George Carleton gave expression to the general feeling when he wrote to his brother Dudley, afterwards Lord Dorchester: "I like your going to France much better than if you had gone to Italy."[595] "France is above all most needful for us to mark," was the advice Sir Philip Sidney sent to his brother Robert on his travels.[596] Sir John Eliot gave similar injunctions to his sons.[597] France was, he said, a country full of noble instincts and versatile energy; and what his own experience had been, he recommended his sons to profit by. Some friend had warned them of possible dangers in France. Heed them not, says Eliot; any hazard or adventure in France they will find repaid by such advantages of knowledge and experience as observation of the existing troubles there is sure to convey. But he will not allow them even to enter Spain; and the Italian territories of the Church they must avoid as dangerous: "stagnant and deadly are the waters in the region of Rome, not clear and flowing for the health-seeking energies of man." He thought, however, that some parts of Italy might be visited with profit. To attempt to learn the Italian language before some knowledge of French had been acquired, was not discreet. "Besides it being less pleasant and more difficult to talk Italian first," he writes, "it was leaving the more necessary acquirement to be gained when there was, perchance, less leisure for it. Whereas by attaining some perfection in French, and then moving onward, what might be lost in Italy of the first acquirement, would be regained in France as their steps turned homeward."
Not only were fears of Roman Catholicism and corrupt manners directed more specifically toward Italy than France, but the French language was considered a much more necessary acquirement than Italian. It was generally agreed that the country most requisite for the English to know was France, "in regard of neighbourhood, of conformity in Government in divers things and necessary intelligence of State."[598]. "French is the most useful of languages—the richest lading of the traveller next to experience—Italian and Spanish not being so fruitful in learning," remarks Francis Osborne in his Advice to a Son.[599]
Thus the main object of study of the traveller in France was usually the language itself, and next to that the polite accomplishments. Those who continued their travels into Italy were attracted chiefly by the country and its antiquities. When Addison was in France, after a short stay in Paris in 1699[600] he settled for nearly a year at Blois to learn the language, living in great seclusion, studying, and seeing no one but his teachers, who would sup with him regularly. In 1700 he returned to Paris, qualified to converse with Boileau and Malebranche. But he spent his time in Italy very differently, living in fancy with the old Latin poets, taking Horace as his guide from Naples to Rome, and Virgil on the return journey: there was no question of settling down in a quiet town to study Italian. The experience of Lord Herbert of Cherbury at the end of the sixteenth century and of Evelyn in the middle of the seventeenth was of a similar nature. Though travellers continued to include Italy in their tour, the feeling in favour of France became stronger and stronger. It reached its climax in the latter half of the seventeenth century, when Clarendon wrote: "What parts soever we propose to visit, to which our curiosity usually invites us, we can hardly avoid the setting our feet first in France." And he invites travellers, on returning there after visiting Italy, THE TRAVELLING TUTORto stay in Paris a year to "unlearn the dark and affected reservation of Italy." As for Germany, he thinks they have need to remain two years in France that they may entirely forget that they were ever in Germany![601]
The sons of gentlemen setting out on the Grand Tour were usually accompanied by a governor or tutor,[602] and the need for such a guide was generally recognized by writers on travel; all urge the necessity of his being acquainted with the languages and customs of the countries to be visited. "That young men should Travaile under some Tutor or grave Servant, I allow well: so that he be such a one that hath the language and hath been in the Countrey before," wrote Bacon. And if any one was not able or did not wish to "be at the charges of keeping a Governor abroad" with his son, he was advised[603] to "join with one or two more to help to bear the charges: or else to send with him one well qualified to carry him over and settle him in one place or other of France, or of other Countries, to be there with him 2 or 3 months, leave him there after he hath set him in a good way, and then come home." We also gather from Gailhard's The Compleat Gentleman that it was "a custom with many in England to order Travelling to their sons, as Emetick Wine is by the Physician prescribed to the Patient, that is when they know not what else to do, and when schools, Universities, Inns of Court, and every other way hath been tried to no purpose: then that nature which could not be tamed in none of these places, is given to be minded by a Gouvernor, with many a woe to him."[604]
The suitable age for the Grand Tour, as distinct from the shorter journey in France, was the subject of much discussion. It was usually undertaken between the ages of sixteen and twenty, and occupied from three to five years. Some, and among them Locke,[605] agreed with Gailhard in thinking that travel should not come at the end. They argued that languages were more easily learnt at an earlier age, and that children were then less difficult to manage. Others, regarding travel as a necessary evil,[606] held that, at a later age, travellers are less receptive of evil influences and the snares of popery. This was the current opinion.
