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.
* * * * *
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF ADVICE TO TRAVELLERS, 1500-1700
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. Basileae, 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 77 of 105
Words from 40118 to 40677
of 55513
