To Parys, Padway, Lumbardy or Spayne
Another to Bonony, Rome, or Orleanse
To Cayne, to Tolows, Athenys, or Colayne."

Another reference to his travels and mode of travelling is found in the
Eclogues. Whether he made himself acquainted with the English towns he
enumerates before or after his continental travels it is impossible to
determine:

CORNIX.

"As if diuers wayes laye vnto Islington,
To Stow on the Wold, Quaueneth or Trompington,
To Douer, Durham, to Barwike or Exeter,
To Grantham, Totnes, Bristow or good Manchester,
To Roan, Paris, to Lions or Floraunce.

CORIDON.

(What ho man abide, what already in Fraunce,
Lo, a fayre iourney and shortly ended to,
With all these townes what thing haue we to do?

CORNIX.

By Gad man knowe thou that I haue had to do
In all these townes and yet in many mo,
To see the worlde in youth me thought was best,
And after in age to geue my selfe to rest.

CORIDON.

Thou might haue brought one and set by our village.

CORNIX.

What man I might not for lacke of cariage.
To cary mine owne selfe was all that euer I might,
And sometime for ease my sachell made I light."
ECLOGUE I.

Returning to England, after some years of residence abroad, with his mind
broadened and strengthened by foreign travel, and by the study of the best
authors, modern as well as ancient, Barclay entered the church, the only
career then open to a man of his training. With intellect, accomplishments,
and energy possessed by few, his progress to distinction and power ought to
have been easy and rapid, but it turned out quite otherwise. The road to
eminence lay by the "backstairs," the atmosphere of which he could not
endure. The ways of courtiers--falsehood, flattery, and fawning--he
detested, and worse, he said so, wherefore his learning, wit and eloquence
found but small reward. To his freedom of speech, his unsparing exposure
and denunciation of corruption and vice in the Court and the Church, as
well as among the people generally, must undoubtedly be attributed the
failure to obtain that high promotion his talents deserved, and would
otherwise have met with. The policy, not always a successful one in the
end, of ignoring an inconvenient display of talent, appears to have been
fully carried out in the instance of Barclay.

His first preferme