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. "There's another
exercise to be learned in France, because there are better teachers, and
the French fashion is in most request with us, that is, of dancing.
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