility it was for a governor to undertake one of these precious charges, may be gathered from this letter by Lady Lowther to Joseph Williamson, he who afterwards rose to be Secretary of State: "I doubt not but you have received my son," writes the mother, "with our letters entreating your care for improving all good in him and restraining all irregularities, as he is the hope and only stem of his father. I implore the Almighty, and labour for all means conducible thereto; I conceive your discreet government and admonition may much promote it. Tell me whether you find him tractable or disorderly: his disposition is good, and his natural parts reasonable, but his acquirements meaner than I desire: however he is young enough yet to learn, and by study may recover, if not recall, his lost time.
"In the first place, endeavour to settle him in his religion, as the basis of all our other hopes, and the more to be considered in regard of the looseness of the place where you are. I doubt not but you have well considered of the resolve to travel to Italy, yet I have this to say for my fond fears (besides the imbecility of my sex) my affections are all contracted into one head: also I know the hotness of his temper, apt to feverishness. Yet I submit him to your total management, only praying the God of Heaven to direct you for the best, and to make him tractable to you, and laborious for his own advancement."[313]
A governor became increasingly necessary as the arbiter of what was modish for families whose connection with the fashionable world was slight. He assumed airs of authority, and took to writing books on how the Grand Tour should be made. Such is The Voyage of Italy, with Instructions concerning Travel, by Richard Lassels, Gent., who "travelled through Italy Five times, as Tutor to several of the English Nobility and Gentry."[314] Lassels, in reciting the benefits of travel, plays upon that growing sensitiveness of the country gentleman about his innocent peculiarities: "The Country Lord that never saw anybody but his Father's Tenants and M. Parson, and never read anything but John Stow, and Speed; thinks the Land's-end to be the World's-end; and that all solid greatness, next unto a great Pasty, consists in a great Fire, and a great estate;" or, "My Country gentleman that never travelled, can scarce go to London without making his Will, at least without wetting his hand-kerchief."[315]
The Grand Tour, of course, is the remedy for these weaknesses--especially under the direction of a wise governor. More care should go to choosing that governor than to any other retainer. For lacqueys and footmen "are like his Galoshooes, which he leaves at the doors of those he visits," but his governor is like his shirt, always next him, and should therefore be of the best material. The revelation of bad governors in Lassels' instructions are enough to make one recoil from the Grand Tour altogether. These "needy bold men" led pupils to Geneva, where the pupils lost all their true English allegiance and respect for monarchy; they kept them in dull provincial cities where the governor's wife or mistress happened to live. "Others have been observed to sell their pupils to Masters of exercises, and to have made them believe that the worst Academies were the best, because they were the best to the cunning Governour, who had ten pound a man for every one he could draw thither: Others I have known who would have married their Pupils in France without their Parents' knowledge";[316] ... and so forth, with other more lurid examples.
The difficulties of procuring the right sort of governor were hardly exaggerated by Lassels. The Duke of Ormond's grandson had just such a dishonest tutor as described--one who instead of showing the Earl of Ossory the world, carried him among his own relations, and "buried" him at Orange.[317] It seems odd, at first sight, that the Earl of Salisbury's son should be entrusted to Sir John Finet, who endeared himself to James the First by his remarkable skill in composing "bawdy songs."[318] It astonishes us to read that Lord Clifford's governor, Mr Beecher, lost his temper at play, and called Sir Walter Chute into the field,[319] or that Sir Walter Raleigh's son was able to exhibit his governor, Ben Jonson, dead-drunk upon a car, "which he made to be drawn by pioneers through the streets, at every corner showing his governor stretched out, and telling them that was a more lively image of a crucifix than any they had."[320] But it took a manly man to be a governor at all. It was not safe to select a merely intelligent and virtuous tutor; witness the case of the Earl of Derby sent abroad in 1673, with Mr James Forbes, "a gentleman of parts, virtue and prudence, but of too mild a nature to manage his pupil." The adventures of these two, as narrated by Carte in his life of Ormond, are doubtless typical.
"They had not been three months at Paris, before a misunderstanding happened between them that could not be made up, so that both wrote over to the duke (of Ormond) complaining of one another. His grace immediately dispatched over Mr Muleys to inquire into the ground of the quarrel, in order to reconcile them.... The earl had forgot the advice which the duke had given him, to make himself acquainted with the people of quality in France, and to keep as little correspondence with his own countrymen, whilst he was abroad, as was consistent with good manners; and had formed an intimate acquaintance with a lewd, debauched young fellow whom he found at Paris, and who was the son of Dr Merrit, a physician. The governor had cautioned his young nobleman against creating a friendship with so worthless a person, who would draw him into all manner of vice and expense, and lead him into numberless inconveniences. Merrit, being told of this, took Mr Forbes one day at an advantage in an house, and wounded him dangerously. The earl, instead of manifesting his resentment as he ought in such a case, seemed rather pleased with the affair, and still kept on his intimacy with Merrit. The duke finding that Merrit had as ill a character from all that knew him in London, as Mr Forbes had given him, easily suspected the earl was in the wrong, and charged Muleys to represent to him the ill fame of the man, and how unworthy he was of his lordship's acquaintance and conversation....
"When Muleys came to Paris, he found the matters very bad on Lord Derby's side, who had not only countenanced Merrit's assault, but, at the instigation of some young French rakes, had consented to his governor's being tossed in a blanket. The earl was wild, full of spirits, and impatient of restraint: Forbes was a grave, sober, mild man, and his sage remonstrances had no manner of effect on his pupil. The duke, seeing what the young gentleman would be at, resolved to send over one that should govern him. For this purpose he pitched upon Colonel Thomas Fairfax, a younger son of the first lord Fairfax, a gallant and brave man (as all the Fairfaxes were), and roughly honest. Lord Derby was restless at first: but the colonel told him sharply, that he was sent to govern him, and would govern him: that his lordship must submit, and should do it; so that the best method he had to take, was to do it with decorum and good humour. He soon discharged the vicious and scandalous part of the earl's acquaintance, and signified to the rest, that he had the charge of the young nobleman, who was under his government: and therefore if any of them should ever have a quarrel with his pupil, who was young and inexperienced, he himself was their man, and would give them satisfaction. His courage was too well known to tempt anybody make a trial of it; the nobleness of his family, and his own personal merit, procured him respect from all the world, as well as from his pupil. No quarrel happened: the earl was reclaimed, being always very observant of his governor. He left Paris, and passing down the Loire went to the south of France, received in all places by the governors of towns and provinces with great respect and uncommon marks of honour and distinction. From thence he went into Italy, making a handsome figure in all places, and travelling with as much dignity as any nobleman whatever at little more than one thousand two hundred pounds a year expense; so easy is it to make a figure in those countries with virtue, decorum, and good management."[321]
This concluding remark of Carte's gives us the point of view of certain families; that it was more economical to live abroad. It certainly was--for courtiers who had to pay eighty pounds for a suit of clothes--without trimming[322]--and spent two thousand pounds on a supper to the king.[323] Francis Osborn considered one of the chief benefits of travel to be the training in economy which it afforded: "Frugality being of none so perfectly learned as of the Italian and the Scot; Natural to the first, and as necessary to the latter."[324] Notwithstanding, the cost of travel had in the extravagant days of the Stuarts much increased. The Grand Tour cost more than travel in Elizabethan days, when young men quietly settled down for hard study in some German or Italian town. Robert Sidney, for instance, had only £100 a year when he was living with Sturm. "Tearm yt as you wyll, it ys all I owe you," said his father. "Harry Whyte ... shall have his £20 yearly, and you your £100; and so be as mery as you may."[325] Secretary Davison expected his son, his tutor, and their servant to live on this amount at Venice. "Mr. Wo." had said this would suffice.[326] If "Mr Wo." means Mr Wotton, as it probably does, since Wotton had just returned from abroad in 1594, and Francis Davison set out in 1595, he was an authority on economical travel, for he used to live in Germany at the rate of one shilling, four pence halfpenny a day for board and lodging.[327] But he did not carry with him a governor and an English servant. Moryson, Howell, and Dallington all say that expenses for a servant amounted to £50 yearly. Therefore Davison's tutor quite rightly protested that £200 would not suffice for three people. Although they spent "not near so much as other gentlemen of their nation at Venice, and though he went to market himself and was as frugal as could be, the expenses would mount up to forty shillings a week, not counting apparel and books." "I protest I never endured so much slavery in my life to save money," he laments.[328] When learning accomplishments in France took the place of student-life in Italy, expenses naturally rose. Moryson, who travelled as a humanist, for "knowledge of State affaires, Histories, Cosmography, and the like," found that fifty or sixty pounds were enough to "beare the charge of a Traveller's diet, necessary apparrell, and two Journies yeerely, in the Spring and Autumne, and also to serve him for moderate expences of pleasure."[329] But Dallington found that an education of the French sort would come to just twice as much. "If he Travell without a servant fourscore pounds sterling is a competent proportion, except he learne to ride: if he maintaine both these charges, he can be allowed no lesse than one hundred and fiftie poundes: and to allowe above two hundred, were superfluous, and to his hurte. And thus rateably, according to the number he keepeth.
"The ordinarie rate of his expence, is this: ten gold crownes a moneth his owne dyet, eight for his man, (at the most) two crownes a moneth his fencing, as much dancing, no lesse his reading, and fiftene crownes monethly his ridings: but this exercise he shall discontinue all the heate of the yeare. The remainder of his 150 pound I allow him for apparell, bookes, Travelling charges, tennis play, and other extraordinaire expences."[330] A few years later Howell fixes annual expense at £300--(£50 extra for every servant.) These three hundred pounds are to pay for riding, dancing, fencing, tennis, clothes, and coach hire--a new item of necessity. An academy would seem to have been a cheaper means of learning accomplishments. For about £110 one might have lodging and diet for himselfe and a man and be taught to ride, fence, ply mathematics, and so forth.[331] Lassels very wisely refrains from telling those not already persuaded, what the cost will be for the magnificent Grand Tour he outlines. We calculate that it would be over £500, for the Earl of Cork paid £1000 a year for his two sons, their governor, only two servants and only saddle-horses:[332] whereas Lassels hints that no one with much pretension to fashion could go through Paris without a coach followed by three lacqueys and a page.[333] Evelyn, at any rate, thought the expenses of a traveller were "vast": "And believe it Sir, if he reap some contentment extraordinary, from what he hath observed abroad, the pains, sollicitations, watchings, perills, journeys, ill entertainment, absence from friends, and innumerable like inconveniences, joyned to his vast expences, do very dearly, and by a strange kind of extortion, purchase that smal experience and reputation which he can vaunt to have acquired from abroad."[334]
Perhaps some details from the education of Robert Boyle will serve to illustrate the manner of taking the Grand Tour. His father, the great Earl of Cork, was a devoted adherent to this form of education and launched his numerous sons, two by two, upon the Continent. He was, as Boyle says, the sort of person "who supplied what he wanted in scholarship himself, by being both a passionate affecter, and eminent patron of it."[335] His journal for 1638 records first the return of "My sones Lewis and Roger from their travailes into foreign kingdomes,... ffor which their safe retorn, god be ever humbly and heartely thancked and praised both by me and them."[336] In the same year he recovered the Lord Viscount of Kynalmeaky and the Lord of Broghill, with Mr Marcombes, their governor, from their foreign travels into France and Italy. Then it was the turn of Francis and Robert, just removed from Eton College. With the governor Marcombes, a French servant, and a French boy, they departed from London in October 1639, "having his Majestie's license under his hand and privy signett for to continew abrode 3 yeares: god guide them abrod and safe back."[337]
Robert, according to his autobiography, was well satisfied to go, but Francis, aged fifteen, had just been married to one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, aged fourteen, and after four days of revelry was in no mood to be thrust back into the estate of childhood.[338] High words passed between him and his father on the occasion of his enforced departure for Paris. He was so agitated that he mislaid his sword and pistols--at least so we hear by the first letter Marcombes writes from Paris. "Mr Francis att his departure from London was so much troubled because of your Lordship's anger against him that he could never tell us where he put his sword and ye kaise of pistoles that your Lordship gave them, so that I have been forced to buy them here a kaise of pistolles a peece, because of the danger that is now everywhere in France, and because it is so much ye mode now for every gentleman of fashion to ride with a kase of Pistoles, that they Laugh att those that have them not. I bought also a Sword for mr francis and when Mr Robert saw it he did so earnestly desire me to buy him one, because his was out of fashion, that I could not refuse him that small request."[339]
Marcombes did not expose the boys long to the excitement of Paris, but at once hurried them to Geneva, and settled them to work, where Francis showed a great deal of resignation and good-humour in accepting his fate. He was not so sulky as Lord Cranborne, who in a similar situation fell ill, could not eat, and had to be taken back to England.[340] "And as for Mr francis," writes Marcombes to Cork, "I protest unto your Lordship that I did not thinke yt he could frame himselfe to every kind of good Learning with so great a facilitie and passion as he doth, having tasted already a little drope of ye Libertinage of ye Court, but I find him soe disciplinable, and soe desirous to repare ye time Lost, yt I make no question but your Lordship shall receive a great ioye."[341] He had not had much of an education at Eton, as his governor takes pleasure in pointing out: "For Mr Francis I doe assure your Lordship he had need to aplay himselfe to other things till now, for except reeding and writting Inglish he was grounded in nothing of ye wordle (world); and beleeve me, for before God I spake true, when I say that never any gentleman hath donne lesse profit of his time then he had done when he went out of England: and besides yt if he had been Longer at Eatton he had Learned there to drinke with other deboice scholers, as I have beene in formed by Mr Robert."[342]
Won over by the study of "Fortifications," a branch of mathematics very pleasing to the seventeenth century boy, the future Viscount Shannon applied himself to work with energy;[343] and for a time peace reigned over the process of education. "Every morning," writes their tutor, "I teach them ye Rhetoricke in Latin, and I expound unto them Justin from Latin into french, and presently after dinner I doe reade unto them two chapters of ye old Testament with a brief exposition of those points that I think that they doe not understand; and before supper I teach them ye history of ye Romans in french out of florus and of Titus Livius, and two sections of ye Cateshisme of Caluin with ye most orthodox exposition of the points that they doe not understand; and after supper I doe reade unto them two chapters of ye new Testament, and both morning and evening we say our prayers together, and twice a weeke we goe to Church."[344]
The boys spoke French always, and had some dancing lessons, but no riding lessons, for "their lyms are not knitt and strong enough, nor their bodys hable to endure rough exercises; and besides, although wee have here as good and skillfull teachers as in many other places, yet when they shall come to paris or some other place, their teachers will make them beleeve that they have Lost their time and shall make them beginn againe: for it is their custome so to doe to all."[345] At tennis, however, Francis enjoyed himself, and grew apace. "I may assure your Lordship that both his Leggs and armes are by a third part bigger now then they were in England." Robert, even at fourteen a studious person, "doth not Love tennisse play so much, but delights himselfe more to be in private with some booke of history or other, but I perswade him often both to play att tennisse and goe about. I never saw him handsomer, for although he growes much, yet he is very fatt and his cheeks are as red as vermilian. This Leter end of ye winter is mighty cold and a great quantity of snow is fallen upon ye ground, but that brings them to such a stomacke that your Lordship should take a great pleasure to see them feed. I do not give them daintys, but I assure your Lordship that they have allwayes good bred and Good wine, good beef and mouton, thrice a week good capons and good fish, constantly two dishes of fruit and a Good piece of cheese; all kind of cleane linnen twice and thrice a week and a constant fire in their chamber wherein they have a good bed for them, and another for their men."[346]
Indeed, Marcombes was a very good governor, as Robert several times assured the Earl of Cork, and allowed them to lack for nothing. In the spring he bought them saddle-horses so that after their studies they might take the air and see their friends. Since a governor had charge of all the funds, it was a great test of his honesty whether he resisted the temptation to economize on the clothes and spending-money of his pupils, and to pocket the part of their allowance so saved. This is why Marcombes often lets fall into his letters to the Earl of Cork items such as these: "I have made a compleat black satin sute for Mr Robert: ye cloake Lined with plush, and I allow them every moneth a peese ye value of very neare two pounds sterlings for their passe time."[347]
The only disturbing elements in the satisfactory state of Marcombes and his pupils were the Killigrews. Thomas Killigrew, he who afterwards became one of the dramatists of the Restoration, had then only just outgrown the estate of page to Charles I., and in strolling about the Continent he paid the Boyles a visit.[348] As the brother of the wife whom Mr Francis had left at home, and on his own account as a fascinating courtier, he cast a powerful but baleful influence upon the household in Geneva. Marcombes was at first very guarded in his remarks, writing only that "Mr Kyligry is here since Saturday Last ... but I think he will not Stay long: which perhaps will be ye better for yr sons: for although his conversation is very sweet and delectable yet they have no need of interruption, specially Mr francis, which was much abused in his Learning by his former teachers: and although he hath a great desire to redime ye time, yet he cannot follow his younger brother, and therefore he must have time, and avoid ye company of those yt care not for their bookes."[349] But when it appeared that Killigrew had told the Earl of Cork that Marcombes kept the brothers shabbily dressed, the governor unfolded his opinion of the rising dramatist as "one that speakes ill of his own mother and of all his friends and that plays ye foole allwayes through ye streets like a Schoole Boy, having Allwayes his mouth full of whoores and such discourses, and braging often of his getting mony from this or ye other merchant without any good intention to pay."[350] His company fomented in Mr Francis a boastful spirit, "never speaking of any thing but what he should doe when he should once more command his state, how many dogs he shoulde keepe; how many horses; how many fine bands, sutes and rubans, and how freely he would play and keepe Company with good fellowes, etc."[351]
SIR THOMAS KILLIGREW
From a contemporary caricature of the Restoration dramatist, who formed
some of his characteristics in France in 1640
Thomas Killigrew's sister, the wife of Mr Francis, was also a very disturbing person. She would correspond with her husband and urge him to run away from his tutor, and suggested coming to the Continent herself and meeting him.[352] These plots she made with the assistance of her brother, whom she much resembled in disposition.[353] There is no knowing what havoc she would have made with the carefully planned education of the Boyles, for Francis at the end of two years became dangerously restive, had not their tour been decisively ended by the first rumblings of the Civil War at home.
