Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education. E. S. Bates
to consider the foregoing instructions, and even these three "facts," on their humorous side only, is to miss much of their interest. Two, for instance, of these etymologies are but examples of what is not only continually coming into notice in books of this date, but is especially noticeable in guide-books and tourists' notes, in which latter the habit of mind of the time is more exactly mirrored in its daily attitude than in any other class of books. They exemplify the two sources of knowledge of antiquity, the two standards of comparison, then available: classical and biblical; of more nearly equal authority than they were before or have been since; and they were the only ones. So with the objects of enquiry: they are implied by that lack of reference books from which not only the tourist, but governments also, suffered; it is clear, for example, that in 1592 much elementary information was not at hand, even in manuscript, in England.[15] The Tsar, moreover, about this time addressed a letter to the "Governor of the High Signiory of Venice," his advisers thinking that Venice was governed by a nominee of the Pope; and Rivadeneyra, who was very well-informed about affairs English, says in his "Cisma de Inglaterra," written thirty years after the reform of the English currency under Elizabeth: "The gold and silver currency is not so pure nor so fine as it was before heresy entered into the kingdom, for in the time of Henry VIII and his children Edward and Elizabeth, it has been falsified and alloyed with other metals, and so the money is worth much less than it used to be." Camden again, who wrote his Annals of Elizabeth's Reign early in the next century to correct misconceptions to which foreign scholars were liable, thought it necessary, when he mentioned Dublin, to explain that it was the chief city of Ireland; and very reasonably, too, considering that one of Henry VIII's officials in Ireland wrote home: "Because the country called Leinster and the situation thereof is unknown to the King and his Council, it is to be understood that Leinster is the fifth part of Ireland."[16] And there was a certain gentleman at the court of King James I, supposed to be an authority on things Continental, who answered, when asked for information about Venice, that he could not give much because he had ridden post through it—and it was not till the questioner got there that he became aware that Venice was surrounded by water; just as the secretary of a Spanish duke in England writes that his master took ship from "Calais, because, England being an island, it cannot be approached by land."
It may perhaps seem that the absence of knowledge which is ordinary now, indicated by the above illustrations, was extraordinary rather than ordinary even then. But the fact was that, besides the available books being practically always too much behind the times for any but antiquaries' purposes, the writers themselves had so little information at hand that it was only here and there their writings were anything but hopelessly superficial, even when obtained; and to obtain them was no easy matter. There were at least three men who published practical handbooks in English for Continental travelling later than Andrew Boorde and earlier than Howell; yet they, and Howell also, each claim that theirs is the first book of its kind in English. Whether the statement is made in good faith, or for business purposes, it proves equally well that even if a book was written, it was not easy to find.
Or again, take a book which was so often republished as to be easy to obtain, the "Viaggio da Venetia al Santo Sepolcro," for instance, the authorship of the later editions of which is ascribed to one Father Noë, a Franciscan. The first edition seems to be that of 1500, and it continued to be reprinted down to 1781; at least thirty-four editions came out before 1640, when the period under consideration ends. It was not, however, an Italian book originally, having been translated from a German source which was in existence as early as 1465, if not earlier.[17] Since, therefore, its information was never thoroughly revised, at any rate, not before 1640, sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century pilgrims went on buying mid-fifteenth-century information. They were recommended, for instance, to go by the pilgrim galley, which ceased to run about 1586; and also to take part in a festival held yearly on the banks of the Jordan at Epiphany, which must have been abandoned far earlier even than that.
Still, books about what there was to notice in given places did exist just as there were treatises of the Gruberus and Plotius kind unfolding what should be noticed in general, and why. Best known of the earlier kind was Münster's gigantic "Cosmography," which Montaigne regretted he had not brought with him; and by the middle of the seventeenth century several other first-rate geographers, besides minor men, had compiled books of the kind. But the bearing of such books on our subject is only in so far as they reflect the thoughts, and ministered to the needs, of the tourist; and they may therefore be best considered in the works of those who wrote "Itineraries," which not only recorded journeys but were meant to serve as examples of how a journey might be made the most of. Such a book was Hentzner's, a sort of link between Gruberus and Fynes Moryson. Hentzner was a Silesian who acted as guide and tutor to a young nobleman from 1596 to 1600. They began, and ended, their journey at Breslau, and toured through Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, and England; the "Itineraria" being based on notes made by the way. His account of England does him rather more than justice, for there is some first-hand experience there, which is just what is lacking in the rest of his book. Practically everything he says is second-hand, and the fact of his being at a place is merely a peg to hang quotations on. When he is not quoting from books he seems to be quoting from people; and half of what we expect from a guide-book is absent: means of conveyance, for instance. This is an omission, however, which can be explained: he was only concerned with the most respectable form of travelling, and that meant, on horseback. And the rest of his omissions, taken all together, throw into relief the academic character of the book, due, not to himself individually so much as to the period. His preface cannot, naturally, differ much from Plotius, nor add much, except in recommending Psalms 91, 126, 127, and 139 as suitable for use by those about to travel, forgetting, it would seem, the one beginning, "When Israel went forth out of Egypt," which Pantagruel had sung by his crew before they set out to find the "Holy Bottle"; and being a Protestant he cannot recommend the invocation of St. Joseph and St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saints of travellers; all he can do is to pray at the beginning for good angels to guard his footsteps, and, at the end, to acknowledge assistance from one, although it does not appear that he ever went to the length of Uhland's traveller:—
Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee—
Take, I give it willingly;
For, invisible to thee,
Spirits twain have crossed with me,
and paid a fare for the good angel. On the way, having reached, say Rome, he does not, in Baedeker's merciful fashion, tell you the hotels first, in order of merit, but begins straightway: "Rome. Mistress and Queen of Cities, in times past the head of well-nigh all the world, which she had subjected to her rule by virtue of the sublime deeds of the most stout-hearted of men. Concerning the first founders thereof there are as many opinions, and as different, as there are writers. Some there are who think that Evander, in his flight from Arcadia," etc. Yet no one could write over six hundred pages about a four years' tour in sixteenth-century Europe without being valuable at times; partly in relation to ideas, partly to experiences into which those ideas led him and his pupils.
It was less than twenty years after Hentzner that another German published a record of travel which was also meant as a guide. But time had worked wonders; it was not only a personal difference between the former and Zinzerling that accounts for the difference in their books; it was the increase in the number of tourists. The latter sketches out a plan by means of which all France can be seen at the most convenient times and most thoroughly without waste of time, with excursions to England, the Low Countries, and Spain. Routes are his first consideration; other hints abound. At St. Nicholas is a host who is a terror to strangers; and remember that at Saint-Savin, thirty leagues from Bourges, is the shanty of "Philemon and Baucis" where you can live for next to nothing; and that outside the gate at Poictiers is a chemist who speaks German, and so on. Frequently, indeed, he notes where you may find your German understood; and also where you should learn, and where avoid learning, French.
Advice of this last-mentioned kind calls to mind a third class of guide-books, intended to assist those who, without them, would realise how vain is the help of man when he can't understand what you say. The need for such became more and more evident as time went on and Latin became less and less the living and international language