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: Autopsiaei]. 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 44 of 105
Words from 22626 to 23129
of 55513