After a winter in Italy, they were about to start for Paris to perfect themselves in dancing and to begin riding the great horse, when they received news that the Earl of Cork was ruined by the rebellion in Ireland. He could send them no more money, he told them, than the two hundred and fifty pounds he had just dispatched. By economizing, and dismissing their servants, they might reach Holland, and enlist under the Prince of Orange. They must now work out their fortune for themselves.[354]
The two hundred and fifty pounds never came. They were embezzled by the agent; and the Boyles were left penniless in a strange country. Marcombes did not desert them, however. Robert, who was too frail for soldiering, he kept with him in Geneva for two years. Francis, free at last, took horse, was off to Ireland, and joined in the fighting beside his brothers Dungarvan, Kynalmeaky, and Broghill, who rallied around their father.[355]
There are several other seventeenth-century books on the theory of travel besides Lassels', which would repay reading. But we have come to the period when essays of this sort contain so many repetitions of one another, that detailed comment would be tedious. Edward Leigh's Three Diatribes[356] appeared in 1671, a year after Lassels' book, and in 1678 Gailhard, another professional governor, in his "Directions for the Education of youth as to their Breeding at Home and Travelling Abroad,"[357] imitated Lassels' attention to the particular needs of the country gentleman. "The honest country gentleman" is a synonym for one apt to be fooled, one who has neither wit nor experience. He, above all others, needs to go abroad to study the tempers of men and learn their several fashions. "As to Country breeding, which is opposed to the Courts, to the Cities, or to Travelling: when it is merely such, it is a clownish one. Before a Gentleman comes to a settlement, Hawking, Coursing and Hunting, are the dainties of it; then taking Tobacco, and going to the Alehouse and Tavern, where matches are made for Races, Cock-fighting, and the like." As opposed to this life, Gailhard holds up the pattern of Sir Thomas Grosvenor, who did "strive after being bettered with an Outlandish Breeding" by means of close application to the French and Italian languages, to fencing, dancing, riding The Great Horse, drawing landscapes, and learning the guitar. "His Moneys he did not trifle away, but bestowed them upon good Books, Medals and other useful Rareties worth the Curiosity of a Compleat Gentleman."[358]
On comparing these instructions with those of the sixteenth century, one is struck with the emphasis they lay upon drawing and "limning." This is what we would expect in the seventeenth century, when an interest in pictures, statues, and architecture was a distinguishing feature of a gentleman. The Marquis de Seignelay, sent on a tour in 1617 by his father Colbert, was accompanied by a painter and an architect charged to make him understand the beauties of Italian art.[359] Antoine Delahaute, making the Grand Tour with an Abbé for a governor, carried with him an artist as well, so that when he came upon a fine site, he ordered the chaise to be stopped, and the view to be drawn by the obedient draughtsman.[360] Not only did gentlemen study to appreciate pictures, but they strove themselves to draw and paint. In the travels of George Sandys[361] (edition 1615), may be seen a woodcut of travellers, in the costume of Henry of Navarre, sketching at the side of Lake Avernus. To take out one's memorandum-book and make a sketch of a charming prospect, was the usual thing before the camera was invented. "Before I went to bed I took a landscape of this pleasant terrace," says Evelyn in Roane.[362] At Tournon, where he saw a very strong castle under a high precipice, "The prospect was so tempting that I could not forbear designing it with my crayon."[363] Consequently, we find instructions for travellers reflecting the tastes of the time: Gerbier's Subsidium Peregrinantibus, for instance, insisting on a knowledge of "Perspective, Sculpture, Architecture and Pictures," as among the requisites of a polite education, lays great stress on the identification and survey of works of art as one of the main duties of a traveller.[364]
Significant as are the instructions of Gerbier, Lassels, and others of this period, there are some directions for an education abroad which are more interesting than these products of professional tutors--instructions written by one who was himself the perfect gentleman of his day. The Earl of Chesterfield's letters to his son define the purpose of a foreign education with a freedom which is lacking in the book of a governor who writes for the public eye. Though the contents of the letters are familiar to everyone, their connection with travel for "cultum animi" has hitherto, I think, been overlooked.
It will be remembered that the earl sent his son abroad at the age of fourteen to study for five years on the Continent, and to acquire a better preparation for life than Oxford or Cambridge could offer. Of these universities Chesterfield had a low opinion. He could not sufficiently scorn an education which did not prevent a man from being flurried at his Presentation to the King. He remembered that he himself, when he was first introduced into good company, with all the awkwardness and rust of Cambridge about him, was frightened out of his wits. At Cambridge he "had acquired among the pedants of an illiberal seminary a turn for satire and contempt, and a strong tendency to argumentation and contradiction," which was a hindrance to his progress in the polite world. Only after a continental education did he see the follies of Englishmen who knew nothing of modern Europe, who were always talking of the Ancients as something more than men, and of the Moderns as something less. "They are never without a classic or two in their pockets; they stick to the old good sense; they read none of modern trash; and will show you plainly that no improvement has been made, in any one art or science, these last seventeen hundred years."[365]
His son, therefore, was to waste no time in the society of pedants, but accompanied by a travelling tutor, was to begin studying life first-hand at the Courts. His book-learning was to go side by side with the study of manners:
"Courts and Camps are the only places to learn the world in. There alone all kinds of characters resort, and human nature is seen in all the various shapes and modes ... whereas, in all other places, one local mode generally prevails."[366]
Moreover, the earl did not think that a company wholly composed of men of learning could be called good company. "They cannot have the easy manners and tournure of the world, as they do not live in it." And an engaging address, "an insinuating behaviour," was to be sought for early in life, and, at the same time, with the solid parts of learning. "The Scholar, without good breeding, is a Pedant: the Philosopher, a Cynic: the Soldier, a Brute: and every man disagreeable."[367]
The five years of young Stanhope's travel were carefully distributed as follows: a year in Lausanne,[368] for the rudiments of languages; a year in Leipsic, for a thorough grounding in history and jurisprudence; a year spent in visits to such cities as Berlin, Dresden, and Vienna, for a view of the different Courts; one in Italy, to get rid of the manners of Germany; and one in Paris, to give him the final polish, the supreme touch, of gentlemanly complaisance, politeness, and ease.
We may pass over the years in Germany, as the earl did, without much comment. Young Stanhope was quite satisfactory in the more solid parts of learning, and it was not until he reached Italy, there to begin his courtly training, that Chesterfield's interest was fully aroused.
"The manners of Leipsig must be shook off," he says emphatically. "No scramblings at your meals as at a German ordinary: no awkward overturns of glasses, plates, and salt-cellers."[369]
He is to mind the decent mirth of the courtiers--their discreet frankness, their natural, careless, but genteel air; in short, to acquire the Graces. Chesterfield sent letters of introduction to the best company in Venice, forwarded his own diamond shoe buckles for his son, and began to pour forth advice on the possible social problems confronting a young Englishman in Rome. With a contemptuous tolerance for Papists, Protestants, and all religious quarrels as obstructions to the art of pleasing, he bade Stanhope be civil to the Pope, and to kneel down while the Host was being carried through the streets. His tutor, though, had better not. With wonderful artistic insight, the earl perceives that the fitting attitude for Mr Harte is simple, ungracious honesty.[370]
On the subject of the Pretender, then resident in Rome, his advice is; never meet a Stuart at all if you can help it; but if you must, feign ignorance of him and his grievances. If he begins to talk politics, disavow any knowledge of events in England, and escape as soon as you can.[371]
Long before his son's year in Italy was completed, Chesterfield began preparing him for Paris. For the first six months Stanhope was to live in an academy with young Frenchmen of fashion; after that, to have lodgings of his own. The mornings were to belong to study, or serious conversation with men of learning or figure; the afternoons, to exercise; the evenings to be free for balls, the opera, or play. These are the pleasures of a gentleman, for which his father is willing to pay generously. But he will not, he points out frequently, subscribe to the extravagance of a rake. The eighteen-year-old Stanhope is to have his coach, his two valets and a footman, the very best French clothes--in fact, everything that is sensible. But he shall not be allowed money for dozens of cane-heads, or fancy snuff-boxes, or excessive gaming, or the support of opera-singers. One handsome snuff-box, one handsome sword, and gaming only when the presence of the ladies keeps down high stakes; but no tavern-suppers--no low company which costs so much more than dissipations among one's equals. There is no need for a young man of any address to make love to his laundress,[372] as long as ladies of his own class stoop to folly.
Above all, Stanhope is not to associate with his own countrymen in Paris. On them Chesterfield is never tired of pouring the vials of scorn. He began while Stanhope was at Leipsic to point out the deficiences of English boys:
"They are commonly twenty years old before they have spoken to anybody above their schoolmaster, and the Fellows of their college. If they happen to have learning, it is only Greek and Latin; but not one word of modern history, or modern languages. Thus prepared, they go abroad as they call it; but in truth, they stay at home all that while; for being very awkward, confoundedly ashamed, and not speaking the languages, they go into no foreign company, at least none good, but dine and sup with one another only, at the tavern.[373]...
"The life of les Milords Anglais is regularly, or if you will, irregularly, this. As soon as they rise, which is very late, they breakfast together to the utter loss of two good morning hours. Then they go by coachfuls to the Palais, the Invalides, and Notre-Dame; from thence to the English coffee-house where they make up their tavern party for dinner. From dinner, where they drink quick, they adjourn in clusters to the play, where they crowd up the stage, drest up in very fine clothes, very ill made by a Scotch or Irish tailor. From the play to the tavern again, where they get very drunk, and where they either quarrel among themselves, or sally forth, commit some riot in the streets, and are taken up by the watch."[374]
To avoid these monsters, and to cultivate the best French society, was what a wise young man must do in Paris. He must establish an intimacy with the best French families. If he became fashionable among the French, he would be fashionable in London.
Chesterfield considered it best to show no erudition at Paris before the rather illiterate society there. As the young men were all bred for and put into the army at the age of twelve or thirteen, only the women had any knowledge of letters. Stanhope would find at the academy a number of young fellows ignorant of books, and at that age hasty and petulant, so that the avoidance of quarrels must be a young Englishman's great care. He will be as lively as these French boys, but a little wiser; he will not reproach them with their ignorance, nor allow their idlenesses to break in on the hours he has laid aside for study.
Such was the plan of a Grand Tour laid down by one of the first gentlemen of Europe. It remains one of the best expressions of the social influence of France upon England, and for that reason properly belongs to the seventeenth century more than to the Georgian era in which the letters were written. Chesterfield might be called the last of the courtiers. He believed in accomplishments and personal elegance as a means of advancing oneself in the world, long after the Court had ceased to care for such qualities, or to be of much account in the destinies of leading Englishmen. Republicanism was in the air. Chesterfield was thinking of the France of his youth; but France had changed. In 1765, Horace Walpole was depressed by the solemnity and austerity of French society. Their style of conversation was serious, pedantic, and seldom animated except by a dispute on some philosophic subject.[375] In fact, Chesterfield was admiring the France of Louis the Fourteenth long after "Le Soleil" had set, and the country was sombre. It was the eve of the day when France was to imitate the democratic ideals of England. England, at last, instead of being on the outskirts of civilization, was coming to be the most powerful, respected, and enlightened country in Europe. When that day dawned, Englishmen no longer sought the Continent in the spirit of the Elizabethans--the spirit which aimed at being "A citizen of the whole world."
During the several generations when the Stuarts communicated their love of France to the aristocracy of England, there was, as we might suppose, a steady undercurrent of protest against this Gallic influence. A returning traveller would be pursued by the rabble of London, who, sighting his French periwig and foreign gestures, would pelt his coach with gutter-dirt, squibs, roots and rams-horns, and run after it shouting "French Dogs! French Dogs! A Mounser! A Mounser!"[376] Between the courtiers and the true-born Englishman there was no great sympathy in the matter of foreign culture. The courtiers too often took towards deep-seated English customs the irreverent attitude of their master, Charles II.--known to remark that it was the roast beef and reading of the holy Scriptures that caused the noted sadness of the English.[377] The true-born Englishman retorted with many a jibe at the "gay, giddy, brisk, insipid fool," who thought of nothing but clothes and garnitures, despised roast beef, and called his old friends ruffians and rustics; or at the rake who "has not been come from France above three months and here he has debauch'd four women and fought five duels." The playwrights could always secure an audience by a skilful portrait of an "English Mounsieur" such as Sir Fopling Flutter, who "went to Paris a plain bashful English Blockhead and returned a fine undertaking French Fop."[378]
There had always been a protest against foreign influence, but in the eighteenth century one cannot fail to notice a stronger and more contemptuous attitude than ever before. England was feeling her power. War with France sharpened the shafts of satire, and every victory over the French increased a strong insular patriotism in all classes. Foote declared residence in Paris a necessary part of every man of fashion's education, because it "Gives 'em a relish for their own domestic happiness and a proper veneration for their own national liberties."[379] His Epilogue to The Englishman in Paris commends the prudence of British forefathers who
It was not the populace alone, or those who appealed directly to the populace, who sneered at Popish countries, and pitied them for not being British.[381] As time went on Whigs of all classes boasted of the superiority of England, especially when they travelled in Europe.
