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.
Perhaps literature has never been so directly benefited by the spirit of trade as it was in the seventeenth century, when European jewellers found their most liberal customers in the courts of the East. Some of the best travels which we possess, as well as the best materials for Persian and Indian history, have been left us by persons engaged in that trade. From that time travelling became less dangerous and more frequent in every generation, except during the late years when Englishmen were excluded from the Continent by the military tyrant whom (with God’s blessing on a rightful cause) we have beaten from his imperial throne. And now it is more customary for females in the middle rank of life to visit Italy than it was for them in your days to move twenty miles from home.
Sir Thomas More.—Is this a salutary or an injurious fashion?
Montesinos.—According to the subject, and to the old school maxim quicquid recipitur, recipitur in modum recipientis. The wise come back wiser, the well-informed with richer stores of knowledge, the empty and the vain return as they went, and there are some who bring home foreign vanities and vices in addition to their own.
Sir Thomas More.—And what has been imported by such travellers for the good of their country?
Montesinos.—Coffee in the seventeenth century, inoculation in that which followed; since which we have had now and then a new dance and a new game at cards, curry and mullagatawny soup from the East Indies, turtle from the West, and that earthly nectar to which the East contributes its arrack, and the West its limes and its rum. In the language of men it is called Punch; I know not what may be its name in the Olympian speech. But tell not the Englishmen of George the Second’s age, lest they should be troubled for the degeneracy of their grandchildren, that the punchbowl is now become a relic of antiquity, and their beloved beverage almost as obsolete as metheglin, hippocras, chary, or morat!
Sir Thomas More.—It is well for thee that thou art not a young beagle instead of a grey-headed bookman, or that rambling vein of thine would often bring thee under the lash of the whipper-in! Off thou art and away in pursuit of the smallest game that rises before thee.