English Travellers of the Renaissance | Page 7

certainly, to be learned abroad, for men of
every calibre. Those who did not profit by the study of international
law learned new tricks of the rapier. And because experience of foreign
countries was expensive and hard to come at, the acquirement of it gave
prestige to a young man.
Besides, underneath worldly ambition was the old curiosity to see the
world and know all sorts of men--to be tried and tested. More powerful
than any theory of education was the yearning for far-off, foreign
things, and the magic of the sea.
* * * * *

CHAPTER II

THE HIGH PURPOSE OF THE ELIZABETHAN TRAVELLER
The love of travel, we all know, flourished exceedingly in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. All classes felt the desire to go beyond seas upon
"Such wind as scatters young men through the world, To seeke their
fortunes farther than at home, Where small experience growes."[36]
The explorer and the poet, the adventurer, the prodigal and the earl's
son, longed alike for foreign shores. What Ben Jonson said of Coryat
might be stretched to describe the average Elizabethan: "The mere
superscription of a letter from Zurich sets him up like a top: Basil or
Heidelberg makes him spinne. And at seeing the word Frankford, or
Venice, though but in the title of a Booke, he is readie to breake
doublet, cracke elbowes, and overflowe the roome with his
murmure."[37] Happy was an obscure gentleman like Fynes Moryson,
who could roam for ten years through the "twelve Dominions of
Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerand, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland,
Italy, Turkey, France, England, Scotland and Ireland" and not be
peremptorily called home by his sovereign. Sad it was to be a court
favourite like Fulke Greville, who four times, thirsting for strange lands,
was plucked back to England by Elizabeth.
At about the time (1575) when some of the most prominent
courtiers--Edward Dyer, Gilbert Talbot, the Earl of Hertford, and more
especially Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Philip Sidney--had just
returned from abroad, book-publishers thought it worth while to print
books addressed to travellers. At least, there grew up a demand for
advice to young men which became a feature of Elizabethan literature,
printed and unprinted. It was the convention for a young man about to
travel to apply to some experienced or elderly friend, and for that friend
to disburden a torrent of maxims after the manner of Polonius. John
Florio, who knew the humours of his day, represents this in a dialogue
in Second Frutes.[38] So does Robert Greene in _Greene's Mourning
Garment_.[39] What were at first the personal warnings of a wise man
to his young friend, such as Cecil's letter to Rutland, grew into a
generalized oration for the use of any traveller. Hence arose manuals of
instruction--marvellous little books, full of incitements to travel as the

duty of man, summaries of the leading characteristics of foreigners,
directions for the care of sore feet--and a strange medley of matters.
Among the first essays of this sort are translations from Germanic
writers, with whom, if Turler is right, the book of precepts for travel
originated. For the Germans, with the English, were the most
indefatigable travellers of all nations. Like the English, they suddenly
woke up with a start to the idea that they were barbarians on the
outskirts of civilization, and like Chicago of the present day, sent their
young men "hustling for culture." They took up assiduously not only
the Renaissance ideal of travel as a highly educating experience, by
which one was made a complete man intellectually, but also the
Renaissance conviction that travel was a duty to the State. Since both
Germany and England were somewhat removed from the older and
more civilized nations, it was necessary for them to make an effort to
learn what was going on at the centre of the world. It was therefore the
duty of gentlemen, especially of noblemen, to whom the State would
look to be directed, to search out the marts of learning, frequent foreign
courts, and by knowing men and languages be able to advise their
prince at home, after the manner set forth in Il Cortegiano. It must be
remembered that in the sixteenth century there were no schools of
political economy, of modern history or modern languages at the
universities. A sound knowledge of these things had to be obtained by
first-hand observation. From this fact arose the importance of
improving one's opportunities, and the necessity for methodical,
thorough inquiry, which we shall find so insisted upon in these manuals
of advice.
Hieronymus Turlerus claims that his De Peregrinatione (Argentorati,
1574) is the first book to be devoted to precepts of travel. It was
translated into English and published in London in 1575, under the title
of The Traveiler of Jerome Turler,