for Italy which had made the young men of the north all rush together
there. We can no longer imagine an Englishman like Selling coming to the
great Politian at Bologna and grappling him to his heart--"arctissima
sibi conjunxit amicum familiaritate,"[152] as the warm humanistic phrase
has it. In the seventeenth century Politian would be a "contagious
Papist," using his charm to convert men to Romanism, and Selling would
be a "true son of the Church of England," railing at Politian for his
"debauch'd and Popish principles." The Renaissance had set men
travelling to Italy as to the flower of the world. They had scarcely
started before the Reformation called it a place of abomination. Lord
Burghley, who in Elizabeth's early days had been so bent on a foreign
education for his eldest son, had drilled him in languages and pressed
him to go to Italy,[153] at the end of his long life left instructions
to his children: "Suffer not thy sonnes to pass the Alps, for they shall
learn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism. And if by travel
they get a few broken languages, that shall profit them nothing more
than to have one meat served on divers dishes."[154]

The mother of Francis Bacon affords a good example of the Puritan
distrust of going "beyond seas." She could by no means sympathize with
her son Anthony's determination to become versed in foreign affairs, for
that led him into intimacy with Roman Catholics. All through his
prolonged stay abroad she chafed and fretted, while Anthony perversely
remained in France, gaining that acquaintance with valuable
correspondents, spies, and intelligencers which later made him one of
the greatest authorities in England on continental politics. He had a
confidential servant, a Catholic named Lawson, whom he sent over to
deliver some important secret news to Lord Burghley. Lady Bacon, in her
fear lest Lawson's company should pervert her son's religion and morals,
had the man arrested and detained in England. His anxious master sent