English Travellers of the Renaissance

English Travellers of the
Renaissance

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Title: English Travellers of the Renaissance
Author: Clare Howard
Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13403]
Language: English
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ENGLISH TRAVELLERS OF THE RENAISSANCE
BY CLARE HOWARD

BURT FRANKLIN: BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCE SERIES
#179

1914

PREFACE
This essay was written in 1908-1910 while I was studying at Oxford as
Fellow of the Society of American Women in London. Material on the
subject of travel in any century is apparently inexhaustible, and one
could write many books on the subject without duplicating sources.
The following aims no further than to describe one phase of
Renaissance travel in clear and sharp outline, with sufficient illustration
to embellish but not to clog the main ideas.
In the preparation of this book I incurred many debts of gratitude. I
would thank the staff of the Bodleian, especially Mr W.H.B. Somerset,
for their kindness during the two years I was working in the library of
Oxford University; and Dr Perlbach, Abteilungsdirektor of the
Königliche Bibliothek at Berlin, who forwarded to me some helpful
information concerning the early German books of instructions for
travellers; and Professor Clark S. Northup, of Cornell University, for
similar aid. To Mr George Whale I am indebted for the use of his
transcript of Sloane MS. 1813, and to my friend Miss M.E. Marshall, of
the Board of Trade, for the generous gift of her leisure hours in reading
for me in the British Museum after the sea had divided me from that
treasure-house of information.
I would like to acknowledge with thanks the kind advice of Sir Walter
Raleigh and Sir Sidney Lee, whose generosity in giving time and
scholarship many students besides myself are in a position to appreciate.
Mr L. Pearsall Smith, from whose work on the Life and Letters of Sir
Henry Wotton I have drawn copiously, gave me also courteous personal
assistance.
To the Faculty of the English Department at Columbia University I
owe the gratitude of one who has received her earliest inclination to
scholarship from their teachings. I am under heavy obligations to
Professor A.H. Thorndike and Professor G.P. Krapp for their
corrections and suggestions in the proof-sheets of this book, and to
Professor W.P. Trent for continued help and encouragement throughout
my studies at Columbia and elsewhere.
Above all, I wish to emphasize the aid of Professor C.H. Firth, of
Oxford University, whose sympathy and comprehension of the
difficulties of a beginner in the field he so nobly commands can be
understood only by those, like myself, who come to Oxford aspiring

and alone. I wish this essay were a more worthy result of his influence.
CLARE HOWARD
BARNARD COLLEGE, NEW YORK
October 1913
* * * * *

INTRODUCTION
Among the many didactic books which flooded England in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were certain essays on travel. Some
of these have never been brought to light since their publication more
than three hundred years ago, or been mentioned by the few writers
who have interested themselves in the literature of this subject. In the
collections of voyages and explorations, so often garnered, these have
found no place. Most of them are very rare, and have never been
reprinted. Yet they do not deserve to be thus overlooked, and in several
ways this survey of them will, I think, be useful for students of
literature.
They reveal a widespread custom among Elizabethan and Jacobean
gentlemen, of completing their education by travel. There are scattered
allusions to this practice, in contemporary social documents: Anthony à
Wood frequently explains how such an Oxonian "travelled beyond seas
and returned a compleat Person,"--but nowhere is this ideal of a
cosmopolitan education so explicitly set forth as it is in these essays.
Addressed to the intending tourist, they are in no sense to be confused
with guide-books or itineraries. They are discussions of the benefits of
travel, admonitions and warnings, arranged to put the traveller in the
proper attitude of mind towards his great task of self-development.
Taken in chronological order they outline for us the life of the
travelling student.
Beginning with the end of the sixteenth century when travel became the
fashion, as the only means of acquiring modern languages and modern
history, as well as those physical accomplishments and social graces by
which a young man