English Travellers of the Renaissance eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 194 pages of information about English Travellers of the Renaissance.

English Travellers of the Renaissance eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 194 pages of information about English Travellers of the Renaissance.
“purchased the greatest part of his divine wisdome from the very innermost closets of Egypt.”  Therefore to learn how to serve one’s Prince in peace or war, as a soldier, ambassador, or “politicke person,” one must, like Ulysses, have known many men and seen many cities; know not only the objective points of foreign countries, such as the fortifications, the fordable rivers, the distances between places, but the more subjective characteristics, such as the “chief force and virtue of the Spanyardes and of the Frenchmen.  What is the greatest vice in both nacions?  After what manner the subjects in both countries shewe their obedience to their prince, or oppose themselves against him?"[59] Here we see coming into play the newly acquired knowledge of human nature of which the sixteenth century was so proud.  An ambassador to Paris must know what was especially pleasing to a Frenchman.  Even a captain in war must know the special virtues and vices of the enemy:  which nation is ablest to make a sudden sally, which is stouter to entertain the shock in open field, which is subtlest of the contriving of an ambush.

Evidently, since there is so varied a need for acquaintance with foreign countries, travel is a positive duty.  Noah, Aristotle, Solomon, Julius Caesar, Columbus, and many other people of authority are quoted to prove that “all that ever were of any great knowledge, learning or wisdom since the beginning of the world unto this present, have given themselves to travel:  and that there never was man that performed any great thing or achieved any notable exploit, unless he had travelled."[60]

This summary, of course, cannot reproduce the style of each of our authors, and only roughly indicates their method of persuasion.  Especially it cannot represent the mode of Zwinger, whose contribution is a treatise of four hundred pages, arranged in outline form, by means of which any single idea is made to wend its tortuous way through folios.  Every aspect of the subject is divided and subdivided with meticulous care.  He cannot speak of the time for travel without discriminating between natural time, such as years and days, and artificial time, such as festivals and holidays; nor of the means of locomotion without specifying the possibility of being carried through the air by:  (I) Mechanical means, such as the wings of Icarus; or (2) Angels, as the Apostle Philip was snatched from Samaria.[61] In this elaborate method he found an imitator in Sir Thomas Palmer.[62] The following, a mere truncated fragment, may serve to illustrate both books:—­

    “Travelling is either:—­
    I. Irregular. 
    II.  Regular.  Of Regular Travailers some be
      A. Non-voluntaries, sent out by the prince,
        and employed in matters of
        1.  Peace (etc.).
        2.  Warre (etc.). 
      B. Voluntaries.  Voluntary Regular Travailers
      are considered
        1.  As they are moved accidentally.

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English Travellers of the Renaissance from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.