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]
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.
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