"We envy not the warmer clime that lies
In ten degrees of more indulgent skies ...
'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's Isle
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile."[382]
Addison's travels are full of reflections of this sort. The destitution of the Campagna of Rome demonstrates triumphantly what an aversion mankind has to arbitrary government, while the well-populated mountain of St Marino shows what a natural love they have for liberty. Whigs abroad were well caricatured by Smollett in Peregrine Pickle in the figures of the Painter and the Doctor. They observed that even the horses and dogs in France were starved; whereupon the Governor of Peregrine, an Oxonian and a Jacobite, sneered that they talked like true Englishmen. The Doctor, affronted by the insinuation, told him with some warmth that he was wrong in his conjecture, "his affections and ideas being confined to no particular country; for he considered himself as a citizen of the world. He owned himself more attached to England than to any other kingdom, but this preference was the effect of reflection and not of prejudice."
This growing conviction of England's superiority helped to bring about the decadence of travel for education. Travel continued, and the eighteenth century was as noticeable as any other for the "mal du pays" which attacked young men, but travel became the tour of curiosity and diversion with which we are familiar, and not an earnest endeavour to become "a compleat person." Many changes helped this decadence. The "policy" of Italy and France, which once attracted the embryo statesmen of Elizabeth, was now well known and needed no further study. With the passing of the Stuarts, when the king's favour ceased to be the means of making one's fortune, a courtly education was no longer profitable. High offices under the Georges were as often as not filled by unpolished Englishmen extolled for their native flavour of bluntness and bluffness. Foreign graces were a superfluous ornament, more or less ridiculous. The majority of Englishmen were wont to prize, as Sam Johnson did, "their rustic grandeur and their surly grace," and to join in his lament:
"Lost in thoughtless ease and empty show,
Behold the warrior dwindled to a beau;
Sense, freedom, piety refined away,
Of France the mimick and of Spain the prey."[383]
A large section of society was inimical to the kind of education that the Earl of Chesterfield prescribed for his son. The earl was well aware of it, indeed, and marked with repugnance divers young bucks of his day with leathern breeches and unpowdered hair, who would exclaim; "Damn these finical outlandish airs, give me a manly resolute manner. They make a rout with their graces, and talk like a parcel of dancing masters, and dress like a parcel of fops; one good Englishman will beat three of them."[384]
Even during the height of the Grand Tour in the latter half of the seventeenth century, thoughtful minds, observing the effects of a foreign education as seen not only in the courtiers of Charles II., but in the dozens of obscure country gentlemen who painfully sought to acquire the habit of a Parisian Marquis by education abroad, noticed the weak points of such a system. The Earl of Clarendon thought it pernicious to send boys abroad until after they had gone through Oxford or Cambridge. There was no necessity for their getting the French accent at an early age, "as if we had no mind to be suspected to be Englishmen." That took them from their own country at just the age when they ought to have severe mental discipline, for the lack of which no amount of social training would make them competent men. "They return from travel with a wonderful confidence which may very well be called impudence ... all their learning is in wearing their clothes well; they have very much without their heads, very little within; and they are very much more solicitous that their periwigs fit handsomely, than to speak discreetly; they laugh at what they do not understand, which understanding so little, makes their laughter very immoderate. When they have been at home two or three years, which they spend in the vanities which they brought over with them, fresh travellers arrive with newer fashions, and the same confidence, and are looked upon as finer gentlemen, and wear their ribbons more gracefully; at which the others are angry, quit the stage, and would fain get into wiser company, where they every day find defects in themselves, which they owe to the ill spending that time when they thought only of being fine gentlemen."[385]
When these products of a French education could not remain in town, but were obliged to live on their estates amid rough country squires, it went hard with them. "They will by no means embrace our way," says The Country Gentleman in Clarendon's Dialogue of the Want of Respect Due to Age, "but receive us with cringes and treat us with set speeches, and complain how much it rains, that they cannot keep their hair dry, or their linnen handsome one hour. They talk how much a better country France is and how much they eat and drink better there, which our neighbors will not believe, and laugh at them for saying so. They by no means endure our exercises of hunting and hawking, nor indeed can their tender bodies endure those violent motions. They have a guitar or some other fiddle, which they play upon commonly an hour or so in their beds before they rise, and have at least one French fellow to wait upon them, to shave them, and comb their periwig; and he is sent into the kitchen to dress some little dish, or to make some sauce for dinner, whom the cook is hardly restrained from throwing into the fire. In a word, they live to and within themselves, and their nearest neighbors do not know whether they eat and drink or no."[386]
Not only were the recreations of their country neighbours violent and unrefined, according to the English Messieurs, but that preoccupation with local government, which was the chief duty of the country gentleman, was beyond the capacity of those who by living abroad had learned little of the laws and customs of their own country. Clarendon draws a sad picture of the return of the native who was ashamed to be present at the public and private meetings for the administration of justice, because he had spent in dancing the time when he might have been storing knowledge, and who now passed his days a-bed, reading French romances of which he was tired.
Locke also set forth the fallacies of the Grand Tour in his Essay of Education. He admitted that fencing and riding the Great Horse were looked upon as "so necessary parts of breeding that it would be thought a great omission to neglect them," but he questioned whether riding the Great Horse was "of moment enough to be made a business of."[387] Fencing, he pointed out, has very little to do with civil life, and is of no use in real warfare, while music "wastes so much of a young man's time, to gain but a moderate skill in it, and engages often in such odd company, that many think it much better spared."[388] But the feature of travel which was most mercilessly analysed by Locke was the Governor. He exposed the futility of sending a boy abroad to gain experience and to mingle with good society while he was so young as to need a guardian. For at the age when most boys were abroad--that is, from sixteen to twenty-two--they thought themselves too much men to be governed by others, and yet had not experience and prudence enough to govern themselves. Under the shelter of a Governor they were excused from being accountable for their own conduct and very seldom troubled themselves with inquiries or with making useful observations of their own.
RIDING THE GREAT HORSE,
AS TAUGHT BY ANTOINE PLUVINEL, THE RIDING-MASTER OF LOUIS XIII From 'Le
Maneige Royal,' by Antoine Pluvinel, 1624
While the Governor robbed his pupil of life's responsibilities on one hand, he hampered him, on the other, in any efforts to get into good company:
"I ask amongst our young men that go abroad under tutors what one is there of an hundred, that ever visits any person of quality? much less makes an acquaintance with such from whose conversation he may learn what is good breeding in that country and what is worth observation in it.... Nor indeed is it to be wondered. For men of worth and parts will not easily admit the familiarity of boys who yet need the care of a tutor: though a young gentleman and stranger, appearing like a man, and shewing a desire to inform himself in the customs, laws, and government of the country he is in, will find welcome, assistance and entertainment everywhere."[389]
These, and many comments of the same sort from other observers, made for the disintegration of the Grand Tour, and cast discredit upon it as a mode of education. Locke was not the only person who exposed the ineffectiveness of governors. They became a favourite subject of satire in the eighteenth century. Though even the best sort of "maître d'ours" or "bear-master," as the French called him, robbed travel of its proper effect, the best were seldom available for the hosts of boyish travellers. Generally the family chaplain was chosen, because of his cheapness, and this unfortunate was expected to restrain the boisterous devilment of the Peregrine Pickle committed to his care.[390] A booklet called The Bear-Leaders; or, Modern Travelling Stated in a Proper Light, sums up a biting condemnation of "our rugged unsocial Telemachuses and their unpolished Mentors," describing how someone in orders, perhaps a family dependent, is chosen as the Governor of the crude unprepared mortal embarking for a tour of Europe. "The Oddities, when introduced to each other, start back with mutual Astonishment, but after some time from a frequency of seeing, grow into a Coarse Fondness one for the other, expressed by Horse Laughs, or intimated by alternate Thumps on the Back, with all such other gentle insinuations of our uncivilized Male Hoydens."[391]
Small wonder, therefore, that a youth, who returned from driving by post-chaise through the principal towns of Europe in the company of a meek chaplain,[392] returned from his tour about as much refined, according to Congreve, "as a Dutch skipper from a whale-fishing."[393] The whole idea of the Grand Tour was thrown into disrepute after its adoption by crude and low-bred people, who thought it necessary to inform all their acquaintance where they had been, by a very unbecoming dress and a very awkward address: "not knowing that an Englishman's beef-and-pudding face will not agree with a hat no bigger than a trencher; and that a man who never learned to make a bow performs it worse in a head of hair dressed a L'aille Pidgeon, than in a scratch wig."[394]
In many other ways, also, travel lost its dignity in the eighteenth century. It was no longer necessary to live in foreign countries to understand them. With the foundation of the chairs of modern history at Oxford and Cambridge by King George the First in 1724, one great reason for travel was lost. Information about contemporary politics on the Continent could be had through the increasing number of news-journals and gazettes. As for learning the French language, there had been no lack of competent teachers since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 sent French Protestant refugees swarming across the channel to find some sort of living in England. Therefore the spirit of acquisitiveness dwindled and died down, in the absence of any strong need to study abroad, and an idle, frivolous, darting, capricious spirit controlled the aristocratic tourist. Horace Walpole on his travels spent his time in a way that would have been censured by the Elizabethans. He rushed everywhere, played cards, danced through the streets of Rheims before the ladies' coaches, and hailed with delight every acquaintance from England. What would Sir Philip Sidney have thought of the mode of life Walpole draws in this letter:
"About two days ago, about four o'clock in the afternoon ... as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray[395] in an undress, Mr Conway in a morning-grey coat and I in a trim white night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr Walpole from Mr More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on Mr Walpole. We scuttle upstairs in great confusion, but with no other damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the dropping a slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr More, we began to consider who Mr More might be."[396]
In the tour of Walpole and Gray one may see a change in the interest of travel; how the romantic spirit had already ousted the humanistic love of men and cities. As he drifted through Europe Gray took little interest in history or in the intricacies of human character. He would not be bothered by going to Courts with Walpole, or if he did he stood in the corner of the ballroom and looked on while Walpole danced. What he cared for was La Grande Chartreuse, with its cliffs and pines and torrents and hanging woods.[397] He is the forerunner of the Byronic traveller who delighted in the terrific aspects of nature and disdained mankind. Different indeed was the genial heart of Howell, who was at pains to hire lodgings in Paris with windows opening on the street, that he might study every passerby,[398] but who spoke of mountains in Spain in a casual way as "not so high and hideous as the Alps," or as "uncouth, huge, monstrous Excrescences of Nature, bearing nothing but craggy stones."[399]
With the decline of enthusiasm over the serious advantages of travel, there was not much demand for those essays on the duties of the student abroad which we have tried to describe. By the eighteenth century, hand-books for travellers were much the same as those with which we are to-day familiar; that is, a guide-book describing the particular objects to be inspected, and the sensations they ought to inspire, together with exceedingly careful notes as to the price of meals and transportation. This sort of manual became necessary when travel grew to be the recreation of men of moderate education who could not read the local guide-books written in the language of the country they visited. Compilations such as the Itinerarium Italiæ of Schottus, published at Antwerp in 1600, and issued in eleven editions during the seventeenth century, had been sufficient for the accomplished traveller of the Renaissance.[400] France, as the centre of travel, produced the greatest number of handy manuals,[401] and it was from these, doubtless, that Richard Lassels drew the idea of composing a similar work in the English language, which would comprise the exhortation to travel, in the manner of Turler, with a continental guide to objects of art. The Voyage of Italy by Lassels, published in Paris in 1670, marks the beginning of guide-books in English.
AN ERUPTION OF MOUNT
VESUVIUS A Governor showing his pupil the sights
Still, in succeeding vade-mecums there are some occasional echoes of the old injunctions to improve one's time. Misson's A New Voyage to Italy,[402] maps out some intellectual duties. According to Misson a voyager ought to carry along with him a cane divided into several measures, or a piece of pack-thread well twined and waxed, fifty fathom long and divided into feet by knots, so as to be able to measure the height of the towers and the bigness of pillars and the dimensions of everything so far as he is able. This seems sufficiently laborious, but it makes for an easy life compared to the one prescribed by Count Leopold Berchtold in his Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers. He would have one observe the laws and customs of foreigners with a curiosity that would extend to every department of social and economic life, beginning with "Causes of the Decrease of Population and Remedies to prevent them"; proceeding to such matters as the state of the peasantry; to questions applicable to manuring, ploughing, and the housing of black cattle; or to an "Inquiry concerning Charitable Institutions such as one for recovering Drowned and Strangled Persons"; or to the "Extent of Liberty to Grown-up Young Ladies." In case the traveller is at a loss how to conduct his investigation, a list of particular questions on the topics for study is added by the author. A few random examples of this list are:
"Which are the favourite herbs of the sheep of this country?"
"Are there many instances of people having been bit by mad animals?"
"Is the state of a bachelor aggravated and rendered less desirable? By what means?"
"How much is paid per day for ploughing with two oxen? With two horses?"
"Which food has been experienced to be most portable and most nourishing for keeping a distressed ship's crew from starving?"
"What is the value of whales of different sizes?"
In addition to such inquiries Berchtold[403] urges the necessity of sketching landscapes and costumes, and better yet, the scientific drawing of engines and complicated machines, and also of acquiring skill on some musical instrument, to keep one from the gaming table in one's idle hours, preferably of learning to play on a portable instrument, such as a German flute. Journals, it goes without saying, must be written every night before the traveller goes to sleep.
It is not only the fact of their being addressed to persons of small intelligence which makes the guide-books of the eighteenth century seem ridiculous; another reason for their ignoble tone is the increased emphasis they lay on the material convenience of the traveller. Not the service of one's country or the perfecting of one's character is the note of Georgian injunctions, but the fear of being cheated and of being sick. Misson's instructions begin at once with praise of fixed rates in Holland, where one is spared the exhaustion of wrangling. The exact fare from Cologne to Maintz is his next subject, and how one can hire a coach and six horses for three crowns a day; how the best inns at Venice are The Louvre, The White Lion, and The French Arms; how one can stay at The Louvre for eight livres a day and pay seven or eight livres for a gondola by the day, and so forth; with similar useful but uninspired matter. Next he discusses sea-sickness, and informs us that the best remedy is to keep always, night and day, a piece of earth under the nose; for which purpose you should provide a sufficient quantity of earth and preserve it fresh in a pot of clay; and when you have used a piece so long that it begins to grow dry, put it again into the pot, and take out some fresh earth.[404]
Berchtold's suggestions for comfort are even more elaborate. One should carry everywhere:
"A bottle of vinegar, de quatre voleurs.
Ditto best French Brandy.
Ditto spirit of Salmiac, against fits.
Ditto Hoffman's Drops."
At inns it is advisable to air the room by throwing a little strong vinegar upon a red hot shovel, and to bring your bed-clothes with you. As a guard against robbers it is advisable to have your servant sleep in the same room with you, keep a wax candle burning all night, and look into the chests and behind the bed before retiring. Pocket door-bolts in the form of a cross are easily obtainable; if not, put the tables and chair against the door.
There is something fussy about such a traveller, though robbers undoubtedly were to be feared, even in the eighteenth century,[405] and though inns were undoubtedly dirty. A repugnance to dirt and discomfort is justifiable enough, but there is something especially peevish in the tone of many Georgian travellers. Sam Sharp's Letters from Italy breathe only sorrow, disillusion and indignation. Italian beds and vermin, Italian post-boys and their sorry nags are too frequently the theme of his discourse. He even assures us that the young gentlemen whom he had always pictured as highly delighted by the Grand Tour are in reality very homesick for England. They are weary of the interminable drives and interminable conversazioni of Italy and long for the fox-hunting of Great Britain.[406] Fielding's account of his voyage to Lisbon contains too much about his wife's toothache and his own dropsy.[407] Smollett, like Fielding, was a sick man at the time of his travels, and we can excuse his rage at the unswept floors, old rotten tables, crazy chairs and beds so disgusting that he generally wrapped himself in a great-coat and lay upon four chairs with a leathern portmanteau for a pillow; but we cannot admire a man who is embittered by the fact that he cannot get milk to put in his tea, and is continually thrusting his head out of the window to curse at the post-boys, or pulling out his post-book to read to an inn-yard with savage vociferation the article which orders that the traveller who comes first shall be first served.[408]
This is a degeneration from the undaunted mettle of the Elizabethans, who, though acquainted with dirty inns and cheating landlords, kept their spirits soaring above the material difficulties of travel. We miss, in eighteenth century accounts, the gaiety of Roger Ascham's Report of Germany and of the fair barge with goodly glass windows in which he went up the Rhine--gaiety which does not fail even when he had to spend the night in the barge, with his tired head on his saddle for a bolster.[409] We miss the spirit of good fellowship with which John Taylor, the Water Poet, shared with six strangers in the coach from Hamburgh the ribs of roast beef brought with him from Great Britain.[410] Vastly diverting as the eighteenth-century travel-books sometimes are, there is nothing in them that warms the heart like the travels of poor Tom Coryat, that infatuated tourist, chief of the tribe of Gad, whom nothing daunted in his determination to see the world. Often he slept in wagons and in open skiffs, and though he could not afford to hire the guides with Sedan chairs who took men over the Alpine passes in those days, yet he followed them on foot, panting.[411]
So, in spite of the fact that travel is never-ending, and that "peregrinatio animi causa" of the sixteenth century is not very different from the Wanderlust of the nineteenth, we feel we have come to the end of the particular phase of travel which had its beginning in the Renaissance. The passing of the courtier, the widened scope of the university, the rise of journalism, and the ascendancy of England, changed the attitude of the English traveller from eager acquisitiveness to complacent amusement. With this change of attitude came an end to the essay in praise of travel, written by scholars and gentlemen for their kind; intended for him "Who, whithersoever he directeth his journey, travelleth for the greater benefit of his wit, for the commodity of his studies, and dexterity of his life,--he who moveth more in mind than in body."[412] We hope we have done something to rescue these essays from the oblivion into which they have fallen, to show the social background from which they emerged, and to reproduce their enthusiasm for self-improvement and their high-hearted contempt for an easy, indolent life.
1561. Gratarolus, Guilhelmus. Authore Gratarolo Guilhelmo, philosopho et medico, De Regimine Iter Agentium, vel equitum, vel peditum, vel navi, vel curru rheda ... viatoribus et peregrinatoribus quibusque utilissimi libri duo, nunc primum editi. Basileæ, 1561.
1570-1. Cecil, William, Lord Burghley: Letter to Edward Manners, Earl of Rutland, among State Papers, Elizabeth, 1547-80, vol. lxxvii. No. 6.
1574. Turlerus, Hieronymus. De Peregrinatione et agro neapolitano, libri II. scripti ab Hieronymo Turlero. Omnibus peregrinantibus utiles ac necessarii; ac in corum gratiam nunc primum editi. Argentorati, anno 1574.
1575 ---- The Traveiler of Jerome Turler, divided into two bookes, the first conteining a notable discourse of the maner and order of traveiling oversea, or into strange and foreign countries, the second comprehending an excellent description of the most delicious realme of Naples in Italy; a work very pleasant for all persons to reade, and right profitable and necessarie unto all such as are minded to traveyll. London, 1575.
1577. Pyrckmair, Hilarius. Commentariolus de arte apodemica seu vera peregrinandi ratione. Auctore Hilario Pyrckmair Landishutano. Ingolstadii, 1577.
1577. Zvingerus, Theodor. Methodus apodemica in eorum gratiam qui cum fructu in quocunq; tandem vitæ genere peregrinari cupiunt, a Theod. Zvingero. Basiliense typis delineata, et cum aliis tum quatuor præsertim Athenarum vivis exemplis illustrata. Basileæ, 1577.
1578. Bourne, William. A booke called the Treasure for traveilers, devided into five parts, contayning very necessary matters for all sortes of travailers, eyther by sea or by lande. London, 1578.
1578. ---- A Regiment for the Sea, containing verie necessarie matters for all sortes of men and travailers: netyly corrected and amended by Thomas Hood. London, 1578.
1578. Lipsius, Justus. De ratione cum fructu peregrinandi, et præsertim in Italia. (In Epistola ad Ph. Lanoyum.) Justi Lipsii Epistolæ Selectæ: fol. 106. Parisiis, 1610.
1580. Sidney. Sir Philip Sidney to his brother Robert Sidney when he was on his travels; advising him what circuit to take; how to behave, what authors to read, etc. In Letters and Memorials of State, collected by Arthur Collins. London, 1746.
1587. Pighius (Stephanus Vinandus). Hercules Prodicius, seu principis juventutis vita et peregrinatio. Ex officina C. Plantini. Antverpiæ, 1587.
1587. Meierus, Albertus. Methodus describendi regimes, urbes et arces, et quid singulis locis proecipue in peregrinationibus homines nobiles ac docti animadvertere, observare et annotare debeant. Per M. Albertum Meierum. Helmstadii, 1587.
1589. ---- Certaine briefe and speciall instructions for gentlemen, merchants, students, souldiers, marriners ... employed in services abroad or anie way occasioned to converse in the kingdomes and governementes of forren princes. London, 1589. (Translation by Philip Jones.)
1592. Stradling, Sir John. A Direction for Travailers taken out of Justus Lipsius and enlarged for the behoofe of the right honorable Lord, the young Earle of Bedford, being now ready to travell. London, 1592.
1595. Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex (or Bacon ?). Harl. MS. 6265, p. 428. Profitable instructions, for Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland.
1595 (?). Davison, William (Secretary of Queen Elizabeth.) Harl. MS. 6893. Instructions for Travel.
1598. Loysius, Georgius. G. Loysii Curiovoitlandi Pervigilium Mercurii, quo agitur de præstantissimis peregrinantis virtutibus, ... Curiæ Variscorum, 1598.
1598. Dallington, Sir Robert. A Method for Travell, shewed by taking the view of France as it stoode in the yeare of our Lord, 1598. N.D., London, printed by Thomas Creede.
c. 1600. A True Description and Direction of what is most worthy to be seen in all Italy. Anon., N.D. Harleian Miscellany, vol. v. No. 128.
1604. Pitsius, Joannes, Ioannis Pitsii Anglii Sacræ Theologiæ Doctoris de Peregrinatione libri septem. Dusseldorpii, 1604.
1605 (?). Neugebauer, Salomon. Tractatus de peregrinatione ... historcis, ethicis, politicisque exemplis illustratus ... cum indice rerum et exemplorum. Basileæ.
1606. Palmer, Thomas. An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Travailes into forraine Countries the more profitable and honourable. London, 1606.
1608. Ranzovinus, Henricus Count. Methodus apodemica seu peregrinandi perlustrandique regiones, urbes et arces ratio ... (With a dedication by Tob. Kirchmair.) Argentinæ, 1608.
1609. Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke. A Letter of Travell, to his cousin Greville Varney. (In Certaine Learned and Elegant Works of the Right Honorable Fulke, Lord Brooke. London, 1633.)
1611. Kirchnerus, Hermannus. An Oration made by Hermannus Kirchnerus ... concerning this subject; that young men ought to travell into forraine countryes, and all those that desire the praise of learning and atchieving worthy actions both at home and abroad. (In Coryat's Crudities, London, 1611.)
1616. Sincerus, Iodocus. Itinerarium Galliæ, ita accommodatum, ut eius ductu mediocri tempore tota Gallia obiri, Anglia et Belgium adiri possint; nec bis terve ad eadem loca rediri oporteat; notatis cuiusque loci, quas vocant, deliciis. Lugduni, 1616.
1617. Moryson, Fynes. Of Travel in General; Of Precepts for Travellers. (In the Itinerary of Fynes Moryson. Ed. Glasgow, 1907.)
1622. Peacham, Henry. The Compleat Gentleman. 1634 Ed., reprinted in Tudor and Stuart Library by Clarendon Press, with introduction by G.S. Gordon. Oxford, 1906.
1625. Bacon, Francis. Of Travel. In Works. Ed. James Spedding. London, 1859.
1631. Erpenius, Thomas. De Peregrinatione Gallica utiliter instituenda Tractatus. Lugduni Batavorum, 1631.
1633. Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex. Profitable Instructions: Describing what speciall Observations are to be taken by Travellers in all Nations, States and Countries; Pleasant and Profitable. By the three much admired, Robert, Late Earl of Essex, Sir Philip Sidney and Secretary Davison. London, 1633.
1637. Wotton, Sir Henry. Letter of Instruction to John Milton, about to travel. In Life and Letters, ed. by Pearsall Smith. Oxford, 1907.
1639. Le Voyage de France, Dresse pour l'instruction et commodité tant des François, que des Estrangers. Paris, 1639. (Du Verdier.)
1642. Howell, James. Instructions for Forreine Travell, Shewing by what cours, and in what compasse of time, one may take an exact Survey of the Kingdomes and States of Christendome, and arrive to the practicall knowledge of the Languages, to good purpose. London, 1642.
1652. Evelyn, John. The State of France as it stood in the IXth yeer of this present Monarch, Lewis XIIII. Written to a Friend by J. E. London, 1652. (Discussion of travel in the preface.)
1653. Zeiler, Martin. Fidus Achates qui itineris sui socium ... non tantum de locorum ... situ, verum etiam, quid in plerisque spectatu ... dignum occurrat ... monet ... Nunc e Germanico Latinus factus a quodam Apodemophilo.... Ulmæ, 1653.
1656. Osborn, Francis. Travel, in Advice to a Son. Ed. E. A. Parry. London, 1896.
1662. Howell, James. A New English Grammar, whereunto is annexed A Discours or Dialog containing a Perambulation of Spain and Portugall which may serve for a direction how to travell through both Countreys. London, 1662.
c. 1665. Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon. A Dialogue concerning Education in A Collection of Several Tracts. London, 1727.
1665. Gerbier, Balthazar, Knight; Master of the Ceremonies to King Charles the First. Subsidium Peregrinantibus or An Assistance to a Traveller in his Convers ... directing him, after the latest Mode, to the greatest Honour, Pleasure, Security, and Advantage in his Travells. Written to a Princely Traveller for a Vade Mecum. Oxford, 1665.
1670: Lassels, Richard: The Voyage of Italy or a Compleat Journey through Italy.... With Instructions concerning Travel; by Richard Lassels, Gent., who travelled through Italy Five times, as Tutor to several of the English Nobility and Gentry. Never before Extant. Newly printed at Paris and are to be sold in London by John Starkey. 1670.
1670. ---- A Letter of Advice to a young Gentleman Leaving the University, concerning his behavior and conversation in the World, by R(ichard) L(assels). Dublin, 1670.
1671. Leigh, Edward. Three Diatribes or Discourses; First of Travel, or a Guide for Travellers into Foreign Parts; Secondly, of Money or Coyns; Thirdly, of Measuring the Distance betwixt Place and Place. London, 1671.
1678. Gailhard, J. (Who hath been Tutor Abroad to severall of the Nobility and Gentry.) The Compleat Gentleman: or Directions for the Education of Youth as to their Breeding at Home and Travelling Abroad. London, 1678.
1693. Locke, John. Some Thoughts concerning Education. Fourth Edition. London, 1699.
1688. A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman of an Honorable Family, now in his Travels beyond the Seas: for his more safe and profitable conduct in the three great Instances, of Study, Moral Deportment and Religion. In three parts. By a True Son of the Church of England. London, 1688.
1688. Carr, Will, late Consul for the English Nation in Amsterdam. Remarks of the Government of severall Parts of Germaniæ, Denmark ... but more particularly the United Provinces, with some few directions how to Travell in the States Dominions. Amsterdam, 1688.
1690. ---- The Travellers Guide and Historians Faithful Companion. [London? 1690?]
1695. Misson, Maximilian. A New Voyage to Italy: With a description of the Chief Towns ... Together with Useful Instructions for those who shall Travel thither. Done into English, and adorn'd with Figures. 2 vols. London, 1695.
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---- The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady ... Travels into Spain. 2nd Ed. London, 1692.
Belvoir MSS. (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Report; Appendix, Part IV. MSS. of the Duke of Rutland preserved at Belvoir Castle.)
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---- The Nobility of Women. Ed. Warwick Bond for Roxburghe Club, 1904. (Written 1559.)
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Botero, Giovanni. The Travellers Breviat, or an historicall description of the most famous kingdomes in the world. Translated into English. London, 1601.
---- A Treatise, concerning the causes of the magnificencie and greatness of cities, ... now done into English by Robert Peterson of Lincolnes Inne, Gent. London, 1606.
---- Relations of the Most Famous Kingdoms and Common-weales through the world.... London, 1608. (Translated by Robert Johnson.)
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Breton, Nicholas. Works. Ed. A.B. Grosart. London, 1879.
---- Grimello's Fortunes, with his Entertainment in his Travaile. London, 1604.
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Burnet, Gilbert. Some Letters containing an account of what seemed most remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, etc. (Written to the Hon. Robert Boyle.) Printed 1687.
---- Three Letters concerning the Present State of Italy, written in the year 1687. Printed 1688.
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Carew, George. A Relation of the State of France, with the Character of Henry IV. and the Principal Persons of that Court. Printed by Thomas Birch. London, 1749.
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Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. Life of ... William Cavendishe, Duke of Newcastle. London, 1667.
---- Life of ... the Duke of Newcastle, to which is added "The True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life." Ed. C.H. Firth. London, 1906.
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Contarini, Gaspar. The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, written by the Cardinall Gaspar Contareno, and translated out of Italian into English by Lewes Lewkenor, Esquire, London, 1599.
Coryat, Thomas. Coryat's Crudities hastily gobled up in five moneths travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia, commonly called the Grisons country, Helvetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany and the Netherlands; newly digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the county of Somerset, and now dispersed to the nourishment of the travelling members of this kingdome. London, 1611. Reprint by James Maclehose & Sons. Glasgow, 1905.
Dallington, Robert. A Survey of the Great Dukes State of Tuscany in the yeare of our Lord 1596. Printed for Edward Blount at London, 1605.
Description Contenant les Antiquitez, fondations et singularitez des plus celebres Villes, Chasteaux et Places remarquables du Royaume de France, avec les choses plus memorables advenues en iciluy (par F. Des Rues). Constance, 1608.
Dudithius, Andreas. Vita Reginaldi Poli. Venetiis, 1558.
Erasmus, Desiderius. Opera Omnia. Lugduni Batavorum, 1703. (Tomus Tertius qui complectitur epistolas.)
---- Modus Orandi Deum. Basileæ, 1524.
---- Familiarium Colloquiorum Des. Erasmi Roterodami Opus. Basileæ, 1542.
