Of pedantry, however, there never seems to have been any danger in Court circles, either in Tudor or Stuart days. It took constant exhortations to make the majority of noblemen's sons learn anything at all out of books. For centuries the marks of a gentleman had been bravery, courtesy and a good seat in the saddle, and it was not to be supposed that a sudden fashionable enthusiasm for literature could change all that. Ascham had declared that the Elizabethan young bloods thought it shameful to be learned because the "Jentlemen of France" were not so.[208] When with the general relaxation of high effort which appeared in so many ways at the Court of James I., the mastery of Greek authors was no longer an ideal of the courtier, the Jacobean gallant was hardly more intellectual than the mediæval page. Henry Peacham, in 1623, described noblemen's flagging faith in a university education. They sent their sons to Oxford or Cambridge at an early age, and if the striplings did not immediately lay hold on philosophy, declared that they had no aptitude for learning, and removed them to a dancing school. "These young things," as he calls the Oxford students "of twelve, thirteene, or foureteene, that have no more care than to expect the next Carrier, and where to sup on Fridayes and Fasting nights" find "such a disproportion betweene Aristotles Categories, and their childish capacities, that what together with the sweetnesse of libertie, varietie of companie, and so many kinds of recreation in towne and fields abroad," they give over any attempt to understand "the crabbed grounds of Arts." Whereupon, the parents, "if they perceive any wildnesse or unstayednesse in their children, are presently in despaire, and out of all hope of them for ever prooving Schollers, or fit for anything else; neither consider the nature of youth, nor the effect of time, the Physitian of all. But to mend the matter, send them either to the Court to serve as Pages, or into France and Italy to see fashions, and mend their manners, where they become ten times worse."[209]
The influence of France would not be towards books, certainly. Brave, gallant, and magnificent were the Gallic gentlemen; but not learned. Reading made them positively ill: "la tête leur tourne de lire," as Brézé confessed.[210] Scorning an indoor sedentary life, they left all civil offices to the bourgeoisie, and devoted themselves exclusively to war. As the Vicomte D'Avenel has crisply put it:
"It would have seemed as strange to see a person of high rank the Treasurer of France, the Controller of Finance, or the Rector of a University, as it would be to see him a cloth-merchant or maker of crockery.... The poorest younger son of an ancient family, who would not disdain to engage himself as a page to a nobleman, or as a common soldier, would have thought himself debased by accepting the post of secretary to an ambassador."[211]
Brute force was still considered the greatest power in the world, even when Sully was Conseiller d'Etat, though divining spirits like Eustache Deschamps had declared that the day would come when serving-men would rule France by their wits, all because the noblesse would not learn letters.[212] In vain the wise Bras-de-Fer warned his generation that glory and strength of limb were of short duration, while knowledge was the only immortal quality.[213] As long as parents saw that the honours at Court went to handsome horsemen, they thought it mistaken policy to waste money on book-learning for their sons. When a boy came from the university to Court, he found himself eclipsed by young pages, who scarcely knew how to read, but had killed their man in a duel, and danced to perfection.[214] A martial training, with physical accomplishments, was the most effective, apparently.
The martial type which France evolved dazzled other nations, and it is not surprising that under the Stuarts, who had inherited French ways, the English Court was particularly open to French ideals. Our directions for travellers reflect the change from the typical Elizabethan courtier, "somewhat solemn, coy, big and dangerous of look," to the easy manners of the cavalier. A Method for Travell, written while Elizabeth was still on the throne, extols Italian conduct. "I would rather," it says of the traveller, "he should come home Italianate than Frenchified: I speake of both in the better sense: for the French is stirring, bold, respectless, inconstant, suddaine: the Italian stayed, demure, respective, grave, advised."[215] But Instructions for Forreine Travell in 1642 urges one to imitate the French. "For the Gentry of France have a kind of loose, becoming boldness, and forward vivacity in their manners."[216]
The first writer of advice to travellers who assumes that French accomplishments are to be a large part of the traveller's education, is Sir Robert Dallington, whom we have already quoted. His View of France[217] to which the Method for Travel is prefixed, deserves a reprint, for both that and his Survey of Tuscany,[218] though built on the regular model of the Elizabethan traveller's "Relation," being a conscientious account of the chief geographical, economic, architectural, and social features of the country traversed, are more artistic than the usual formal reports. Dallington wrote these Views in 1598, a little before the generation which modelled itself on the French gallants, and his remarks on Frenchmen may well have served as a warning to courtiers not to imitate the foibles, along with the admirable qualities, of their compeers across the Channel. For instance, he is outraged by the effusiveness of the "violent, busy-headed and impatient Frenchman," who "showeth his lightness and inconstancie ... in nothing more than in his familiaritie, with whom a stranger cannot so soone be off his horse, but he will be acquainted: nor so soone in his Chamber, but the other like an Ape will bee on his shoulder: and as suddenly and without cause ye shall love him also. A childish humour, to be wonne with as little as an Apple and lost with lesse than a Nut."[219] The King of France himself is censured for his geniality. Dallington deems Henry of Navarre "more affable and familiar than fits the Majesty of a great King." He might have found in current gossip worse lapses than the two he quotes to show Henry's lack of formality, but it is part of Dallington's worth that he writes of things at first-hand, and gives us only what he himself saw; how at Orleans, when the Italian commedians were to play before him, the king himself, "came whiffling with a small wand to scowre the coast, and make place for the rascall Players,... a thing, me thought, most derogatory to the Majesty of a King of France."
"And lately at Paris (as they tell us) when the Spanish Hostages were to be entertayned, he did Usher it in the great Chamber, as he had done here before; and espying the Chayre not to stand well under the State, mended it handsomely himselfe, and then set him downe to give them audience."[220]
Nor can Dallington conceal his disapproval of foreign food. The sorrows of the beef-eating Englishman among the continentals were always poignant. Dallington is only one of the many travellers who, unable to grasp the fact that warmer climes called for light diet, reproached the Italians especially for their "parsimony and thin feeding." In Henry the Eighth's time there was already a saying among the Italians, "Give the Englishman his beef and mustard,"[221] while the English in turn jibed at the Italians for being "like Nebuchadnezzar,--always picking of sallets." "Herbage," says Dallington scornfully "is the most generall food of the Tuscan ... for every horse-load of flesh eaten, there is ten cart loades of hearbes and rootes, which also their open Markets and private tables doe witnesse, and whereof if one talke with them fasting, he shall have sencible feeling."[222] The whole subject of diet he dismisses in his advice to a traveller as follows: "As for his viands I feare not his surfetting; his provision is never so great, but ye may let him loose to his allowance.... I shall not need to tell him before what his dyet shall be, his appetite will make it better than it is: for he shall be still kept sharpe: only of the difference of dyets, he shall observe thus much: that of Germanie is full or rather fulsome; that of France allowable; that of Italie tolerable; with the Dutch he shall have much meat ill-dressed: with the French lesse, but well handled; with the Italian neither the one nor the other."[223]
Though there is much in Dallington's description of Italy and France to repay attention, our concern is with his Method for Travell,[224] which, though more practical than the earlier Elizabethan essays of the same sort, opens in the usual style of exhortation: