Sir Thomas More.—­Their fables were designed, by exciting admiration, to call forth money for the support of missions, which, notwithstanding such false pretences, were piously undertaken and heroically pursued.  They scrupled therefore as little at interlarding their chronicles and annual letters with such miracles, as poets at the use of machinery in their verses.  Think not that I am excusing them; but thus it was that they justified their system of imposition to themselves, and this part of it must not be condemned as if it proceeded from an evil intention.

Montesinos.—­Yet, Sir Thomas, the best of those missionaries are not more to be admired for their exemplary virtue, and pitied for the superstition which debased their faith, than others of their respective orders are to be abominated for the deliberate wickedness with which, in pursuance of the same system, they imposed the most blasphemous and atrocious legends upon the credulous, and persecuted with fire and sword those who opposed their deceitful villainy.  One reason wherefore so few travels were written in the age of which we are speaking is, that no Englishman, unless he were a Papist, could venture into Italy, or any other country where the Romish religion was established in full power, without the danger of being seized by the Inquisition!

Other dangers, by sea and by land, from corsairs and banditti, including too the chances of war and of pestilence, were so great in that age, that it was not unusual for men when they set out upon their travels to put out a sum upon their own lives, which if they died upon the journey was to be the underwriter’s gain, but to be repaid if they returned, within such increase as might cover their intervening expenses.  The chances against them seem to have been considered as nearly three to one.  But danger, within a certain degree, is more likely to provoke adventurers than to deter them.

Sir Thomas More.—­There thou hast uttered a comprehensive truth.  No legislator has yet so graduated his scale of punishment as to ascertain that degree which shall neither encourage hope nor excite the audacity of desperate guilt.  It is certain that there are states of mind in which the consciousness that he is about to play for life or death stimulates a gamester to the throw.  This will apply to most of those crimes which are committed for cupidity, and not attended with violence.

Montesinos.—­Well then may these hazards have acted as incentives where there was the desire of honour, the spirit of generous enterprise, or even the love of notoriety.  By the first of these motives Pietro della Valle (the most romantic in his adventures of all true travellers) was led abroad, the latter spring set in motion my comical countryman, Tom Coriat, who by the engraver’s help has represented himself at one time in full dress, making a leg to a courtesan at Venice, and at another dropping from his rags the all-too lively proofs of prolific poverty.