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---- Florios Second Frutes to be gathered of twelve Trees, of divers but delightsome tastes to the tongues of Italians and Englishmen. ... London, 1591.
France: The Survey or Topographical Description of France; with a new Mappe.... Collected out of sundry approved authors; very amply, truly and historically digested for the pleasure of those who desire to be thoroughly acquainted in the state of the kingdome and dominion of France. London, 1592.
---- The View of France. Printed by Symon Stafford. London, 1604.
Fuller, Thomas. The Church-History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ untill the year MDCXLVIII. Endeavoured by Thomas Fuller. London, 1655.
---- History of the Worthies of England. 2 vols, London, 1811.
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---- The First Lecture of an Introduction to Cosmographie: being a Description of all the World. Read Publiquely at Sir Balthazar Gerbier's Academy. London, 1649.
---- Sir Balthazar Gerbier's Project for an Academy Royal in England. No. XXI. in Collectanea Curiosa. Oxford, 1781.
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---- The Zodiake of Life written by ... Pallingenius ... newly translated into Englishe verse by Barnabe Googe. London, 1565.
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---- Life of Sir Philip Sidney. Tudor and Stuart Library. Oxford, 1907.
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---- Vol. iii. A Relation of such things as were observed to happen in the journey of the Rt. Hon. Chas. Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral of England, his Highness's Ambassador to the King of Spain. By Robert Treswell, Esq., Somerset-Herald. 1605.
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---- Autobiography. Ed. Sidney Lee. London, 1907.
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----France Painted to the Life by a Learned and Impartial Hand. The Second Edition. London, 1657.
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---- The Book of the Courtier. Introduction by Walter Raleigh in Tudor Translations. Ed. W.E. Henley. Vol. xxiii. London, 1900.
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----A Survey of the Signorie of Venice, of her admired policy and method of government,... with a cohortation to all Christian Princes to resent her dangerous condition at present. London, 1651.
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---- The Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jacke Wilton. London, 1594.
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---- The Court and Times of Charles the First. London, 1848.
---- Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth from 1581 till 1603, from the papers of Anthony Bacon, Esq. London, 1754.
---- Life of Henry, Prince of Wales. London, 1760.
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Physikalisch-ökonomischer Bibliothek, XXI. Vide Beckmann, Johann.
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Poole, R., Doctor of Physick. A Journey from London to France and Holland; or the Traveller's Useful Vade Mecum.... Wherein is also occasionally contained many Moral Reflections and Useful Observations. London, 1746.
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Rye, W.B. England as seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First. London, 1865.
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Sharp, Samuel. Letters from Italy, describing the Customs and Manners of that Country in the years 1765-1766. To which is annexed, an Admonition to Gentlemen who pass the Alps in their Tour through Italy. London, 1767.
---- A View of the Customs, Manners, Drama, etc., of Italy as they are described in The Frustra Letteraria; and in the Account of Italy in English written by Mr Baretti; compared with the Letters from Italy written by Mr Sharp. London, 1768.
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Stanhope, Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield. Letters to his Son. Published by Mrs Eugenia Stanhope from the originals now in her possession. 2 vols. London, 1774.
Thicknesse, Philip. Observations on the Customs and Manners of the French Nation in a Series of Letters in which that Nation is vindicated from the Misrepresentations of some Late Writers. London, 1766.
The Travellers. A Satire. London, 1778.
Verney, Margaret. Memoirs of the Verney Family during the Commonwealth, 1650-1660. Vol. iii. London, 1894.
Voltaire (Francis Marie Arouet). Lettres Philosophiques. Ed. by Gustave Lanson. Paris, 1909.
Walpole, Horace, Fourth Earl of Orford. Letters. Ed. by Peter Cunningham. 9 vols. London, 1891.
Academies, 121-132;
in France, 121-123;
proposals for academies in England, 123-126;
objections to such academies, 128-132
Acworth, George, 62
Addison, Joseph, 181
Advice to Travellers, 4-5, 205;
Elizabethan, 21;
characteristics of Renaissance books of, 28-32;
admonitory side of, 55, 88-98;
for the country gentleman, 148;
guide-books of the 18th century, 196, 200
Agricola, Rudolf, 7
Alps, the, 192, 200
Ambassadors,
training for, 12-16, 43-47, 69;
troubles of, 83-85, 133
Amorphus, in Cynthia's Revels, xii
Amsterdam, 137
Art in Spain, 134;
attention to in 17th century, 168-169
Arundel, Earl of, see Howard
Ascham, Roger, 16, 18, 42, 52, 57, 65, 200
Bacon,
Lady Anne, 73-75
Anthony, 73-75
Francis, 36 note, 45:
Of Travel, 146
Sir Nicholas, 123
Barker, William, 62, 63
Bear-Leaders, the, 188
Becket, Thomas à, 7
Bedell, William, 76
Bedford, Earl of, see Russell
Bellay, Joachim Du, 16
Bembo, Pietro, 16
Berchtold, Leopold, Count, Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers, 195-198
Berneville, Marie Catherine Jumelle de, Comtesse D'Aunoy, 134
Bethune, Maximilien de, Duc de Sully, 115
Blotz, Hugo, 41
Bobadil, Captain, in Every Man in His Humour, 117
Bodley, Sir Thomas, 37
Boleyn, George, Viscount Rochford, 12, 15
Boorde, Andrew, 14
Borssele, Anne, Lady of Veer, 8
Bothwell, Earl of, see Hepburn
Bourdeille, Pierre de, Seigneur de Brantome, 117
Bourne, William, Treasure for Travellers, 35
Bowyer, Sir Henry, 113
Boyle, Richard, First Earl of Cork, and his sons Robert and Francis, 158-167
Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suffolk, 15
Brantome, see Bourdeille
Bras-de-Fer, see La Noue
Browne, Sir Thomas, 142, 193 note;
his son at Padua, 139
Bryan, Sir Francis, 15
Bucer, Martin, 17, 41
Buckingham, Duke of, see Villiers
Burghley, Lord, see Cecil
Camden, Thomas, History of England, 14
Carew, Sir Nicholas, 15
Carlton, Sir Dudley, 45
Cavendish,
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, 144
William, Duke of Newcastle, 104
Cecil,
Anne, Countess of Oxford, 64, 66
Robert, Earl of Salisbury, 39, 76, 78, 150
Thomas, Earl of Exeter, 40, 57 note, 77, 145, 193 note
William, Baron of Burghley, l8, 37, 39, 40, 64-66, 73
William, Lord Cranbourne, 76, 160
William, Lord Roos, 76-78, 80
Chamberlain, John, 45, 113
Charles I., 114, 132
Charles II., 104, 131, 178
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 29
Chesterfield, Earls of, see Stanhope
Chichester, Bishop of, see Montague
Clarendon, Earl of, see Hyde
Clenardus, Nicolaus, 132
Cleves, Charles Frederick, Duke of, 25
Clothes, 68-70;
French, 15, 50, 51, 118, 179, 184, 189;
Italian, 57, 67
Colbert, Jean Baptiste, Marquis de Seignelay, 168
Colet, John, 10
Compostella, St James of, 3
Cork, Earl of, see Boyle
Cornwallis, Sir Charles, 83-85
Coryat, Thomas, 20, 28 note, 200
Cost, see Expense
Cottington, Sir Francis, 83
Cranbourne, Lord, see Cecil
Cranmer, George, 11, 17, 41
Creswell, Joseph, Jesuit, 84
Crichton, James, "The Admirable," 48
Curiosities, 138-139, 168
Customs (droit d'aubaine) in Spain, 133
Dallington, Sir Robert,
Method for Travell, 88-89, 108, 111-118, 155, 156;
Survey of Tuscany, 108, 111;
View of France, 108, 109
Dancing, 113-115
Dangers of Travel, 30, 47-49, 56, 94-98, 198
D'Aunoy, see Berneville
Davison,
Francis, 39-41, 146, 155
William, 35, 154
Delahaute, Antoine, 168
De Peregrinatione, 23, 29-32, 55
Derby, Earl of, see Stanley
Descartes, René, 137
Deschamps, Eustache, 107
Devereux,
Robert, Second Earl of Essex, 35, 36, 42
Robert, Third Earl of Essex, 38
Drake, Sir Francis, 27
Dudley, Sir Robert, 102
Dyer, Sir Edward, 21
Education, 103-108;
see also Academies, Universities, Scholars, Ambassadors, Governors, Humanism
Edward VI., 16, 17
Einstein, Lewis, Italian Renaissance in England, 9
Ellis, Sir Henry, 4
Englishmen,
their special reason for travelling, 22;
peculiarities, 120;
Italianate, 55;
prejudices against foreigners, 67-69, 178-181
Erasmus, Desiderius, 6, 8, 9
Essex, Earls of, see Devereux
Evelyn, John, 138, 141, 144, 157, 169
Expenses of travel, 66, 154-157
Fairfax, Colonel Thomas, 152
Faubert, Mons., 125
Fencing, 117
Ferrar, Nicholas, 140
Fielding, Henry, 199
Finch, Sir John, 139
Fitzroy, Henry, Duke of Richmond, 15
Fleetwood, William, Recorder of London, 58, 62
Flemming, Robert, 9
Florio, John, Second Frutes, 21
Flutter, Sir Fopling, 179
Food, 48, 110-111
Foote, Samuel, The Englishman in Paris, 180
Forbes, James, 151-152
Foreigners, English prejudice against, 67-71, 178-181
Fox, Richard, Bishop of Winchester, 10
France,
academies in, 101, 121-132;
affectations learned in, 15, 50, 51, 179, 183-186;
arbiter of fashion, 118, 119, 141;
gentlemen of, 105, 107, 118, 119;
attraction for tourists, 102-103;
loses some of its charm, 177
Francis I., 14
Free, John, 9
Gailhard J., 167
Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, 41
George I., 190
Gerbier, Balthazar, 124-125;
Subsidium Peregrinantibus, 169
Germans,
energetic travellers, 22;
Fynes Moryson's preference for, 93;
slow to learn languages, 113 note
Germany,
attraction of, 17;
women of, 40;
manners of, 48, 172;
Ascham's Report of Germany, 200
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 123
Gloucester, Duke of, see Henry
Governors, 24-25, 145-154, 167, 170, 186-189
Grand Tour, the, Origin of the term, 143-145
Gray, Thomas, 191-192
Greek, 7, 10, 18, 105
Greene, Robert, 55, 70;
Greene's Mourning Garment, 21;
Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 70
Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke, 21, 36
Grey, William, 9
Grimani, Dominic, the Cardinal, 9
Grocyn, William, 10
Grosvenor, Sir Thomas, 168
Guide-books, see Advice to travellers
Gunthorpe, John, 9
Hall,
Arthur, 57-62
Edward, 15
Joseph, 87, 98
Harington, Sir John, 38, 39, 79
Harrison, William, 68
Harvey, Gabriel, 67
Hatton, Sir Christopher, 21
Henri III., 113
Henri IV., 109-110
Henry VI., 3
Henry VIII., 6, 7, 11, 13, 67, 103
Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James I., 38, 79 note, 114, 124
Henry, Duke of Gloucester, son of Charles I., 131
Hepburn, Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, 102
Hertford, Earl of, see Seymour
Hoby, Sir Thomas, 16, 53-55, 62
Holland, 136-139, 197
Horace, 8, 27
Howard,
Thomas, Fourth Duke of Norfolk, 63
Thomas, Second Earl of Arundel, 102
Howell, James, 118-120, 136, 156, 192;
Instructions for Forreine Travell, 108, 118-120, 132;
Perambulations of Spain, 135
Humanists, their sociability, 41, 43
Humanism, 7
Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 128, 135, 183-186;
Dialogue of the Want of Respect Due to Age, 184
Il Cortegiano, 23
Informacon for Pylgrymes unto the Holy Land, 4-5
Inns, 30, 47, 48, 197-199
Inquisition, 75-79 passim
Instructions for travellers, see Advice
Insurance, 95
Italianate Englishmen, 51-58 passim, 62-63, 70
Italy,
attraction of, 7-9, 11, 17, 52, 54, 73;
evils of, 49, 51, 55, 101-102;
universities of, 7-9, 52-54
Jaffa, port, 3, 5
James I., 114, 135, 150
Jerusalem, 6
Jesuits, 75-85 passim
Johnson, Samuel, 182
Jones, Philip, 27
Jonson, Ben, 150;
Cynthia's Revels, xii;
Preface to Coryat's Crudities, 20;
Every Man out of his Humour, 95 note;
Volpone, or the Fox, 96-97
Journals, 38-40, 196
Jusserand, J.J., 130
Killigrew, Sir Thomas, 164-165
Kinaston, Sir Francis, 124
Kirchnerus, Hermannus, 28;
Oration in Praise of Travel, 28, 30, 31, 201
Langton, Thomas, Bishop of Winchester, 11
Languages, 15-16, 73, 112-113, 190
La Noue, François de, 107
Lassels, Richard, 145, 157;
The Voyage of Italy, 148-149, 194
Latimer, William, 10
Leicester's, the Earl of, son, see Dudley
Leigh, Edward, 167
Lewknor, Thomas, 100
Licences for Travel, 86-87
Lichefield, Edward, 79
Lily,
William, 10
George, 11
Linacre, Thomas, 10
Lipsius, Justus, 26, 41, 42, 55
Lister, Martin, 139
Locke, John, 137, 186-187
Lodgings,
with an ambassador, 43-46;
with a bookseller, 43;
with a scholar, 41;
in Spain, 133-134;
see also Inns
Lorkin, Thomas, 122
Louis XIII., 121, 126
Louis XIV., 177
Loysius, Georgius, Pervigilium Mercurii, 27-28
Lupset, Thomas, 11
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 23, 56
Maidwell, Lewis, 126
Mallerie, Melchisedech, 59-62
Manners, Edward, Third Earl of Rutland, 37, 39, 63
Manutius, Aldus, 9
Mason, Sir John, 13
Mathew, Sir Tobie, 86 note
Meierus, Albertus, Methodus describendi regiones, 27
Milton, John, 97, 101
Misson, Maximilian, 194, 197;
A New Voyage to Italy, 194
Mole, John, 77-79
Montagu, Richard, Bishop of Chichester, 104
Morison, Sir Richard, 11
Moryson, Fynes, 20, 90;
Precepts for Travellers, 90-95
Murder, 48, 198 note
Nash, Thomas, 50
Newcastle, Duchess and Earl of, see Cavendish
Norfolk, Duke of, see Howard
North, Dudley, Third Lord North, 48
Nuove Inventioni di Balli, 114
Osborn, Francis, 143, 154
Oxford, Earls of, see Vere
Pace, Richard, 11
Padua,
Pole's household at, 11;
University of, 52-55, 139, 140
Palmer,
Sir Thomas, "The Traveller," died 1626, 35
Sir Thomas, died in Spain 1605, 81
Paris,
life of Englishmen at, 174-176;
medical students at, 139;
see also France
Passports, see Licences
Paulet, Sir Amias, 44
Peacham, Henry, 105, 132
Peregrine, in Volpone, or the Fox, xii
Peter Martyr, see Vermigli
Pighius, Stephanus Vinandus, 25
Pignatelli, 121
Pilgrimages, 3-7
Pirates, 47, 49
Plague, 24 note, 49
Plantin, Christophe, 25
Plato, 31, 112
Plegsis, Armand du, Cardinal Richelieu, 121
Pluvinel, Antoine, 121, 126, 128
Pole, Reginald, Cardinal, 11-12
Politian (Angelo Ambrogini), 15, 72
Politick-Would-Be in Volpone, or the Fox, xii, 96
Pretender, the, 173
Pugliano, John Pietro, 127
Pyrckmair, Hilarious, 24-25
Raleigh's, Sir Walter, son, 150
Ramus, Peter, 26
Réaux, Tallemant des, 115, 128
Religion, changes in, due to travel, 51, 56, 72-73, 75-86 passim, 88, 98
Renaissance, enthusiasm for travel, sources of, 18, 201;
quest of virtù, 29
Richelieu, Cardinal and Duc de, see Plessis
Riding, 120;
the Great Horse, 121, 126-130 passim, 142, 186
Robbers, 30, 47, 90, 91, 133, 198
Rochford, Viscount, see Boleyn
Rome, 25, 76, 86, 91, 94, 173
Ronsard, Pierre de, 16
Roos, Lord, see Cecil
Russell, Edward, Third Earl of Bedford, 42
Rutland, Earl of, see Manners
St John's College, Cambridge, 17, 18
St Lieger, Sir Anthony, 12
Salisbury, Earl of, see Cecil
Scholars, 7-11, 17, 18, 41-43, 65
Schottus, Franciscus, Itinerarium Italiæ, 193
Seignelay, Marquis de, see Colbert
Selling, William, 10, 72
Seymour, Edward, Earl of Hertford, 21, 41
Shakespeare, William,
Two Gentlemen of Verona, xii;
Taming of the Shrew, 20
Sharp, Sam, 198;
Letters from Italy, 198
Sickness, 24, 48, 160, 197, 199
Sidney,
Sir Philip, 35, 43, 46, 127
Robert, Earl of Leicester, 41, 66, 154
"Sights," 143, 193
Smith,
Richard, 40, 48
Sir Thomas, 14, 46
Smollett, Tobias, 199;
Peregrine Pickle, 181
Spain,
gentlemen of, 119, 135;
discomforts of, 132-136
Stanhope,
Philip, Second Earl of Chesterfield, 131-132, 140
Philip Dormer, Third Earl of Chesterfield, 170-177, 182-183
Stanley, William, Ninth Earl of Derby, 151-153
Starkey, Thomas, 11
Stradling, Sir John, 26, 42
Students, see Universities
Sturmius, Joannes, 17, 65
Sully, Duc de, see Bethune
Talbot, Gilbert, Seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, 21, 39, 63
Taylor, John, The Water Poet, 200
Temple, Sir William, 137
Tennis, 115-116
Thomas, William,
The Historie of Italie, 53;
The Pilgrim, 110
Throgmorton, Michael, 11
Tiptoft, John, Earl of Worcester, 9
Transportation, 4-5, 54, 142, 189, 197, 200
Tunstall, Cuthbert, 10
Turlerus, Hieronymus, 23, 24, 26;
De Peregrinatione, 23, 29-32 passim, 55
Tutors, see Governors
Ulysses, 27, 31
Universities,
of Italy, 7-9, 52-55, 139;
of Spain, 84, 85;
of England, 53, 105, 170, 171, 175, 183, 190
Unton, Sir Edward, 40, 56
Ursinus, Zacharias, 43
Valladolid, conversions at, 81, 84
Veer, Lady of, see Borssele
Venice,
charm of, 52, 54, 55;
clothes from, 50:
inns at, 197
Vere, Edward de, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, 63-67
Vermigli,
John de, Twelfth Earl of Oxford, 4
Peter, Martyr, 17
Verney, Edmund, 131
Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, 102, 114, 133
Wallis, John, 129
Walpole,
Horace, Fourth Earl of Orford, 177, 191-192
Richard, Jesuit, 81, 84
Walsingham,
Sir Francis, 46
Our Lady of, 7
Wentworth, Thomas, Fourth Baron Wentworth, 78-80
Williamson, Sir Joseph, 147
Wilson, Thomas, Arte of Rhetoric, 24
Windebanke, Sir Thomas, 145
Wingfield,
Sir Richard, 12
Sir Robert, 12
Winsor, Sir Edward, 49
Winter, Thomas, 11
Women, 28, 34, 55
Wood, Anthony à, ix, 124
Worde, Wynkin de, 4
Wotton,
Sir Edward, 10, 127
Sir Henry, 41, 78-80, 95-98, 155
Sir Nicholas, 12
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 12
Zouche, Edward la, Eleventh Baron Zouche of Harringworth, 38, 60, 87
Zwingerus, Theodor, 24, 26;
Methodus Apodemica, 24, 33
1. Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, Act i. Sc. I.
2. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, i. 110, note.
3. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, i. 110, note.
4. In c. 1498, 1515, and 1524.
5. Itineraries of William Wey. Printed for the Roxburghe Club from the original MS. in the Bodleian Library, 1857, pp. 153-154.
6. Familiarium Colloquiorum Opus. Basileæ, 1542. De utilitate colloquiorum, ad lectorem.
7. Ibid. De votis tentere susceptis, fol. 15.
8. Ibid. Ad lectorem.
9. Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, i. 95.
10. G. Cavendish, Life of Wolsey. Kelmscott Press, 1893.
11. Opera (MDCCIII.), Tom. iii., Ep. xcii. (Annæ Bersalæ, Principi Verianæ).
12. "Quid cælum, quos agros, quas bibliothecas, quas ambulationes, quam mellitas eruditorum hominum confabulationes, quot mundi lumina ... reliquerim." Ep. cxxxvi.
13. Ep. mclxxv.
14. Opera (MDCCIII.) Tom. ix. 1137.
15. Ep. ccclxiii.
16. Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. iv., Part I., No. 4.
17. Richard Pace, De Fructu qui ex Doctrina Percipitur (1517), p. 27.
18. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. i. 65. Archbishop Cranmer to Henry VIII.
19. Becatelli, Vita Reginaldi Poli. Latin version of Andreas Dudithius, Venetiis, 1558.
20. MS. Cotton, Nero, B. f. 118.
21. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. i. 54.
22. Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss.
23. Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. ix., No. 101.
24. J.S. Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII., vol. i. 117-147.
25. Bapst, Edmond, Deux Gentilshommes-Poetes de la cour de Henry VIII., Paris, 1891, pp. 26, 60.
26. Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. ii., Part I., No. 2149.
27. Ibid., vol. xi., No. 60; vol. xv., No. 581.
28. D. Lloyd, State Worthies, vol. i. 105.
29. Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. v. p. 751.
30. Camden, History of England.
31. In the First Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, 1547.
32. Hall's Life of Henry VIII., ed. Whibley, 1904, vol. i. 175.
33. The Travels and Life of Sir Thomas Hoby, ed. Powell, 1902, pp. 18, 37.
34. Ascham's Works, ed. Giles, vol. i., Part II., p. 265.
35. I refer to the death of Bucer and P. Fagius. Strype (Life of Cranmer, p. 282) says that when they arrived in England in the month of April they "very soon fell sick: which gave a very unhappy stop to their studies. Fagius on the fifth of November came to Cambridge, and ten days afterwards died."
36. Taming of the Shrew, Act I. Sc. ii.
37. Coryat's Crudities, ed. 1905, p. 17.
38. Ed. 1591, p. 91.
39. Works, ed. Grossart, ix. 139. In which the father of Philador, among many other admonitions, forestalls Sir Henry Wotton's famous advice to Milton on the traveller's need of holding his tongue: "Be, Philador, in secrecy like the Arabick-tree, that yields no gumme but in the darke night."
40. Jöcher, Gelehrten-Lexicon, 1751, and Zedler's Universal-Lexicon.
41. Clarendon Press ed. 1909, p. 29.
42. G. Gratarolus, De Regimine Iter Agentium, Some insight into the trials of travel in the sixteenth century may be gained by the sections on how to endure hunger and thirst, how to restore the appetite, make up lost sleep, ward off fever, avoid vermin, take care of sore feet, thaw frozen limbs, and so forth.
43. Methodus Apodemica, Basel, 1577, fol. B, verso.
44. Paul Hentzner, whose travels were reprinted by Horace Walpole, was a Hofmeister of this sort. The letter of dedication which he prefixed to his Itinerary in 1612 is a section, verbatim, of Pyrckmair's De Arte Apodemica.
45. De Arte Apodemica, Ingolstadii, 1577, fols. 5-6.
46. Hercules Prodicius, seu principis juventutis vita et peregrinatio, pp. 131-137
47. Jöcher, Gelebrten-Lexicon, under Zwinger.
48. Zwinger, Methodus Apodemica, fol. B, verso.
49. Ad. Ph. Lanoyum, fol. 106, in Justi Lipsii Epistole Selecta, Parisiis, 1610.
50. A Direction for Travailers, London, 1592.
51. "Methodus describendi regiones, urbes, et arces, et quid singulis locis præcipue in peregrinationibus homines nobiles ac docti animadvertere observare et annotare debeant." Meier was a Danish geographer and historian, 1528-1603.
52. G. Loysii Curiovoitlandi Pervigilium Mercurii. Curiæ Variscorum, 1598. (Nos. 17, 20, 23, 27.)
53. Op. cit., No. 109.
54. Translated by Thomas Coryat in his Crudities, 1611. He must have picked up the oration in his tour of Germany; but nothing which appears to be the original is given among the forty-six works of Hermann Kirchner, Professor of History and Poetry at Marburg, as cited by Jöcher, though the other "Oratio de Germaniæ perlustratione omnibus aliis peregrinationibus anteferenda," also translated by Coryat, is there listed.
55. Turler, The Traveiler, p. 12.
56. Kirchner in Coryat's Crudities, vol. i. 131.
57. Turler, op. cit., p. 48.
58. Lipsius, Turler, Kirchner.
59. Turler, The Traveiler, p. 47.
60. Turler, op. cit., p. 107.
61. Methodus Apodemica, p. 26.
62. An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Travailes in forraine Countries the more profitable and honourable. London, 1606.
63. London, 1578.
64. Sidney, Letter to his brother, 1580.
65. Profitable Instructions. Written c. 1595. Printed 1633.
66. Profitable Instructions, 1595, Harl. MS. 6265, printed in Spedding's Letters and Life of Bacon, vol. ii. p. 14. Spedding believes these Instructions to be by Bacon.
67. State Papers, Domestic Elizabeth, 1547-80, vol. lxxvii., No. 6.
68. Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Report, App. IV., January 31, 1571.
69. Life, Written by Himself, Oxford, 1647.
70. Devereux, Lives and Letters of the Devereux, vol. ii. 233.
71. Birch, Life of Prince Henry of Wales, App. No. XII.
72. Life and Letters, by Pearsall Smith, vol. i. 246.
73. Op. cit.
74. Talbot, MSS. in the College of Arms, vol. P, fol. 571.
75. Davison's Poetical Rhapsody. I. Biographical Notice, p. xxiii.
76. Sloane MS. 1813.
77. State Papers, Domestic, 1547-80, vols. xviii., No. 31; xix., No. 6-52 passim; xx., No. 1-39 passim.
78. Direction for Travailers.
79. Stowe's Annals, p. 600.
80. Works, ed. Giles, vol. i., Pt. ii., Epis. cxvi.
81. Op. cit.
82. Fox-Bourne's Life of Sidney, p. 91.
83. Op. cit.
84. Thomae Erpenii, De Peregrinatione Gallica, 1631, pp. 6, 12.
85. Copy-Book of Sir Amias Poulet's Letters, Roxburghe Club, p. 89.
86. Letter-Book, p. 16.
87. Letter-Book, p. 89.
88. Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. W.C. Hazlitt, 1870. Pp. xxiii.-xxx.
89. T. Birch, Court and Times of James I., vol. i. p. 218.
The embarrassments of an ambassador under these circumstances are hardly exaggerated, perhaps, in Chapman's play, Monsieur D'Olive, where the fictitious statesman bursts into a protest:
"Heaven I beseech thee, what an abhominable sort of Followers have I put upon mee: ... I cannot looke into the Cittie, but one or other makes tender his good partes to me, either his Language, his Travaile, his Intelligence, or something: Gentlemen send me their younger Sonnes furnisht in compleat, to learn fashions, for-sooth: as if the riding of five hundred miles, and spending 1000 Crownes would make 'am wiser then God meant to make 'am.... Three hundred of these Gold-finches I have entertained for my Followers: I can go in no corner, but I meete with some of my Wifflers in there accoutrements; you may heare 'am halfe a mile ere they come at you, and smell 'am half an hour after they are past you: sixe or seaven make a perfect Morrice-daunce; they need no Bells, their Spurs serve their turne: I am ashamed to traine 'am abroade, theyle say I carrie a whole Forrest of Feathers with mee, and I should plod afore 'am in plaine stuffe, like a writing Schole-maister before his Boyes when they goe a feasting."
90. Strype, Life of Sir Thomas Smith, p. 119.
91. The Travels and Life of Sir Thomas Hoby, 1547-1564, ed. Powell, p. 27.
92. Spelman, W., A Dialogue between Two Travellers, c. 1580, ed. by Pickering for the Roxburghe Club, 1896, p. 42.
93. Gratarolus, De Regimine iter agentium, 1561, p. 19.
94. Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, vol. i. p. 69.
95. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 10th May 1909.
96. Florio, Second Frutes, p. 95.
97. Sloane MS., 1813, fol.7.
98. Article on the third Lord North in the Dictionary of National Biography.
99. T. Wright, Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 316.
100. Sir Thomas Overbury, An Affectate Traveller, in Characters.
101. Dieppe.
102. Thomas Nash, Pierce Pennilesse, in Works, ed. Grosart, vol. ii. 27.
103. Nash, The Unfortunate Traveller, in Works, ed. Grosart, v. 145.
104. Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, ed. Mayor, pp. 84-85.
105. William Harrison, A Description of England, ed. Withington, p. 8.
106. Ascham, op. cit., p. 86.
107. Robert Greene, Repentance, in Works, ed. Grosart, xii. 172; John Marston, Certaine Satires, 1598; Satire II., p. 47.
108. Ascham, op. cit., p. 77.
109. James Howell, Letters, ed. Jacobs, p. 69.
110. William Thomas, The Historic of Italie, 1549, p. 2.
111. Travels and Life of Sir Thomas Hoby, Written by Himself, ed. Powell, p. 10.
112. William Thomas, op. cit. p. 2.
113. Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary, etc., Glasgow ed. 1907, i. 159.
114. Ibid.
115. Thomas Hoby, op. cit. pp. 14, 15.
116. William Thomas, op. cit. p. 85.
117. Robert Greene, All About Conny-Catching. Works, x. Foreword.
118. Epistola de Peregrinatione in De Eruditione Comparanda, 1699, p. 588.
119. Turler, The Traveller, Preface, and pp. 65-67.
120. The Unton Inventories, ed. by J.G. Nichols, p. xxxviii.
121. Sir Robert Dallington, State of Tuscany, 1605, p. 64.
122. Arthur Hall, Ten Books of Homer's Iliades, 1581, Epistle to Sir Thomas Cicill.
123. Nicholas Breton: A Floorish upon Fancie, ed. Grosart, p. 6.
124. Thomas Wright, Queen Elizabeth, ii. 205.
125. "A letter sent by F.A. touching the proceedings in a private quarrel and unkindnesse, between Arthur Hall and Melchisedech Mallerie, Gentleman, to his very friend L.B. being in Italy." (Only fourteen copies of this escaped destruction by order of Parliament in 1580. One was reprinted in 1815 in Miscellanea Antiqua Anglicana, from which my quotations are taken.)
