English Travellers of the Renaissance (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III SOME CYNICAL ASPERSIONS UPON THE BENEFITS OF TRAVEL HE traveller newly returned from foreign 1 lands was a great butt for the satirists. -- In Elizabethan times his bows and tremendous politeness, his close-fitting black clothes from Venice, his French accent, his finicky refinements, such as perfumes and pick-tooths, were highly offensive to the plain Englishman. One was always sure of an appreciative audience if he railed at the " disguised garments and desperate hats " of the "affectate traveller " how; his attire spoke French or Italian, and his gait cried " behold me! " how he spoke his own language with shame and loathing.1 " You shall see a dapper Jacke, that hath beene but over at Deepe, wring his face round about, as a man would stir up a mustard-pot, and talke English through the teeth, like . . . Monsieur Mingo de Moustrap." 3 Nash was one of the best at describing some who had lived in France for half-a-dozen years, " and when they came home, they have hyd a littleweerish leane face under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coyle with the dust in the streete in their long cloaks of gray paper, and spoke English strangely. Naught else have they profited by their travell, save learnt to distinguish of the true Burdeaux Grape, and know a cup of neate Gascoygne wine from wine of Orleance; yea, and peradventure this also, to esteeme of the poxe as a pimple, to weare a velvet patch on their face, and walke melancholy with their armes folded."1 1 Sir Thomas Overbury, An Affectate Traveller, in Characters. 2 Dieppe. 3 Thomas Nash, Pierce Pennilesse, in Works, ed. Grosart, vol. ii.1 Nash, The Unfortunate Traveller, in Works'. Grosart, v. 145. The Frenchified traveller came in for a good share of satire, but darker things were said of the Italian...