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.
* * * * *
CHAPTER II
THE HIGH PURPOSE OF THE ELIZABETHAN TRAVELLER
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.
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