[14] A correspondent of the Athenaeum has pointed out, but the discovery seems to have been hardly noticed, that Shakespeare took the name of Ophelia from Sanazzaro’s Arcadia—another argument for his acquaintance with Italian.
CHAPTER XVI.
TRAVELLERS.
Travel was well represented in the literature of the period, as could hardly be otherwise in an age distinguished by the awakening of a spirit of curiosity and intelligent inquiry. The time for systematic scientific exploration had not arrived; no Englishman devoted himself to travel as a profession with the steadiness of the Italian Della Valle, or described a foreign land with such thoroughness as in the Indian monograph of the French jeweller, Tavernier. But if no such monumental work was produced, there was no lack of standard ones. The two which have come nearest to attaining the rank of literary classics, however, were not the production of men of high attainments, but the work, or reputed work, of writers of imperfect education, whose chief claim to attention was the surpassing interest of their narratives.
Robert Knox (1640?-1720).
Robert Knox belongs to the especially interesting class of travellers whose experience of foreign countries has been gained in captivity. Driven by a storm on to the coast of Ceylon in 1659, he was made prisoner and carried into the interior, then almost unknown to Europeans. Here he supported himself for nearly twenty years by knitting caps and hawking goods, resisting all inducements to enter the service of the native sovereign, whose caprice and cruelty he dreaded with good reason. At length he escaped to a Dutch settlement, and returned safely to England, where he entered the service of the East India Company. After several more voyages to the East he retired, and died in good circumstances in 1720. His letters to his cousin, Strype, preserved in the University Library, Cambridge, show him, it is said, ‘to have been a man of morose temper, rough manners, and a woman-hater.’ The ‘manuscripts of my own life,’ bequeathed by him to his nephew, Knox Ward, have unfortunately gone astray. His account of his captivity was published in 1681, with a preface by the illustrious natural philosopher, Robert Hooke, who no doubt gave Knox much literary assistance, but happily abstained from tampering with the simplicity of his narrative. As a classic of travel this ranks with the similar works of Drury and Mariner, which also received literary form from intelligent collaborators, and it may have served in some measure as an example to Defoe.
William Dampier (1652-1715).
William Dampier fills a more important place than Knox in the history of travel, his experiences having been much more diversified, and his works being of much greater compass. Having gone in 1679 to the West Indies on a commercial adventure, he was persuaded to join a buccaneering expedition, many of the piratical incidents of which, judiciously passed over in his own narrative, are recorded in the manuscripts of his companions. It involved him in a series of adventures which took him all round the world, and from which he returned in 1691 with no other property than an ‘amiable savage, curiously tattooed.’ His voyage was published in 1697-99, and obtained such success that the government, overlooking or ill-informed of his piracies, employed him on a voyage of discovery to Australia. He was subsequently engaged in two privateering expeditions, in the first as commander, in the second only as pilot. Alexander Selkirk was put on shore on Juan Fernandez in the first of these, and taken off in the second. Dampier’s temper seems to have disqualified him for supreme authority, and he lost much of the reputation which he had formerly acquired. He died in 1715 in good circumstances, with a large amount of prize-money still owing to him. As a traveller he takes high rank from the interest of the occurrences he narrates, the clearness and simplicity of his style, his powers of description, and his practical knowledge. ‘His Discourse of the Winds,’ says Professor Laughton, ‘may even now be regarded, so far as it goes, as a text-book of that branch of physical geography.’ His literary merit, however, partly belongs to some unnamed coadjutor. ‘I have,’ says Charles Hatton, in the Hatton correspondence edited by Sir Edward Thompson, ‘discoursed with Dampier. He is a blunt fellow, but of better understanding than would be expected from one of his education. He is a very good navigator, kept his journal exactly, and set down every day what he thought of, but, you must imagine, had assistance in dressing up his history, in which are many mistakes in naming of places.’
Burnet and Molesworth.
The times were not ripe for archæological exploration, or for profound investigation of the manners and institutions of foreign nations; and the most gifted travellers of the age wrote with one eye upon things abroad and the other upon affairs at home. Among such itinerant politicians the first place must be given to Burnet, rather, however, for his celebrity in other fields than for the special merit of his travels. He recorded, nevertheless, a number of intelligent observations upon Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. Burnet is always lively and sagacious, and much more impartial than could have been expected in one so deeply concerned in political and theological controversies. His account of Venice is especially interesting. The book, written during his exile, was published in Holland, and was for some time prohibited in England. The somewhat similar work of Lord Molesworth (1656-1725) owes its existence to accident. Molesworth, a theoretical republican of Algernon Sidney’s school, was English envoy at Copenhagen from 1690 to 1692, and was obliged to quit the country in consequence, as was asserted, of an insult offered by him to the king; considering, however, the favourable character he gives of the monarch, this appears hardly probable. Whatever the reason, he threw up his embassy, and avenged himself by a severe indictment of the system of absolute government established in Denmark by the memorable revolution of 1660, which he declared to have entirely impoverished the country. Himself a patrician, he finds the principal cause of this in the abasement of his own class; and he probably wrote rather from regard to the affairs of England than those of Denmark. He is a forcible, but, at the same time, a candid writer, admitting frankly that ‘In Denmark there are no seditions, mutinies, or libels against the government; but all the people either are, or appear to be lovers of their king, notwithstanding their ill treatment, and the hardships they groan under. There are no clippers or coiners, no robbers upon the highway, nor housebreakers; which conveniency of arbitrary government, among the multitude of mischiefs attending it, I have likewise observed in France.’ He is greatly impressed with the merits of the Danish laws, apart from their administration. ‘For justice, brevity, and perspicuity, they exceed all that I know in the world. They are grounded upon equity, and are all contained in one quarto volume, written in the language of the country.’ Such passages are conclusive as to his impartiality, and the violent attacks which his book provoked were probably mainly due to its exceedingly plain speaking about individuals. Of the Danes in general he says: ‘I never knew any country where the minds of the people were more of one calibre and pitch than here; you shall meet with none of extraordinary parts or qualifications, or excellent in particular studies and trades; you see no enthusiasts, madmen, natural fools, or fanciful folks; but a certain equality of understanding reigns among them. Every one keeps the ordinary beaten road of sense, which in this country is neither the fairest nor the foulest, without deviating to the right or left.’ Molesworth was a man of parts and independent character, who afterwards rendered his country considerable services in Ireland, where Swift dedicated one of the Drapier’s letters to him as a patriot.