English Travellers of the Renaissance | Page 2

won his way at Court, they trace his evolution up
to the time when it had no longer any serious motive; that is, when the
chairs of modern history and modern languages were founded at the

English universities, and when, with the fall of the Stuarts, the Court
ceased to be the arbiter of men's fortunes. In the course of this
evolution they show us many phases of continental influence in
England; how Italian immorality infected young imaginations, how the
Jesuits won travellers to their religion, how France became the model
of deportment, what were the origins of the Grand Tour, and so forth.
That these directions for travel were not isolated oddities of literature,
but were the expression of a widespread ideal of the English gentry, I
have tried to show in the following study. The essays can hardly be
appreciated without support from biography and history, and for that
reason I have introduced some concrete illustrations of the sort of
traveller to whom the books were addressed. If I have not always
quoted the "Instructions" fully, it is because they repeat one another on
some points. My plan has been to comment on whatever in each book
was new, or showed the evolution of travel for study's sake.
The result, I hope, will serve to show something of the
cosmopolitanism of English society in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries; of the closer contact which held between England and the
Continent, while England was not yet great and self-sufficient; of times
when her soldiers of low and high degree went to seek their fortunes in
the Low Countries, and her merchants journeyed in person to conduct
business with Italy; when a steady stream of Roman Catholics and
exiles for political reasons trooped to France or Flanders for years
together.
These discussions of the art of travel are relics of an age when
Englishmen, next to the Germans, were known for the greatest
travellers among all nations. In the same boat-load with merchants,
spies, exiles, and diplomats from England sailed the young gentleman
fresh from his university, to complete his education by a look at the
most civilized countries of the world. He approached the Continent
with an inquiring, open mind, eager to learn, quick to imitate the
refinements and ideas of countries older than his own. For the same
purpose that now takes American students to England, or Japanese
students to America, the English striplings once journeyed to France,
comparing governments and manners, watching everything, noting
everything, and coming home to benefit their country by new ideas.
I hope, also, that a review of these forgotten volumes may lend an

added pleasure to the reading of books greater than themselves in
Elizabethan literature. One cannot fully appreciate the satire of
Amorphus's claim to be "so sublimated and refined by travel," and to
have "drunk in the spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen
princes' courts where I have resided,"[1] unless one has read of the
benefits of travel as expounded by the current Instructions for
Travellers; nor the dialogues between Sir Politick-Would-be and
Peregrine in _Volpone, or the Fox_. Shakespeare, too, in The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, has taken bodily the arguments of the
Elizabethan orations in praise of travel:
"Some to the warres, to try their fortune there; Some, to discover
Islands farre away; Some, to the studious Universities; For any, or for
all these exercises, He said, thou Proteus, your sonne was meet; And
did request me, to importune you To let him spend his time no more at
home; Which would be great impeachment to his age, In having
knowne no travaile in his youth. (Antonio) Nor need'st thou much
importune me to that Whereon, this month I have been hamering, I
have considered well, his losse of time, And how he cannot be a perfect
man, Not being tryed, and tutored in the world; Experience is by
industry atchiev'd, And perfected by the swift course of time."
(Act I. Sc. iii.)
* * * * *

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS OF TRAVEL FOR CULTURE
Pilgrimages at the close of the Middle Ages--New objects for travel in
the fifteenth century--Humanism--Diplomatic ambition--Linguistic
acquirement.

CHAPTER II

THE HIGH PURPOSE OF THE ELIZABETHAN TRAVELLER
Development of the individual--Benefit to the Commonwealth--First
books addressed to travellers.

CHAPTER III
SOME CYNICAL ASPERSIONS UPON THE BENEFITS OF
TRAVEL
The Italianate Englishman.

CHAPTER IV
PERILS FOR PROTESTANT TRAVELLERS
The Inquisition--The Jesuits--Penalties of recusancy.

CHAPTER V
THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH ACADEMIES
France the arbiter of manners in the seventeenth century--Riding the
great horse--Attempts to establish academies in England--Why
travellers neglected Spain.

CHAPTER VI
THE GRAND TOUR

Origin of the term--Governors for young travellers--Expenses of travel.

CHAPTER VII
THE DECADENCE OF THE GRAND TOUR
The decline of