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.
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