In many cases, especially in later times, the travelling tutor was a Frenchman. Many Englishmen, however, found in this capacity an opportunity for travel which they might not otherwise have had. For example, Ben Jonson visited Paris in 1613 as tutor to the son of Sir Walter Raleigh, and became better known there as a reveller than as a poet.[607] In the same way Ben Jonson's friend, the poet Aurilian Townsend, accompanied Lord Herbert of Cherbury on his foreign tour in 1608, and was of much help to him on account of his fluent knowledge of French, Italian, and Spanish.[608] The time-serving politician Sir John Reresby travelled with a Mr. Leech, a divine and Fellow of Cambridge.[609] And the philosopher Thomas Hobbes spent as travelling tutor in the Cavendish family many years which he calls the happiest time of his life. He visited France, Germany, and Italy. For a time he left the Cavendishes to act as tutor to the son of Sir Gervase Clifton, with whom he remained eighteen months in Paris. It was while travelling with his pupils that Hobbes became known in the philosophic circles of Paris.[610] Addison was offered a salary of £100 to be tutor to the Duke of Somerset, who desired him "to be more of a companion than a Governor," but did not accept the offer.[611] In some cases the travelling tutor had several pupils. Thus Mr. Cordell, the friend of Sir Ralph Verney, was tutor to a party of Englishmen.[612]
On the other hand, Sir Philip Sidney travelled without a governor. At Frankfort, in the house of the Protestant BOOKS ON TRAVELprinter Andreas Wechel, he began his life-long friendship with the Huguenot scholar Hubert Languet, who, to some degree, supplied his needs. Languet, however, expresses his regret that Sidney had no governor, and when the young Englishman continued his journey into Italy they kept up a correspondence, in the course of which Languet sent Sidney much good advice. At his instigation Sidney practised his French and Latin by translating some of Cicero's letters into French, then from French into English, and finally back into Latin again, "by a sort of perpetual motion."[613] John Evelyn the diarist also travelled without a governor, while the eldest son of Lord Halifax first made the Grand Tour in the usual fashion, and afterwards returned to his uncle, Henry Savile, English ambassador at Paris, without the "encumbrance" of a governor. Savile superintended his nephew's reading, providing him with books on such subjects as political treaties and negotiations, and warning him against "nouvelles" and other "vain entretiens."[614]
The practice of travelling abroad called forth many books on the subject, often written by travellers desiring to place their experience at the service of others. Such books usually include indications of the routes to be followed and the places to be visited, and sometimes advice as to the best way of studying abroad. Some, such as those of Coryat, Fynes Moryson, and Purchas,[615] are descriptions of long journeys. Others deal more especially with the method of travel.[616] A few were written for the particular use of some traveller of high rank; for instance, when the Earl of Rutland set out on his travels in 1596, his cousin Essex sent him letters of advice, which circulated at Court, and were published as Profitable Instructions for Travellers in 1633.[617] Further information was supplied in the treatises on polite education.[618]
The subject of travel was thus continually under consideration, and the different books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which deal with this topic are of great interest. Robert Dallington, the author of an early guide to France,[619] thought it necessary, seeing the few teachers there were in France, to "set downe a course of learninge." "I will presume to advise him," he says of the traveller to France, "that the most compendious way of attaining the tongue is by booke. I mean for the knowledge, for as for the speaking he shall never attaine it but by continuall practize and conversation: he shall therefore first learne his nownes and verbs by heart, and specially the articles, and their uses, with the two words sum and habeo: for in these consist the greatest observation of that part of speech." He also urges the future traveller to engage a Frenchman to assist him, chiefly, no doubt, with reading and pronunciation. This "reader," as Dallington calls him, "shall not reade any booke of Poetrie at first, but some other kinde of stile, and I thinke meetest some moderne comedie. Let his lecture consist more in questions and answers, either of the one or the other, then in the reader's continued speech, for this is for the most part idle and fruitlesse: by the other many errors and mistakings either in pronunciation or sense are reformed. After three months he shall quit his lectures, and use his Maister only to walk with and discourse, first the one and then the other: for thus shal he observe the right use of the phrase in his Reader, heare his owne faults reproved and grow readie and prompt in his owne deliverie, which, with the right straine of the accent, are the two hardest things in language." He should also read much in private, and "to this reading he must adde a continuall talking and exercising of his speech with all sorts of people, with boldnesse and much assurance in himselfe, A "METHOD OF TRAVEL"for I have often observed in others that nothing hath more prejudiced their profiting then their owne diffidence and distrust. To this I would have him adde an often writing, either of matter of translation or of his owne invention, where againe is requisite the Reader's eye, to censure and correct: for who so cannot write the language he speaks, I count he hath but halfe the language. There, then, are the two onely meanes of obtaining a language, speaking and writing, but the first is the chiefest, and therefore I must advertise the traveller of one thing which in other countries is a great hinderer thereof, namely, the often haunting and frequenting of our own Countrimen, whereof he must have a speciall care,[620] neither to distaste them by a too much retirednesse[621] nor to hinder himselfe by too much familiaritie."
A few years later Fynes Moryson[622] offered equally sound advice to the traveller "for language." "Goe directly to the best citie for the puritie of language," he tells him, and first "labour to know the grammar rules, that thy selfe mayst know whether thou speaketh right or no. I meane not the curious search of those rules, but at least so much as may make thee able to distinguish Numbers, Cases, and Moodes." Moryson thought that by learning by ear alone students probably pronounced better, but, on the other hand, with the help of rules, "they both speake and write pure language, and never so forget it, as they may not with small labour and practice recover it again." The student, he adds, should make a collection of choice phrases, that "hee may speake and write more eloquently, and let him use himselfe not to the translated formes of speech, but to the proper phrases of the tongue." For this purpose he should read many good books, "in which kind, as also for the Instruction of his soule, I would commend unto him the Holy Scriptures, but that among the Papists they are not to be had in the vulgar tongue, neither is the reading of them permitted to laymen. Therefore to this purpose he shall seeke out the best familiar epistles for his writing, and I thinke no booke better for his Discourse then Amadis of Gaule.... In the third place I advise him to professe Pythagoricall silence, and to the end he may learne true pronunciation, not to be attained but by long observation and practice, that he for a time listen to others, before he adventure to speake." He should also avoid his fellow-countrymen, and, having observed these rules, "then let him hier some skilfull man to teach him and to reprove his errors, not passing by any his least omission. And let him not take it ill that any man should laugh at him, for that will more stirre him up to endevour to learne the tongue more perfectly, to which end he must converse with Weomen, children and the most talkative people; and he must cast off all clownish bashfulnesse, for no man is borne a Master in any art. I say not that he himselfe should rashly speake, for in the beginning he shall easily take ill formes of speaking, and hardly forget them once taken."