was the old curiosity to see the
world and know all sorts of men--to be tried and tested. More powerful
than any theory of education was the yearning for far-off, foreign
things, and the magic of the sea.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II

THE HIGH PURPOSE OF THE ELIZABETHAN TRAVELLER

The love of travel, we all know, flourished exceedingly in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. All classes felt the desire to go beyond seas upon

"Such wind as scatters young men through the world,
To seeke their fortunes farther than at home,
Where small experience growes."[36]

The explorer and the poet, the adventurer, the prodigal and the earl's
son, longed alike for foreign shores. What Ben Jonson said of Coryat
might be stretched to describe the average Elizabethan: "The mere
superscription of a letter from Zurich sets him up like a top: Basil or
Heidelberg makes him spinne. And at seeing the word Frankford, or
Venice, though but in the title of a Booke, he is readie to breake
doublet, cracke elbowes, and overflowe the roome with his murmure."[37]
Happy was an obscure gentleman like Fynes Moryson, who could roam for
ten years through the "twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohmerland,
Sweitzerand, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turkey, France,
England, Scotland and Ireland" and not be peremptorily called home by
his sovereign. Sad it was to be a court favourite like Fulke Greville,
who four times, thirsting for strange lands, was plucked back to England
by Elizabeth.

At about the time (1575) when some of the most prominent
courtiers--Edward Dyer, Gilbert Talbot, the Earl of Hertford, and more
especially Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Philip Sidney--had just
returned from abroad, book-publishers thought it worth while to print
books addressed to travellers. At least, there grew up a demand for
advice to young men which became a feature of Elizabethan literature,
printed and unprinted. It was the convention for a young man about to
travel to apply to some experienced or elderly friend, and for that
friend to disburden a torrent of maxims after the manner of Polonius.
John Florio, who knew the humours of his day, represents this in a
dialogue in _Second Frutes_.[38] So does Robert Greene in _Greene's
Mourning Garment_.[39] What were at first the personal warnings of a
wise man to his young friend, such as Cecil's letter to Rutland, grew
into a generalized oration for the use of any travelle