Touring in 1600

Yet underneath all the special characteristics which distinguish everyone of these tourists from every other, there remains one that all share with each other and with us, that expressed with the crude controversial Elizabethan vigour in some lines which Thomas Nashe wrote towards the close of the sixteenth century – "'Countryman, tell me what is the occasion of thy straying so far … to visit this strange nation?' … 'That which was the Israelites' curse we … count our chief blessedness: he is nobody that hath not travelled'" – the sense of the inexhaustible pleasure of travel. Had it been otherwise they would not have cared to write down their experiences; nor we to read them. And if at times it is hard to find a reflection of their pleasure in what they have written, it is certainly there, if only between the lines, manifesting how this continual variety of human beings is brought into touch, even if unconsciously, with the infinite change and range of the ideas and efforts of millions of persons over millions upon millions of acres, each person and each acre with its own history, life, fate, and influence. If, too, in the course of summarising what they experienced, the more trivial details seem to occupy a larger proportion of the space than is their due, it may be suggested that that is the proportion in which they appear in the tourists' reminiscences.

The permanent undercurrent I have tried to suggest where circumstances bring it to the surface in some one of its more definite forms.

CHAPTER II

GUIDE-BOOKS AND GUIDES

Now resteth in my memory but this point, which indeed is the chief to you of all others; which is, the choice of what men you are to direct yourself to; for it is certain no vessel can leave a worse taste in the liquor it contains, than a wrong teacher infects an unskilful hearer with that which will hardly ever out.

    Sir Philip Sidney's advice to his brother
    (about 1578).

From what has been said already, two conclusions may be drawn: first, that the Average Tourist was given much advice; secondly, that he did not take it. Let us too, then, see the theory for one chapter only; and, in all chapters after, the practice.

It must have amused many a youngster to hear the down-trodden old gentleman, whom his father had hired, setting forth how the said youngster must behave in wicked Italy if he was to grow up in favour with God and man; all the more so if the old gentleman, whose name, perhaps, was the local equivalent for John Smith, published his advice in Latin under a Latin pseudonym, say, Gruberus or Plotius. Gruberus and Plotius suggest themselves because they are the very guidiest of guide-book writers. They, like all the orthodox of their kind, begin by a solemn argument for and against travelling. They bring up to support them a most miscellaneous host: the Prophets, the Apostles, Daedalus, Ulysses, the Queen of Sheba, Theseus, Anacharsis, the "Church of Christ," Pythagoras, Plato, Abraham, Aristotle, Apollonius of Tyana, Euclid, Zamolxis, Lycurgus, Naomi, Cicero, Galen, Dioscorides, him who travelled from farthest Spain to see Livy ("and immediately," as some one most unkindly says, "immediately he saw him, went away"); Solon also and St. Paul, and Mithridates, the Roman Decemviri, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pausanias, Cluverius, Moses, Orpheus, Draco, Minos, Rhadamanthus, Æsculapius, Hippocrates, Avicenna, the physicians of Egypt and the gods of Greece. But there is not a word about Jonah; perhaps his luck and experiences were considered abnormal; or perhaps because, as Howell says, "he travelled much, but saw little."

Then there are those who have to be refuted or explained away: Socrates, Seneca, the Lacedaemonians, Athenians, Chinese, Muscovites, Psophidius, Elianus, and Pompeius Laetus. Cain, also, the first traveller, creates a prejudice. Likewise, the argument from experience has to be met. Some return from travel, they say, using phrases without meaning, pale, lean, scabby and worm-eaten, burdens on their consciences, astounding garments on their backs, with the manners of an actor and superciliously stupid. Yet is this not due to the thing itself, but to the abuse thereof; peradventure he shall be corrupted more quickly at home than abroad, and there is less to be feared from universities and strange lands than from the indulgent mother. Moreover "non nobiliora quam mobiliora"; the heavens rejoice in motion, and transplantation yieldeth new life to plants. And shall the little sparrow travel as he pleases and man, lord of the animals, be confined to a farm or a hamlet?

