CHAPTER II

THE HIGH PURPOSE OF THE ELIZABETHAN TRAVELLER


The love of travel, we all know, flourished exceedingly in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth. All classes felt the desire to go beyond seas upon

"Such wind as scatters young men through the world,
To seeke their fortunes farther than at home,
Where small experience growes."[36]

The explorer and the poet, the adventurer, the prodigal and the earl's
son, longed alike for foreign shores. What Ben Jonson said of Coryat
might be stretched to describe the average Elizabethan: "The mere
superscription of a letter from Zurich sets him up like a top: Basil or
Heidelberg makes him spinne. And at seeing the word Frankford, or
Venice, though but in the title of a Booke, he is readie to breake
doublet, cracke elbowes, and overflowe the roome with his murmure."[37]
Happy was an obscure gentleman like Fynes Moryson, who could roam for
ten years through the "twelve Dominions of Germany, Bohmerland,
Sweitzerand, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turkey, France,
England, Scotland and Ireland" and not be peremptorily called home by
his sovereign. Sad it was to be a court favourite like Fulke Greville,
who four times, thirsting for strange lands, was plucked back to England
by Elizabeth.

At about the time (1575) when some of the most prominent
courtiers--Edward Dyer, Gilbert Talbot, the Earl of Hertford, and more
especially Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir Philip Sidney--had just