English Travellers of the Renaissance | Page 4

recounting their travels.[7] There was no
harm in going sometimes, but it was not pious. And people could spend
their time, money and pains on something which was truly pious.[8]
It was only a few years after this that that pupil of Erasmus and his
friends, King Henry the Eighth, who startled Europe by the way he not
only received new ideas but acted upon them, swept away the shrines,
burned our Lady of Walsingham and prosecuted "the holy blisful
martyr" Thomas à Becket for fraudulent pretensions.[9]
But a new object for travel was springing up and filling the leading
minds of the sixteenth century--the desire of learning, at first hand, the
best that was being thought and said in the world. Humanism was the
new power, the new channel into which men were turning in the days
when "our naturell, yong, lusty and coragious prynce and sovrayne lord
King Herre the Eighth entered into the flower of pleasaunt youthe."[10]
And as the scientific spirit or the socialistic spirit can give to the
permanent instincts of the world a new zest, so the Renaissance passion
for self-expansion and for education gave to the old road a new mirage.
All through the fifteenth century the universities of Italy, pre-eminent
since their foundation for secular studies, had been gaining reputation

by their offer of a wider education than the threadbare discussions of
the schoolmen. The discovery and revival in the fifteenth century of
Greek literature, which had stirred Italian society so profoundly, gave
to the universities a northward-spreading fame. Northern scholars, like
Rudolf Agricola, hurried south to find congenial air at the centre of
intellectual life. That professional humanists could not do without the
stamp of true culture which an Italian degree gave to them, Erasmus,
observer of all things, notes in the year 1500 to the Lady of Veer:
"Two things, I feel, are very necessary: one that I go to Italy, to gain for
my poor learning some authority from the celebrity of the place; the
other, that I take the degree of Doctor; both senseless, to be sure. For
people do not straightway change their minds because they cross the
sea, as Horace says, nor will the shadow of an impressive name make
me a whit more learned ... but we must put on the lion's skin to prove
our ability to those who judge a man by his title and not by his books,
which in truth they do not understand."[11]
Although Erasmus despised degree-hunting, it is well known that he
felt the power of Italy. He was tempted to remain in Rome for ever, by
reason of the company he found there. "What a sky and fields, what
libraries and pleasant walks and sweet confabulation with the
learned ..."[12] he exclaims, in afterwards recalling that paradise of
scholars. There was, for instance, the Cardinal Grimani, who begged
Erasmus to share his life ... and books.[13] And there was Aldus
Manutius. We get a glimpse of the Venetian printing-house when
Aldus and Erasmus worked together: Erasmus sitting writing regardless
of the noise of printers, while Aldus breathlessly reads proof, admiring
every word. "We were so busy," says Erasmus, "we scarce had time to
scratch our ears."[14]
It was this charm of intellectual companionship which started the whole
stream of travel animi causa. Whoever had keen wits, an agile mind,
imagination, yearned for Italy. There enlightened spirits struck sparks
from one another. Young and ardent minds in England and in Germany
found an escape from the dull and melancholy grimness of their
uneducated elders--purely practical fighting-men, whose ideals were

fixed on a petrified code of life.
I need not explain how Englishmen first felt this charm of urbane
civilization. The travels of Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, of Gunthorpe,
Flemming, Grey and Free, have been recently described by Mr Einstein
in The Italian Renaissance in England. As for Italian journeys of
Selling, Grocyn, Latimer, Tunstall, Colet and Lily, of that extraordinary
group of scholars who transformed Oxford by the introduction of Greek
ideals and gave to it the peculiar distinction which is still shining, I
mention them only to suggest that they are the source of the
Renaissance respect for a foreign education, and the founders of the
fashion which, in its popular spreadings, we will attempt to trace. They
all studied in Italy, and brought home nothing but good. For to
scholarship they joined a native force of character which gave a most
felicitous introduction to England of the fine things of the mind which
they brought home with them. By their example they gave an impetus
to travel for education's sake which lesser men could never have done.
Though through Grocyn, Linacre and Tunstall, Greek was better taught
in England than in Italy, according to Erasmus,[15] at the time Henry