Reason, erudition and emotion having thus conquered, instruction begins. The forethought necessary is as great as if he were choosing a wife. For tutors and horses, it seems, the most that can be expected from them is that they shall not imperil his soul and body respectively. First among requisites is a book of prayers and hymns effective for salvation without being so pugnacious, doctrinally, as to cause suspicion. Next, a note-book, a watch, or a pocket sun-dial; if a watch, not a striker, for that warns the wicked you have cash; a broad-brimmed hat, gaiters, boots, breeches (as if his friends would let him start without any!), gloves, shoes, shirts, handkerchiefs, "which come in useful when you perspire"; and if he cannot take many shirts, let those he takes be washed, he will find it more comfortable. Also, a linen overall, to put over his clothes when he gets into bed, in case the bed is dirty. Let him get to know something of medicine and, "like Achilles," learn to cook before he leaves home. Travel not at night, and, in daytime, be guarded by the official guards which German and Belgian towns provide; or travel in company.

Now, the aim of travelling is the acquisition of knowledge; stay, therefore, in the more famous places rather than keep on the move. Enquire, concerning the district, its names, past and present; its language; its situation; measurements; number of towns, or villages; its climate, fertility; whether maritime or not, and possessing forests, mountains, barren or wooded; wild beasts, profitable mines; animal or vegetable life peculiar to itself; navigable or fish-yielding rivers; medicinal baths; efficient fortresses. And concerning towns: the founder, "sights," free or otherwise; what the town has undergone, famines, plagues, floods, fires, sieges, revolutions, sackings; whether it has been the scene of councils, conferences, synods, assemblies, gatherings, or tournaments.

It should be mentioned that in this last paragraph I am paraphrasing Gruberus only, and presume he is confining himself to what the young tourist should discover before breakfast; otherwise he is but a superficial instructor compared to Plotius. The latter draws up a series of questions, which include enquiries about weights and measures; about the clergy, how many and what salaries; religion, is it "reformed"? if so, what has happened to monks and nuns; how often Communion is administered; and whether strangers are received thereat; arrangements for burial. This last question would seem more in place at the end, but it is only number thirty-six, and there are one hundred and seventeen questions altogether. Then, is there a University? and, if so, may the rector whack the students? and concerning the professors, what they teach and what they are paid. As for local government, the enquiries exhaust possibilities. Also, how many houses; and what about night-watchmen; legal procedure; "ancient lights," the right to use water, executors' duties, grounds for divorce, dress, military training? Furthermore: are the roads clean, and can children marry without their parents' consent? concerning methods of cookery, and antiquity of the town; whether the position of an officer of justice is a respected one or not; concerning notaries public; and whether the water used in cooking comes from river, fountain, well, or rain; how many varieties of grain are used in bread-making; and what means have they for dealing with fires; their sanitary arrangements and public holidays, with the reasons for the latter; care of paupers, orphans, and lepers; what punishments for what crimes.

It must not be imagined that Gruberus and Plotius thought of all this by themselves: they copied others, being but two among many. Where the copying reached its most uncritical extreme was in the origins ascribed to towns: Paris, the guide-books say, was founded by a Gaul of that name who lived two hundred years before his namesake of Troy; Haarlem is also named after its founder "Herr (i. e., Mr.) Lem"; Toulouse dated from the time of the prophetess Deborah; and so on.

But to consider the foregoing instructions, and even these three "facts," on their humorous side only, is to miss much of their interest. Two, for instance, of these etymologies are but examples of what is not only continually coming into notice in books of this date, but is especially noticeable in guide-books and tourists' notes, in which latter the habit of mind of the time is more exactly mirrored in its daily attitude than in any other class of books. They exemplify the two sources of knowledge of antiquity, the two standards of comparison, then available: classical and biblical; of more nearly equal authority than they were before or have been since; and they were the only ones. So with the objects of enquiry: they are implied by that lack of reference books from which not only the tourist, but governments also, suffered; it is clear, for example, that in 1592 much elementary information was not at hand, even in manuscript, in England.[15 - See Faunt's "Discourses touching the office of Principal Secretary of State," in Eng. Hist. Rev., July, 1905.] The Tsar, moreover, about this time addressed a letter to the "Governor of the High Signiory of Venice," his advisers thinking that Venice was governed by a nominee of the Pope; and Rivadeneyra, who was very well-informed about affairs English, says in his "Cisma de Inglaterra," written thirty years after the reform of the English currency under Elizabeth: "The gold and silver currency is not so pure nor so fine as it was before heresy entered into the kingdom, for in the time of Henry VIII and his children Edward and Elizabeth, it has been falsified and alloyed with other metals, and so the money is worth much less than it used to be." Camden again, who wrote his Annals of Elizabeth's Reign early in the next century to correct misconceptions to which foreign scholars were liable, thought it necessary, when he mentioned Dublin, to explain that it was the chief city of Ireland; and very reasonably, too, considering that one of Henry VIII's officials in Ireland wrote home: "Because the country called Leinster and the situation thereof is unknown to the King and his Council, it is to be understood that Leinster is the fifth part of Ireland."[16 - Falkiner, p. 117.] And there was a certain gentleman at the court of King James I, supposed to be an authority on things Continental, who answered, when asked for information about Venice, that he could not give much because he had ridden post through it – and it was not till the questioner got there that he became aware that Venice was surrounded by water; just as the secretary of a Spanish duke in England writes that his master took ship from "Calais, because, England being an island, it cannot be approached by land."