126. St Paul's Cathedral, the fashionable promenade.
127. Cooper's Athenae Cantabrigienses, i. 381.
128. Life and Travels of Thomas Hoby, Written by Himself, p. 19, 20.
129. Bercher, Ded. to Queen Elizabeth, in The Nobility of Women, 1559, ed. by W. Bond for the Roxburghe Club, 1904.
130. Ibid. Introduction by Bond, p. 36.
131. D.N.B. Article by Sir Sidney Lee.
132. Hist. MSS. Commission, 12th Report, App. Part IV. MSS. of the Duke of Rutland, p. 94.
133. Ibid.
134. E. Lodge, Illustrations of British History, ii. 100. (Gilbert Talbot to his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury.)
135. Hatfield MSS. (Calendar), ii. 83.
136. Ibid., ii. 129.
137. Ibid., ii. 114.
138. Hatfield MSS. (Calendar), ii. 129.
139. Ibid., p. 131.
140. Ibid., p. 144.
141. See "Sir Henry Sidney to his son Robert," 28th Oct. 1578, in Collin's Sidney Papers, i. 271.
142. In A Method for Travell, c. 1598, Fol. C.
143. John Stowe, Annales, ed. 1641, p. 868.
144. Ibid.
145. Gabriel Harvey, Letter-Book, Camden Society, New Series, No. xxxiii. p. 97.
146. Stowe, Annales, ed. 1641, p. 867.
147. Ibid., p. 869.
148. Harrison's Description of England, ed. Withington, p. 111.
149. T. Birch, Court and Times of James I., i. 191.
150. E. Lodge's Illustrations of British History, ii. 228.
151. Harleian Miscellany, vol. v. pp. 400-401.
152. Leland, J., De Scriptoribus Britannicis, vol. i. 482.
153. Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1562, Nos. 1069 and 1230.
154. E. Nares, Memoir of Lord Burghley, vol. iii. p. 513.
155. Lambeth MSS., No. 647, fol. iii. Printed in Spedding's Letters and Life of Bacon, vol. i. p. 110.
156. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1603-1610, p. 634.
157. Quoted in Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ed. by L. Pearsall Smith, vol. ii. p. 462.
158. Fuller, The Church-History of Britain, ed. 1655, book x. p. 48. The alleged reason for Mole's imprisonment, Fuller says, was that he had translated Du Plessis Mornay, "his book on the Visibility of the Church, out of French into English; but besides, there were other contrivances therein, not so fit for a public relation" (supra, p. 49).
159. Fourth Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead and first Earl of Cleveland, 1591-1667, who became a Royalist general in the Civil War. At the time of Wotton's letter (1609) he was completing his education abroad after residence at Oxford. See Dictionary of National Biography, which does not, however, mention his foreign tour.
160. He was at once "reconciled" to the Church of Rome, entered the Society of the Jesuits, and "died a most holy death," in 1626, while filling the office of Confessor of the English College at Rome. H. Foley, Records of Society of Jesus, vi. p. 257, cited in Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, i. p. 457, note.
161. Second Lord Harington of Exton, 1592-1614; the favourite friend and companion of Henry, Prince of Wales. A rare and godly young man. For an account of him, and for his letters from abroad, in French and Latin, to Prince Henry, see T. Birch's Life of Prince Henry.
162. "One Tovy, an 'aged man,' late master of the free school, Guildford." Dictionary of National Biography, article on Sir John Harington, supra.
163. Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, i. 456-7.
164. S.R. Gardiner, History of England, iii. 191.
165. H. Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, London, 1882, Series ii. p. 253.
166. Ibid.
167. Foley, op. cit., p. 256. The facts are confirmed by the report of the English Ambassador at Valladolid, 17th July 1605, O.S., printed in the Winwood Memorials, vol. ii. p. 95.
168. Fynes Moryson, Itinerary, ed. 1907, vol. iii. pp. 390-1.
169. Such as Dr Thomas Case of St John's in Oxford, whom Fuller reports as "always a Romanist in his heart, but never expressing the same till his mortal sickness seized upon him" (Church History, book ix. p. 235).
170. Gardiner, History of England, vol. v. pp. 102-3. The same wavering between two Churches in the time of James I. is exemplified by "Edward Buggs, Esq., living in London, aged seventy, and a professed Protestant." He "was in his sicknesse seduced to the Romish Religion." Recovering, a dispute was held at his request between two Jesuits and two Protestant Divines, on the subject of the Visibility of the Church. "This conference did so satisfie Master Buggs, that renouncing his former wavering, he was confirmed in the Protestant truth" (Fuller, Church History, x. 102).
171. Winwood Memorials, vol. ii. 109.
172. The Earl of Nottingham, Ambassador Extraordinary in 1605.
173. Winwood Memorials, vol. ii. 76.
174. Winwood Memorials, vol. ii. 109.
175. Fynes Moryson, Itinerary, vol. i. p. 260.
176. Such was the case of Tobie Matthew, son of the Archbishop of York, converted during his travels in Italy. This witty and frivolous courtier came home and faced the uproar of his friends, spent a whole plague-stricken summer in Fleet arguing with the Bishops sent to reclaim him, and then was banished. After ten years he reappeared at Court, as amusing as ever, the protégé of the Duke of Buckingham. But under the mask of frippery he worked unsleepingly to advance the Church of Rome, for he had secretly taken orders as a Jesuit Priest. See Life of Sir Tobie Matthew, by A.H. Mathew, London, 1907.
177. Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Nicolas, 1826, vol. i. p. vi.
178. Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, vol. ii. 482.
179. Quo Vadis, A Just Censure of Travel, in Works, Oxford, vol. ix. p. 560.
180. Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, vol. i. 70, note.
181. A Method for Travell shewed by taking the view of France, As it stoode in the yeare of our Lord, 1598.
182. Wood records such a state of mind in John Nicolls, who, in 1577 left England, made a recantation of his heresy, and was "received into the holy Catholic Church." Returning to England he recanted his Roman Catholic opinions, and even wrote "His Pilgrimage, wherein is displayed the lives of the proud Popes, ambitious Cardinals, leacherous Bishops, fat bellied Monks, and hypocritical Jesuits" (1581). Notwithstanding which, he went beyond the seas again (to turn Mohometan, his enemies said), and under threats and imprisonment at Rouen, recanted all that he had formerly uttered against the Romanists.--Athenæ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, i. p. 496.
183. Understood: "for in the pulpit, being eloquent, they," etc.
184. In volume iii. of his Itinerary (reprint by the University of Glasgow, 1908), preceded by an Essay of Travel in General, a panegyric in the style of Turler, Lipsius, etc., containing most points of previous essays in praise of travel, and some new ones. For instance, in his defence of travel, he must answer the objection that travellers run the risk of being perverted from the Church of England.
185. Itinerary, iii. 411.
186. Ibid., i. 304.
187. Ibid., i. 78-80.
188. Ibid., i. 399.
189. Ibid., iii. 389.
190. Itinerary, iii. 400.
191. Ibid., iii. 388.
192. Ibid., iii. 387.
193. Ibid., iii. 375.
194. Itinerary, iii. 411.
195. Ibid., iii. 413.
196. See Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, Act II. Sc. i.: "I do intend this year of jubilee coming on, to travel, and because I will not altogether go upon expense I am determined to put forth some five thousand pound, to be paid me five for one, upon the return of myself, my wife, and my dog from the Turk's court in Constantinople." Also the epigram of Sir John Davies in Poems, ed. Grosart, vol. ii. p. 40:
"Lycus, which lately is to Venice gone,
Shall if he doe returne, gaine three for one."
197. Volpone: or the Fox, Act II. Sc. i.
198. Ibid., Act III. Sc. v.
199. The whole letter is printed in Pearsall Smith's Collection, vol. ii. p. 382.
200. Pearsall Smith's Collection, vol. ii. p. 364 (in another letter of advice on foreign travel).
201. Defensio secunda, in Opera Latina, Amstelodami, 1698, p. 96.
202. Quo Vadis? A Just Censure of Travel as it is undertaken by the Gentlemen of our Nation, London, 1617.
203. 19th September 1614. Quoted in C. Dodd's Church History of England, ed. Tierney, vol. iv. Appendix, p. ccxli.
204. Master of Ceremonies to James I.
205. The Reformed Travailer, by W.H., 1616, fol. A 4, verso.
206. Charles II.
207. Ellis, Original Letters, 1st Series, iii. 288.
208. The Scholemaster, ed. Mayor, p. 53.
209. The Compleat Gentleman, 1634 (reprint 1906), p. 33.
210. Cited in G. D'Avenel, La Noblesse française sous Richelieu, p. 52.
211. Ibid., pp. 41-2.
212. Balade, "Les chevaliers ont honte d'étudier" (OEuvres Complètes, tome iii. p. 187).
213. De la Nouë, Discours Politiques et Militaires, 1587, p. 111.
214. De la Nouë, op. cit., pp. 118-22. Court and Times of Charles I., vol. ii. pp. 89, 187.
215. A Method for Travell. Shewed by taking the view of France. As it stood in the yeare of our Lord, 1598.
216. By James Howell.
217. Supra, note (1).
218. A Survey of the Great Dukes State of Tuscany. In the yeare of our Lord, 1596.
219. The View of France, fol. X.
220. The View of France, fol. H 4, verso.
221. William Thomas, The Pilgrim, 1546.
222. Survey of Tuscany, p. 34.
223. A Method for Travell, Fol. B 4, verso.
224. The first edition of The View of Fraunce was printed anonymously in 1604 by Symon Stafford: When Thomas Creede brought out another edition, apparently in 1606, Dallington inserted a preface "To All Gentlemen that have Travelled," and A Method for Travell, consisting of eight unpaged leaves, and a folded leaf containing a conspectus of A Method for Travell.
225. As the use of Latin waned, a knowledge of modern languages became increasingly important. The attitude of continental gentlemen on this point is indicated by a Spanish Ambassador in 1613, to whom the Pope's Nuncio used a German Punctilio, of speaking Latin, for more dignity, to him and Italian to the Residents of Mantua and Urbino. The Ambassador answered in Italian, "and afterwards gave this reason for it: that it were as ill a Decorum for a Cavalier to speak Latin, as for a Priest to use any other Language." (Winwood Memorials, vol. iii. p. 446).
226. Fynes Moryson had a great deal to say on this subject. In particular, he instances the Germans as reprehensible in living only with their own countrymen in Italy, "never attaining the perfect use of any forreigne Language, be it never so easy. So as myselfe remember one of them, who being reprehended, that having been thirty yeeres in Italy hee could not speake the Language, he did merrily answer in Dutch: Ah lieber was kan man doch in dreissig Jahr lehrnen? Alas, good Sir, what can a man learne in thirty yeeres?" (Itinerary, vol. in. p. 379).
227. A Method for Travell, B 4, verso.
228. Court and Times of James I., vol. i. p. 286.
229. Amias Paulet to Elizabeth, Jan. 31, 1577. Cal. State Papers, Foreign.
230. By Cesare Nigri Milanese detto il trombone, "Famose e eccellente Professori di Ballare." Printed at Milan, 1604.
"In twenty manere coude he trippe and dance
After the schole of Oxenforde tho,
And with his legges casten to and fro."
The Milleres Tale, 11. 142-4.
232. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. iii. p. 214.
233. Ibid., 1st Series, vol. iii. pp. 138-9.
234. A Method jor Travell, fol. B 4, verso.
235. Historiettes, ed. Paris, 1834, tome 1er, p. 72.
236. So counted the Pope's Legate in 1596. Cited by Jusserand, in Sports et Jeux D'Exercise dans L'ancienne France, p. 252.
237. A View of France, fol. V, verso.
238. Jusserand, op. cit., p. 241. Cited from Thomassin's Ancienne et nouvelle discipline de l'Eglise, 1725, tome iii. col. 1355.
239. The View of France, T 4, verso, V, verso.
240. Fol. C.
241. Every Man in his Humour, Act IV. Sc. v.
242. Touchant les Duels, ed. 1722, p. 79.
243. "If in the Court they spie one in a sute of the last yeres making, they scoffingly say, 'Nous le cognoissons bien, il ne nous mordra pas, c'est un fruit suranne.' We know him well enough, he will not hurt us, hee's an Apple of the last yeere" (The View of France, fol. T 4).
244. Instructions for Forreine Travell, 1642.
245. Op. cit., pp. 65-70.
246. Ibid., pp. 181, 188.
247. Op. cit., pp. 193-5.
248. Ibid., p. 51.
249. "The Great Horse" is the term used of animals for war or tournaments, in contradistinction to Palfreys, Coursers, Nags, and other common horses. These animals of "prodigious weight" had to be taught to perform manoeuvres, and their riders, the art of managing them according to certain rules and principles. See A New Method ... to Dress Horses, by William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, London, 1667.
250. Histoire et Recherches des Antiquités de la Ville de Paris, par H. Sauval, Paris, 1724, tome ii. p. 498.
251. Les Antiquitez de la Ville de Paris. Paris 1640, Livre second, p. 403.
252. Probably the son of Sir John Puckering, Lord Keeper in 1592-1596.
253. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. iii. pp. 220-1.
254. Archeologia, vol. xxxvi. pp. 343-4.
255. Collectania, First Series, ed. for the Oxford Historical Society (vol. v.) by C.R.L. Fletcher, p. 213.
256. See Archeologia, xxi. p. 506. Gilbert's and La Nouë's dreams were of academies like Vittorino da Feltre's--not Pluvinel's.
257. Oxford Historical Society, vol. v. p. 276.
258. Ibid., pp. 280-2.
259. The Interpreter of the Academic for Forrain Languages, and all Noble Sciences, and Exercises, London, 1648.
260. Evelyn's Diary, 9th August 1682.
261. Ibid., 18th December 1684.
262. Oxford Historical Society, vol. v. pp. 309-13.
263. Ibid., p. 319.
264. Le Maneige Royal, ou l'on peut remarquer le defaut et la perfection du chevalier, en tous les exercices de cet art, digne de Princes, fait et pratique en l'instruction du Roy par Antoine Pluvinel son Éscuyer principal, Conseiller en son Conseil d'Éstat, son Chambellan ordinaire, et Sous-Gouverneur de sa Majesté. Paris, 1624.
265. Opening words of An Apologie for Poetrie, ed. 1595.
266. Historiettes, vol. i. p. 89 of ed. 1834. Marguerite of Valois compared M. de Souvray, the governor of Louis XIII., to Chiron rearing Achilles. Contemporary satire said that M. de Souvray "n'avoit de Chiron que le train de derrière."
267. Henri Sauval, op. cit., p. 498.
268. A Dialogue concerning Education, in Tracts, London, 1727, p. 297. We must allow for the fact that English university men did not approve of the French ambition to elevate the vernacular, or of their translation of the classics, or of any displacement of Latin from the highest place in the ambitions of anyone with pretentions to learning. See also Evelyn, State of France, p. 99.
269. Oxford Historical Society, vol. v. p. 325.
270. Written to John Aubrey, between 1685-93. Quoted in Oxford Historical Society, vol. v. p. 295.
271. Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, Paris, 1866, tome i. p. 263; cited in Sports et Jeux d'Exercice, p. 377.
272. Thomas Carte, Life of James, Duke of Ormond, vol. iii. p. 635.
273. Addit. MS. 19253 (British Museum).
274. Memoires du Comte de Grammont, Strawberry Hill, 1772.
275. In The Compleat Gentleman, 1622.
276. Nicolaus Clenardus Latomo Suo S.D., Epistole, Antverpiæ, 1566, pp. 20-4, passim. See p. 234 for the historic incident of the drinking cup, broken by Vasæus, and so impossible to replace, after a search through the whole Spanish village, that the rest of the party were obliged to drink out of their hands. As to expenses, Clenardus scoffs at the poets who sing of "Auriferum Tagum." "Aurum auferendum" would better express it, he found.
277. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, vol. ii. p. 38.
278. Ibid.
279. James Howell, A Discours or Dialog, containing a Perambulation of Spain and Portugall which may serve for a direction how to travell through both Countreys, London, 1662.
280. Relation du Voyage d'Espagne, a la Haye, 1691 (translated in 1692 under the title of "The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady ---- Travels into Spain").
281. Comtesse d'Aunoy, op. cit., p. 99.
282. Reprinted in The Life of Sir Tobie Matthew, by A.H. Mathew, p. 115.
283. By James Howell, 1662.
284. Howell's Letters, ed. Jacobs, p. 168.
285. Winwood Memorials, vol. iii. p. 264.
286. Tracts: (A Dialogue concerning Education), 1727, p. 340.
287. The Perambulation of Spain, p. 29.
288. See Les Delices de la Hollande, Amsterdam, 1700, pp. 9, 25; Sir William Brereton, Bart., Travels in Holland, the United Provinces, England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1634-1635, ed. Hawkins, for the Chatham Society, 1844; William Carr, Gentleman, The Traveller's Guide and Historian's Faithful Companion, London, 1690.
289. William Seward, Anecdotes of Some Distinguished Persons, London, 1796, vol. ii. p. 168.
290. Lord King, The Life and Letters of John Locke, with Extracts from his Journals and Common-place Books, London, 1858, vol. ii. pp. 5, 50, 71.
291. The Harleian Miscellany, vol. ii. p. 592.
292. Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, London, 1693, p. 188.
293. Coriat Junior, Another Traveller, London, 1767, p. 152.
294. John Evelyn, Diary and Correspondence, ed. Bray, London, 1906, p. 38.
295. Ibid., p. 29. Also John Raymond, Il Mercurio Italico, London, 1648, p. 95.
296. Coriat Junior, op. cit., p. 152.
297. R. Poole, Doctor of Physick, A Journey from London to France and Holland; or, the Traveller's Useful Vade Mecum, London, 1746.
298. Sir Thomas Browne, Works, ed. Wilkin, vol. i. p. 91.
299. Martin Lister's Travels in France, in John Pinkerton's Collection of Voyages and Travels, 1809, vol. iv. pp. 2, 21.
300. Nicholas Ferrar, Two Lives, by his brother John and by Doctor Jebb, ed. J.E.B. Mayor, London, 1855.
301. State of France, 1652, pp. 78, 105. A Character of England, 1659, pp. 45, 49.
302. Advice to a Young Gentleman Leaving the University, by R.(ichard) L.(assels), 1670.
303. Sir Thomas Browne, Works, ed. by Wilkin, vol. i. pp. 3-14, passim.
304. Advice to a Son, ed. 1896, p. 63.
305. Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, ed. Firth, 1886, p. 309.
306. Prefatory Letter, The State of France, 1652, fol. B.
307. Ibid., fol. B 3.
308. The Voyage of Italy, Paris, 1670. A Preface to the Reader concerning Travelling.
309. Winwood Memorials, vol. iii. 312.
310. Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, 1561-2, pp. 632, 635.
311. Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Nicolas, vol. i. p. xi.
312. "That young men travel under some tutor, or grave servant, I allow well: so that he be such a one that hath some entrance into the language, and hath been in the country before; whereby he may be able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen in the country where they go: what acquaintances they are to seek; what exercises or discipline the place yieldeth. For else young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little" (Essays: Of Travel).
313. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1651-2, No, 51. It will be seen from the above letter that fear of a change in their son's religion was still a very real one in the minds of parents. See also A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman of an Honorable Family, Now in his Travels beyond the Seas. By a True Son of the Church of England, London, 1688. The writer hopes that above all things the young man may return "A well-bred Gentleman, a good Scholar, and a sound Christian."
314. "Newly printed at Paris, and are to be sold in London, by John Starkey, 1670." Lassels, a Roman Catholic, passed most of his life abroad. He left Oxford for the College of Douay. See D.N.B.
315. The Voyage of Italy, Preface to the Reader.
316. Op. cit., Preface to the Reader.
317. Thomas Carte, Life of James, Duke of Omond, vol. iv. p. 632. "He passed several months in a very cheap country, and yet the bills of expenses sent over by the governor were higher than those which used to be drawn by Colonel Fairfax on account of the Earl of Derby, when he was travelling from place to place, and appeared in all with so much dignity."
318. Anthony Weldon, Court and Character of King James, London, 1650, p. 92.
319. Winwood Memorials, vol. iii. p. 226.
320. Ben Jonson, Conversations with Drummond, ed. Sidney, 1906, pp. 34-5.
321. Life of James, Duke of Ormond, vol. iv. pp. 487-90.
322. Court and Times of James I., vol. i. p, 285.
323. Life of James, Duke of Ormond, vol. iv. p. 667.
324. Advice to a Son, p. 72.
325. A. Collins, Letters and Memorials of State, vol. i. p. 271. (Sir Henry Sidney to his son Robert Sidney, after Earl of Leicester.)
326. Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Nicolas, vol. i. pp. viii.-xi.
327. Sir Henry Wotton; Life and Letters, ed. Pearsall Smith, vol. i. p. 233 (note 1).
328. Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, pp. viii., xi.
329. Itinerary, vol. iii. p. 374.
330. A Method for Travell, fol. G.
331. Instructions for Forreine Travel, p. 51.
332. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. v. p. 24.
333. The Voyage of Italy; Preface to the Reader, fol. B 4.
334. The State of France, 1652. Folio B.
335. Robert Boyle, Works, 1744, vol. i. p. 7.
336. Lismore Papers, 1st Series, vol. v. pp. 78, 80.
337. Ibid., 112.
338. It was a common custom at this time to marry one's sons, if a favourable match could be made, before they went abroad.
339. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 95.
340. On Nov. 23rd, 1610, Carleton, the Ambassador at Venice, wrote to Salisbury that his son was ill at Padua. "He finds relish in nothing on this side the mountains, nor much in anything on this side the sea; his affections being so strangely set on his return homeward, that any opposition is a disease." Cranborne's tutor, Dr Lister, wrote to Carleton in December: "Sir, we must for England, there is no resisting of it. If we stay the fruit will not be great, the discontent infinite. My Lord is going to dinner, this being the first meal he eateth." (State Papers, 1610. Cited in Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ed. Pearsall-Smith, vol. i. p. 501.)
341. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 98.
342. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 234.
343. Ibid., p. 171.
344. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 100.
345. Ibid., p. 103.
346. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 100.
347. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 99.
348. In March 1640. This fact, and his appearance in the Lismore Papers, are not mentioned in the Dictionary of National Biography.
349. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. iv. p. 113.
350. Ibid., p. 235.
351. Ibid., p. 234.
352. Ibid., pp. 232-3.
353. She became one of the mistresses of Charles II. With her daughter, Charlotte Boyle, otherwise Fitzroy, she is buried in Westminster Abbey. (Cockayne's Peerage, under Viscount Shannon.)
354. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. v. pp. 19-24.
355. Lismore Papers, 2nd Series, vol. v. pp. 72, 97, 121.
356. Three Diatribes or Discourses, London, 1671.
357. The Compleat Gentleman, London, 1678.
358. The Compleat Gentleman, p. 3.
359. Albert Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, Paris, 1885, p. 175.
360. M. Adrien Delahaute, Une Famille de Finance an XVIII. Siècle, vol. i. p. 434.
361. George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey begun in An. Dom. 1610, London, 1615.
362. John Evelyn, Diary and Correspondence, ed. Bray, London, 1906, vol. i. p. 77.
363. Ibid., p. 78.
364. Balthazar Gerbier, Subsidium Peregrinantibus, Oxford, 1665.
365. Letter to his Son, Feb. 22, 1748.
366. Ibid., Oct. 2, O.S., 1747.
367. Letter to his Son, Oct. 9, O.S., 1747.
368. Lausanne was where Edward Gibbon received the education he considered far superior to what could be had from Oxford. When he returned to England, after four years, he missed the "elegant and rational society" of Lausanne, and could not love London--"the noisy and expensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure."
369. Letter to his Son, April 12, O.S., 1749.
370. Ibid., Sept. 22, O.S., 1749.
371. Ibid., Sept. 5, O.S., 1749.
372. Letter to his Son, Nov. 8, O.S., 1750.
373. Letter to his Son, May 10, O.S., 1748.
374. Letter to his Son, April 30, O.S., 1750.
375. Letters from Paris, Sept. 22, 26; Oct. 3, 6, 1765.
376. A Character of England, As it was lately presented in a Letter to a Noble Man of France, London, 1659.
377. See Voltaire, Lettres Philosophiques, tome ii. p. 272, ed. Gustave Lanson, Paris, 1909.
"The merest John Trot in a week you shall see
Bien poli, bien frizé, tout à fait un Marquis."
(Samuel Foote, Dramatic Works, vol. i. p. 47.)
The Hon. James Howard, The English Mounsieur, London, 1674; Sir George Etherege, Sir Fopling Flutter, Love in a Tub, Act III. Sc. iv.
The Abbe le Blanc on visiting England was very indignant at the representation of his countrymen on the London stage: he describes how, "Two actors came in, one dressed in the English manner very decently, and the other with black eye-brows, a riband an ell long under his chin, a big peruke immoderately powdered, and his nose all bedaubed with snuff. What Englishman could not know a Frenchman by this ridiculous picture?... But when it was found that the man thus equipped, being also laced down every seam of his coat, was nothing but a cook, the spectators were equally charmed and surprised. The author had taken care to make him speak all the impertinences he could devise.... There was a long criticism upon our manners, our customs and above all, our cookery. The excellence and virtues of English beef were cried up; the author maintained that it was owing to the quality of its juice that the English were so courageous, and had such a solidity of understanding which raised them above all the nations of Europe" (E. Smith, Foreign Visitors In England, London, 1889, pp. 193-4).
379. Samuel Foote, Dramatic Works, vol. i. p. 7.
380. Ibid.
"Let Paris be the theme of Gallia's Muse
Where Slav'ry treads the Streets in wooden shoes."
(Gay, Trivia.)
382. Joseph Addison, A Letter from Italy, London, 1709.
383. Samuel Johnson, London: A Poem.
384. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, Letters to his Son, London, 1774; vol. ii. p. 123; vol. iii. p. 308.
385. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, A Dialogue concerning Education, in A Collection of Several Tracts, London, 1727.
386. Ibid., Dialogue of The Want of Respect Due to Age, pp. 295-6.
387. John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education, London, 1699, pp. 356-7, 375-7.
388. John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education, London, 1699, pp. 356-7, 375-7.
389. Ibid.
390. As Cowper says in The Progress of Error:
"From school to Cam or Isis, and thence home:
And thence with all convenient speed to Rome.
With reverend tutor clad in habit lay,
To tease for cash and quarrel with all day:
With memorandum-book for every town,
And every post, and where the chaise broke down."
Foote's play, An Englishman in Paris, represents in the character of the pedantic prig named Classick, the sort of university tutor who was sometimes substituted for the parson, as an appropriate guardian.
391. The Bear-Leaders, London, 1758.
392. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu met many of these pairs at Rome, where she writes that, by herding together and throwing away their money on worthless objects, they had acquired the title of Golden Asses, and that Goldoni adorned his dramas with "gli milordi Inglesi" in the same manner as Molière represented his Parisian marquises (Letters, ed. Wharncliffe, London, 1893, vol. ii. p. 327).
393. William Congreve, The Way of the World, Act III. Sc. xv.
394. Philip Thicknesse, Observations on the Customs and Manners of the French Nation, London, 1766, p. 3.
395. Thomas Gray the poet.
396. Horace Walpole, Letters, ed. Cunningham, London, 1891, vol. i. p. 24.
397. Thomas Gray, Letters, ed. Tovey, Cambridge University Press, 1890, pp. 38, 44, 68.
398. James Howell, Instructions for Forraine Travell, p. 25 (Arber Reprint).
399. Ibid., Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, ed. Jacobs, 1892, vol. i. p. 95.
The Renaissance traveller had little commendation for a land that was not fruitful, rich with grains and orchards. A landscape that suggested food was to him the fairest landscape under heaven. Far from being an admirer of mountains, he was of the opinion of Dr Johnson that "an eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility" and that "this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller" (Works, ed. 1787, vol. x. p. 359).
400. Itinerarii Italiæ Rerumq. Romanorum libri tres a Franc. Schotto I.C. ex antiquis novisque Scriptoribus iis editi qui Romam anno Iubileii sacro visunt. Ad Robertum Bellarminum S.R.E. Card. Ampliss. Antverpiæ. Ex officina Plantiniana apud Joannem Moretum. Anno sæcularii sacro, 1600.
Thomas Cecil in Paris in 1562 studied the richly illustrated Cosmographia Universalis of Sebastien Munster (pub. Basel 1550) which gave descriptions of "Omnium gentium mores, leges, religio, res gestæ, mutationes."
Sir Thomas Browne recommends to his son in France in 1661 Les Antiquities de Paris "which will direct you in many things, what to look after, that little time you stay there" (Works, ed. Wilkin, 1846, vol. i. p. 16).
401. Such as: (a) La Guide des Chemins: pour aller et venir par tous les pays et contrees du Royaume de France. Avec les noms des Fleuves et Rivieres qui courent parmy lesdicts pays. A. Paris (n.d.) (1552?).
(b) Deliciæ Galliæ, sive Itinerarium per universam Galliam. Coloniæ, 1608.
(c) Iodoci Sinceri Itinerarium Galliæ, Ita accomodatum, ut eius ductu mediocri tempore tota Gallia obiri, Anglia et Belgium adire possuit: nec bis terve ad eadum loca rediri oporteat: De Burdigala, Lugduni, 1616.
(d) Le Voyage de France Dresse pour l'instruction et commodite tant des Francais que des Estrangers. Paris, chez Olivier de Varennes, 1639.
402. Maximilian Misson, A New Voyage to Italy; Together with Useful Instructions for those who shall Travel thither, 2 vols., London, 1695.
403. Count Leopold Berchtold, An Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers, London, 1789.
404. Mission, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 335.
405. See Hearne's Collections, vol. viii., being vol. I. of publications of The Oxford Historical Society, pp. 118, 133, 201, for the account of an assault by six highwaymen upon two gentlemen with their servants on the way from Calais, in September 1723. Defoe wrote a tract on the subject, and it was treated in Boyer's Political State, and in other periodicals of the time.
406. Letters from Italy, to which is annexed, An Admonition to Gentlemen who pass the Alps, London, 1767, pp. 44, 65, 172, 306.
407. Henry Fielding, The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.
408. Tobias Smollett, Works, ed. 1887, p. 709.
409. Roger Ascham, Works, ed. Giles, London, 1865, vol. i. part ii. p. 253.
410. All the Works of John Taylor the Water Poet, being sixty-three in number, collected into one volume by the Author, London, 1630. See p. 76, Three Weekes, three Dayes, and three Houres Observations from London to Hamburgh in Germanie ... dedicated to Sr. Thomas Coriat, Great Brittaines Error, and the World's Mirror, Aug. 17, 1616.
411. Coryal's Crudities, Glasgow, 1905, vol. i. pp. 216, 226, 255; vol. ii. pp. 57, 176.
412. Hermannus Kirchnerus in Coryat's Crudities, vol. ii. p. 74.