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 the courtier - Foundation of chairs of Modern History and
Modern Languages at Oxford and Cambridge - Englishmen become
self-sufficient - Books of travel become common - Advent of the Romantic
traveller who travels for scenery.