It may perhaps seem that the absence of knowledge which is ordinary now, indicated by the above illustrations, was extraordinary rather than ordinary even then. But the fact was that, besides the available books being practically always too much behind the times for any but antiquaries' purposes, the writers themselves had so little information at hand that it was only here and there their writings were anything but hopelessly superficial, even when obtained; and to obtain them was no easy matter. There were at least three men who published practical handbooks in English for Continental travelling later than Andrew Boorde and earlier than Howell; yet they, and Howell also, each claim that theirs is the first book of its kind in English. Whether the statement is made in good faith, or for business purposes, it proves equally well that even if a book was written, it was not easy to find.

Or again, take a book which was so often republished as to be easy to obtain, the "Viaggio da Venetia al Santo Sepolcro," for instance, the authorship of the later editions of which is ascribed to one Father Noë, a Franciscan. The first edition seems to be that of 1500, and it continued to be reprinted down to 1781; at least thirty-four editions came out before 1640, when the period under consideration ends. It was not, however, an Italian book originally, having been translated from a German source which was in existence as early as 1465, if not earlier.[17 - Röhricht, "Bibliotheca geographica Palaestinæ," 118. In the London Library is a copy of an edition printed at Ronciglione, 1615, which seems to have escaped the notice of all bibliographers.] Since, therefore, its information was never thoroughly revised, at any rate, not before 1640, sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century pilgrims went on buying mid-fifteenth-century information. They were recommended, for instance, to go by the pilgrim galley, which ceased to run about 1586; and also to take part in a festival held yearly on the banks of the Jordan at Epiphany, which must have been abandoned far earlier even than that.

Still, books about what there was to notice in given places did exist just as there were treatises of the Gruberus and Plotius kind unfolding what should be noticed in general, and why. Best known of the earlier kind was Münster's gigantic "Cosmography," which Montaigne regretted he had not brought with him; and by the middle of the seventeenth century several other first-rate geographers, besides minor men, had compiled books of the kind. But the bearing of such books on our subject is only in so far as they reflect the thoughts, and ministered to the needs, of the tourist; and they may therefore be best considered in the works of those who wrote "Itineraries," which not only recorded journeys but were meant to serve as examples of how a journey might be made the most of. Such a book was Hentzner's, a sort of link between Gruberus and Fynes Moryson. Hentzner was a Silesian who acted as guide and tutor to a young nobleman from 1596 to 1600. They began, and ended, their journey at Breslau, and toured through Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, and England; the "Itineraria" being based on notes made by the way. His account of England does him rather more than justice, for there is some first-hand experience there, which is just what is lacking in the rest of his book. Practically everything he says is second-hand, and the fact of his being at a place is merely a peg to hang quotations on. When he is not quoting from books he seems to be quoting from people; and half of what we expect from a guide-book is absent: means of conveyance, for instance. This is an omission, however, which can be explained: he was only concerned with the most respectable form of travelling, and that meant, on horseback. And the rest of his omissions, taken all together, throw into relief the academic character of the book, due, not to himself individually so much as to the period. His preface cannot, naturally, differ much from Plotius, nor add much, except in recommending Psalms 91, 126, 127, and 139 as suitable for use by those about to travel, forgetting, it would seem, the one beginning, "When Israel went forth out of Egypt," which Pantagruel had sung by his crew before they set out to find the "Holy Bottle"; and being a Protestant he cannot recommend the invocation of St. Joseph and St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saints of travellers; all he can do is to pray at the beginning for good angels to guard his footsteps, and, at the end, to acknowledge assistance from one, although it does not appear that he ever went to the length of Uhland's traveller: —

Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee, —
Take, I give it willingly;
For, invisible to thee,
Spirits twain have crossed with me,

and paid a fare for the good angel. On the way, having reached, say Rome, he does not, in Baedeker's merciful fashion, tell you the hotels first, in order of merit, but begins straightway: "Rome. Mistress and Queen of Cities, in times past the head of well-nigh all the world, which she had subjected to her rule by virtue of the sublime deeds of the most stout-hearted of men. Concerning the first founders thereof there are as many opinions, and as different, as there are writers. Some there are who think that Evander, in his flight from Arcadia," etc. Yet no one could write over six hundred pages about a four years' tour in sixteenth-century Europe without being valuable at times; partly in relation to ideas, partly to experiences into which those ideas led him and his pupils.

It was less than twenty years after Hentzner that another German published a record of travel which was also meant as a guide. But time had worked wonders; it was not only a personal difference between the former and Zinzerling that accounts for the difference in their books; it was the increase in the number of tourists. The latter sketches out a plan by means of which all France can be seen at the most convenient times and most thoroughly without waste of time, with excursions to England, the Low Countries, and Spain. Routes are his first consideration; other hints abound. At St. Nicholas is a host who is a terror to strangers; and remember that at Saint-Savin, thirty leagues from Bourges, is the shanty of "Philemon and Baucis" where you can live for next to nothing; and that outside the gate at Poictiers is a chemist who speaks German, and so on. Frequently, indeed, he notes where you may find your German understood; and also where you should learn, and where avoid learning, French.

Advice of this last-mentioned kind calls to mind a third class of guide-books, intended to assist those who, without them, would realise how vain is the help of man when he can't understand what you say. The need for such became more and more evident as time went on and Latin became less and less the living and international language it had been but recently. The use of vernaculars was everywhere coming to the front as nationalities developed further, and in many districts where it had been best known its disuse in Church hastened its disuse outside.

The extent to which Latin was current about 1600 varied in almost every country. Poland and Ireland came first, Germany second, where many of all classes spoke it fluently, and less corruptly than in Poland. Yet an Englishman[18 - Bargrave. See under Bodleian MSS. in Bibliography (Rawlinson, C. 799).] passing through Germany in 1655 found but one innkeeper who could speak it. The date suggests that the Thirty Years' War was responsible for the change. It is certainly true that France in the previous half century was far behind Germany in the matter of speaking Latin, as a result of the civil wars there. Possibly the characters of its rulers had something to do with this too, just as in England, where Latin was ordinarily spoken by the upper classes, according to Moryson, with ease and correctness, the accomplishments of Queen Elizabeth as a linguist had doubtless set a fashion. This much, at least, is certain: that in 1597 when an ambassador from Poland was unexpectedly insolent in his oration, the Queen dumbfounded him by replying on the spot with as excellent Latinity as spirit, whereas at Paris once, when a Latin oration was expected from another ambassador, not only could not the King reply, but not even any one at court. With Montaigne the case was certainly different, but then his father had had him taught Latin before French, and consequently, on his travels, so soon as he reached a stopping-place, he introduced himself to the local priest, and though neither knew the other's native language, they passed their evening conversing without difficulty.

Very many were the interesting interviews that many a tourist had which he owed to a knowledge of Latin; the extent to which knowledge was acquired orally having led to its being an ordinary incident in the life of the tourist to pay a call on the learned man of the district; a duty with the Average Tourist, a pleasure for the others. And Latin was the invariable medium, part of the respectability of the occasion. At least, not quite invariable: when the historian De Thou visited the great Sigonius, they talked Italian, because the latter, in spite of a lifetime spent in becoming the chief authority on Roman Italy, spoke Latin with difficulty.

It seems curious that Latin should have been less generally understood south, than north, of the Alps, but such was the fact. Italy was, however, ahead of Spain, where even an acquaintance with Latin was rare. In the first quarter of the sixteenth century Navagero found Alcalá the only university where lectures were delivered in Latin, and, according to the best of the guide-book writers on Spain, Zeiler, the doctorate at Salamanca could be obtained, early in the seventeenth century, without any knowledge of Latin at all; while it has been shown by M. Cirot, the biographer of Mariana, that the latter's great history of Spain, published in Latin at this time, and as successful as a book of the kind ever is in its own day, was unsaleable until translated into Spanish.

Among those, too, who did know Latin there was the barrier of differing pronunciation. Lauder of Fountainhall was very much at sea to begin with, in spite of his Scotch pronunciation being much nearer to the French than an Englishman's would have been, and there is an anecdote in Vicente Espinel's "Marcos de Obregon" which is to the point here. The latter is a novel, it is true, but the tradition that it is semi-autobiographical is borne out by many of its tales reading as if they were actual experiences, of which the following is one. One day, the hero, a Spaniard, found himself in a boat on the river Po, with a German, an Italian, and a Frenchman, and to pass the time they tried to talk Latin so that all could understand each one; but they soon abandoned the plan, as the pronunciations varied too greatly.

Nevertheless, the passing of Latin out of European conversation is to be attributed rather to the growth of Italian, and later of French, as international tongues. Gaspar Ens, who wrote a series of guides to nearly every part of Europe, says in his preface to the volume on France, "At this day their language is so much used in almost every part of the world that whosoever is unskilled therein is deemed a yokel." This was in 1609, at which date, or soon after, it was as true as a general statement can be expected to be; just as much so as the assertion in the preface to an English book in 1578: "Once every one knew Latin … now the Italian is as widely spread."[19 - Quoted by Einstein, p. 101.]

It was only in the north that French came to rival Italian during this period, for the "lingua franca," also known as "franco piccolo," the hybrid tongue in which commerce was conducted along the shores of the Mediterranean, was so largely Italian that to the average Britisher, from whom Hakluyt drew his narratives, the two were indistinguishable; but an Italian would notice, as Della Valle did, that no form of a verb but the infinitive was used. If any one was met who knew more than two languages, he would oftenest be a Jew, who usually knew Spanish and Portuguese; the latter because the tribe of Judah, from which their deliverer was to come, was supposed to be domiciled in Portugal.

Another hybrid language, as well established in its own area as the "lingua franca," was Scot-French, so constantly in use as to have an existence as a literary dialect as well as in French burlesque. These mixed languages have no place in the ordinary book-guide to languages, but were left to personal tuition; yet in the lists of the most common phrases which Andrew Boorde appends to each of his descriptions of countries may be noted a curious instance from this borderland of philology. In both the Italian and the Spanish lists he renders "How do you fare?" by "Quo modo stat cum vostro corps?"

While we are on this subject we may stop to sympathise with awkward misunderstandings like that of the Jesuit Possevino at Moscow, when invited to (Orthodox) Mass ("obednia") with intent to compromise him; he went, thinking it was dinner ("obed") to which he had been asked. Then there are those, too, whose efforts were hopelessly below even this standard, such as Alonzo de Guzman, who suffered hunger in Germany because he only knew Spanish, and was put on the road to Bologna when he wanted to get to Cologne; or the Englishman who was trying to find that same road and went along staggering the peasantry with the question, "Her ist das der raight stroze auf balnea?" the peasantry replying by signs that he interpreted as directions, but the road led him further than ever from Baden. To which class belonged a certain friend of Josias Bodley, younger brother of the founder of the Bodleian library and author of by far the liveliest account of a tour at this period,[20 - Printed by Falkiner. See Bibliography.] will never be known, but that is no reason why the tale should not be re-told. "Not long ago I was in company with some boon companions who were drinking healths in usquebagh, when one was present who wished to appear more abstemious than the rest and would not drink with them, to whom one of them, who could not speak Latin as well as I do, said these words, 'Si tu es plus sapientis quam nos sumus, tu es plus beholden to God Almighty quam nos sumus.'" And finally there are those who find themselves reduced to sign-language, such as the Roman Catholics who found a sumptuous dinner awaiting them at a Protestant inn on a fast-day, when, to add to the trial of refusing it, was the apparent impossibility of making their wants understood, until one of their number, a priest, by the way, imitated a hen's cackle and "laid" a piece of white paper the shape and size of an egg!

While conversation-dictionaries existed which claimed to be useful their claim has no other basis than that of their own prefaces; the tourists do not own to indebtedness to them. But taking it for granted that primary needs must be served by persons, not books, for further acquirements Moryson recommends the romance of "Amadis de Gaule" which was being read by every one in his own tongue. Probably the conversation-books are of more use now than at the time of their publication, from the light they occasionally throw on customs, and, through their phoneticism, on pronunciation. Yet the tourists' own evidence as to this is more valuable, as being more authentic, when an Englishman writes "Landtaye" for "Landtage" and "Bawre" for "Bauer." As for sixteenth-century maps, they seem meant for gifts rather to an enemy than to a friend. In every department, then, the tourist had recourse to persons.

The qualifications for a first-rate guide, then and now, differ in one respect only, – that a "religious test" should be applied was taken for granted on both sides. In fact, in Scotland in 1609 an edict was issued forbidding young noblemen to leave the country without a Protestant tutor: the reason being that the great danger of a tour abroad lay in a possible change in the youngster's religion, or inclinations towards tolerance developing, with the result that his political career on his return might be dangerous to his country and himself through his being more than the just one step ahead of his fellow-countrymen which is necessary to political salvation.

The prevailing state of mind may be illustrated by one or two anecdotes. The following one Lauder tells of himself is characteristic of his kind. He had entered a church where all were on their knees: "a woman observing that I neither had gone to the font for holy water, neither kneeled, in a great heat of zeal she told me 'ne venez icy pour prophaner ce sainct lieu.' I suddenly replied: 'Vous estez bien devotieuse, madame, mais peut estre vostre ignorance prophane ce sainct lieu d'avantage que ma présence.'" William Lithgow is proud to say he quarrelled with companions simply because they were Papists, and had often seized opportunities to tear in pieces the rich garments on images rather than "with indifferent forbearance wink at the wickedness of idolaters." And an Englishman of good education and breeding and character, says that being at Malaga cathedral during High Mass "so long as we were bare-headed and behaved ourselves civilly and gravely, we might walk up and down and see everything without the least molestation." One extreme was naturally accompanied by another extreme. Sometimes the tourist's return never took place. This was the more likely when the Papacy was in a militant mood, at which times the Inquisition developed a taste for tutors; whose arrest served a double purpose, a hot antagonist was secured, unimportant enough to create no serious trouble, and the young nobleman was left undefended on his sectarian side, probably a vulnerable one. One case of many is that of John Mole,[21 - See Cal. S. P. Ven., vol. ii (under "Mole," in the index).] who died in the prison of the Inquisition at Rome in 1638 at the age of eighty, after thirty years' imprisonment; his ward, Lord Roos, having been credited with no particular desire to get him out.

A visit to Rome, however, and to other places, such as St. Omer, where "seminaries" existed for English Roman Catholics, was usually forbidden in the licence to go abroad which every Englishman had to obtain unless he was a merchant, and which was not granted without good reason shown. This contained ordinarily a time limit also, one year's leave, or three; and prohibition of communication with disloyal countrymen or entry into a State at war with England: supervision of a kind which was exercised by practically every European ruler. A Roman Catholic, for instance, incurred excommunication if he passed into a country at war with the Pope.

The precautions of Protestant sovereigns were against Roman Catholicism inasmuch as there lay political dangers, but so far as religion was concerned, as much precaution might reasonably have been taken against Mohammedanism. In no European country did ability bring a man to the top so readily as in Turkey, and being a foreigner was in a man's favour; not even at Venice was there such a mixture of nations as at Constantinople; the majority of the Grand Signor's eminent subjects were renegade foreigners. Dallam might refuse the invitation; many accepted it; and a Turk considered it only humane to give an unbeliever at least one definite invitation to salvation. An occasion which many would make use of to turn Turk was during the fortnight preceding the circumcision of the Sultan's heir. One traveller saw two hundred circumcised at such a time, many of them adult, one said to be as old as fifty-three. As a particular instance of an English "Turk" there is the case of the English Consul at Cairo in 1601. He was "taking care" of much belonging to English merchants at the time, in the possession of which the Turks no doubt confirmed him. At the same time there was an exactly similar case of a Venetian, for the same purpose. But besides the causes of the chance to rise in the world, or the attractions of others' property, there was another reason for apostacy, the chief one – mitigating the sufferings of captivity.

But the renegades came mostly from the lower or the commercial class, and did not come home, so that the fact that a guide was required to be a sectarian, in contradistinction to a Christian, is another comment on the characteristics of the Average Tourist. Sir Walter Ralegh, however, did not make that a qualification, for he chose Ben Jonson to chaperon his son. There is only one anecdote about Ben Jonson in that capacity, the one he told Drummond himself. "This youth" [i. e., Ralegh's son] "being knavishly inclined, caused him to be drunken, and dead drunk, so that he knew not where he was; thereafter laid him on a car, which he made to be drawn through the streets, at every corner showing his governor stretched out and telling them that was a more lively image of the Crucifix than any they had: at which young Ralegh's mother delighted much (saying his father when young was so inclined), though the father abhorred it."

Another sixteenth-century guide immortalised by another's pen is Jean Bouchet, "Traverseur de Voies Perilleuses" as he called himself. Not that Rabelais, to whom the pen belonged, names him, only he applies this nickname to the guide of Pantagruel and company, Xenomanes (i. e., "mad on foreigners"). No easy task to be an orthodox guide with Friar John at one's elbow; for guide-book etymologies Friar John had no taste; only asked, "What's that to do with me? I wasn't in the country when it was baptised!" A guide to suit Friar John would have been some disciple of Montaigne, who while agreeing with the others that travelling was one of the best forms of education thought that it was not "pour en rapporter seulement, à la mode de nostre noblesse françoise, combien de pas a 'Santa Rotonda,' ou la richesse des calessons de la signora Livia; ou, comme d'aultres, combien le visage de Neron, de quelque vieille ruyne de là, est plus long ou plus large que celuy de quelque pareille medaille, mais pour rapporter principalement les humeurs de ces nations et leur façons, et pour frotter et limer nostre cervelle contre celle d'aultruy."

Others, too, like Montaigne, without setting out to write guide-books, have guidance to offer as a result of experience of life and travel; sometimes in letters, sometimes in chance remarks. Letters of this kind which have survived are many, but so much alike are they as to suggest that the fathers shrunk from explaining to the sons how they themselves had made the most of their time and fell back on unacknowledged quotations from a Gruberus. Of the few frank ones the two best are by Sir Philip Sidney to his brother, and by the ninth Earl of Northumberland to his son Algernon.[22 - Grose and Astle's Antiquarian Repertory, 1805, iv, 374-380.] Although the latter is nearly as encyclopædic as Plotius, it is so merely in the way of suggestion, discussing only motives and ideas and insisting on his son's freedom of choice, in general as well as in detail; with one or two remarks added that would have scandalised the guide-book writer, but leaven the whole of the letter. It is especially interesting as showing how the idea of travel as a factor in life brought out the best of a man who was a failure at home from a day-by-day point of view.

As for chance remarks: one likens travelling to death in so far as it means separation from friends, letters, moreover, yielding as little satisfaction as prayers; and whereas the wise say that death is the entrance to a happier life, there is the opposite prospect with travel, so that it has all the disadvantages of hell as well as of death. And here may follow a few more remarks of theirs, chosen as suggestive of the characteristics of sixteenth-century travel in so far as it differs from our own, not neglecting proverbs: —

A traveller has need of a falcon's eye, an ass's ears, a monkey's face, a merchant's words, a camel's back, a hog's mouth, a deer's feet. And the traveller to Rome – the back of an ass, the belly of a hog, and a conscience as broad as the king's highway.

Line your doublet with taffetie; taffetie is lice-proof.

Never journey without something to eat in your pocket, if only to throw to dogs when attacked by them.

Carry a note-book and red crayon (i. e., lead pencils were not in regular use).

When going by coach, avoid women, especially old women; they always want the best places.

At sea, remove your spurs; sailors make a point of stealing them from those who are being sea-sick. Keep your distance from them in any case; they are covered with vermin.

In an inn-bedroom which contains big pictures, look behind the latter to see they do not conceal a secret door, or a window.

Women should not travel at all and married men not much.

CHAPTER III

ON THE WATER