Chapter VII: The Decadence of the Grand Tour (3)

Footnote 378:
"The merest John Trot in a week you shall see
Bien poli, bien frizé, tout à fait un Marquis."

(Samuel Foote, _Dramatic Works_, vol. i. p. 47.)

The Hon. James Howard, _The English Mounsieur_, London, 1674; Sir George Etherege, _Sir Fopling Flutter, Love in a Tub_, Act III. Sc. iv.

The Abbe le Blanc on visiting England was very indignant at the representation of his countrymen on the London stage: he describes how, "Two actors came in, one dressed in the English manner very decently, and the other with black eye-brows, a riband an ell long under his chin, a big peruke immoderately powdered, and his nose all bedaubed with snuff. What Englishman could not know a Frenchman by this ridiculous picture?... But when it was found that the man thus equipped, being also laced down every seam of his coat, was nothing but a cook, the spectators were equally charmed and surprised. The author had taken care to make him speak all the impertinences he could devise.... There was a long criticism upon our manners, our customs and above all, our cookery. The excellence and virtues of English beef were cried up; the author maintained that it was owing to the quality of its juice that the English were so courageous, and had such a solidity of understanding which raised them above all the nations of Europe" (E. Smith, _Foreign Visitors In England_, London, 1889, pp. 193-4).

Footnote 379: Samuel Foote, _Dramatic Works_, vol. i. p. 7.

Footnote 380: _Ibid._

Footnote 381:
"Let Paris be the theme of Gallia's Muse
Where Slav'ry treads the Streets in wooden shoes."
(Gay, _Trivia_.)

Footnote 382: Joseph Addison, _A Letter from Italy_, London, 1709.

Footnote 383: Samuel Johnson, _London_: A Poem.

Footnote 384: Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, _Letters to his Son_, London, 1774; vol. ii. p. 123; vol. iii. p. 308.

Footnote 385: Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, _A Dialogue concerning Education_, in _A Collection of Several Tracts_, London, 1727.

Footnote 386: _Ibid._, _Dialogue of The Want of Respect Due to Age_, pp. 295-6.

Footnote 387: John Locke, _Some Thoughts concerning Education_, London, 1699, pp. 356-7, 375-7.

Footnote 388: John Locke, _Some Thoughts concerning Education_, London, 1699, pp. 356-7, 375-7.

Footnote 389: _Ibid._

Footnote 390: As Cowper says in _The Progress of Error_:

"From school to Cam or Isis, and thence home:
And thence with all convenient speed to Rome.
With reverend tutor clad in habit lay,
To tease for cash and quarrel with all day:
With memorandum-book for every town,
And every post, and where the chaise broke down."

Foote's play, _An Englishman in Paris_, represents in the character of the pedantic prig named Classick, the sort of university tutor who was sometimes substituted for the parson, as an appropriate guardian.

Footnote 391: _The Bear-Leaders_, London, 1758.

Footnote 392: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu met many of these pairs at Rome, where she writes that, by herding together and throwing away their money on worthless objects, they had acquired the title of Golden Asses, and that Goldoni adorned his dramas with "gli milordi Inglesi" in the same manner as Molière represented his Parisian marquises (_Letters_, ed. Wharncliffe, London, 1893, vol. ii. p. 327).

Footnote 393: William Congreve, _The Way of the World_, Act III. Sc. xv.

Footnote 394: Philip Thicknesse, _Observations on the Customs and Manners of the French Nation_, London, 1766, p. 3.

Footnote 395: Thomas Gray the poet.

Footnote 396: Horace Walpole, _Letters_, ed. Cunningham, London, 1891, vol. i. p. 24.

Footnote 397: Thomas Gray, _Letters_, ed. Tovey, Cambridge University Press, 1890, pp. 38, 44, 68.

Footnote 398: James Howell, _Instructions for Forraine Travell_, p. 25 (Arber Reprint).

Footnote 399: _Ibid., Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ,_ ed. Jacobs, 1892, vol. i. p. 95.

The Renaissance traveller had little commendation for a land that was not fruitful, rich with grains and orchards. A landscape that suggested food was to him the fairest landscape under heaven. Far from being an admirer of mountains, he was of the opinion of Dr Johnson that "an eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility" and that "this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller" (_Works_, ed. 1787, vol. x. p. 359).

Footnote 400: _Itinerarii Italiæ Rerumq. Romanorum libri tres_ a Franc. Schotto I.C. ex antiquis novisque Scriptoribus iis editi qui Romam anno Iubileii sacro visunt. Ad Robertum Bellarminum S.R.E. Card. Ampliss. Antverpiæ. Ex officina Plantiniana apud Joannem Moretum. Anno sæcularii sacro, 1600.

Thomas Cecil in Paris in 1562 studied the richly illustrated _Cosmographia Universalis_ of Sebastien Munster (pub. Basel 1550) which gave descriptions of "Omnium gentium mores, leges, religio, res gestæ, mutationes."

Sir Thomas Browne recommends to his son in France in 1661 _Les Antiquities de Paris_ "which will direct you in many things, what to look after, that little time you stay there" (_Works_, ed. Wilkin, 1846, vol. i. p. 16).

Footnote 401: Such as: (_a_) _La Guide des Chemins_: pour aller et venir par tous les pays et contrees du Royaume de France. Avec les noms des Fleuves et Rivieres qui courent parmy lesdicts pays. A. Paris (n.d.) (1552?).

(_b_) _Deliciæ Galliæ_, sive Itinerarium per universam Galliam. Coloniæ, 1608.

(_c_) _Iodoci Sinceri Itinerarium Galliæ_, Ita accomodatum, ut eius ductu mediocri tempore tota Gallia obiri, Anglia et Belgium adire possuit: nec bis terve ad eadum loca rediri oporteat: De Burdigala, Lugduni, 1616.

(_d_) _Le Voyage de France_ Dresse pour l'instruction et commodite tant des Francais que des Estrangers. Paris, chez Olivier de Varennes, 1639.

Footnote 402: Maximilian Misson, _A New Voyage to Italy_; Together with _Useful Instructions_ for those who shall Travel thither, 2 vols., London, 1695.

Footnote 403: Count Leopold Berchtold, _An Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers_, London, 1789.

Footnote 404: Mission, _op. cit._, vol. ii. p. 335.

Footnote 405: See Hearne's Collections, vol. viii., being vol. I. of publications of _The Oxford Historical Society_, pp. 118, 133, 201, for the account of an assault by six highwaymen upon two gentlemen with their servants on the way from Calais, in September 1723. Defoe wrote a tract on the subject, and it was treated in Boyer's _Political State_, and in other periodicals of the time.

Footnote 406: _Letters from Italy_, to which is annexed, _An Admonition to Gentlemen who pass the Alps_, London, 1767, pp. 44, 65, 172, 306.

Footnote 407: Henry Fielding, _The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_.

Footnote 408: Tobias Smollett, _Works_, ed. 1887, p. 709.

Footnote 409: Roger Ascham, _Works_, ed. Giles, London, 1865, vol. i. part ii. p. 253.

Footnote 410: _All the Works of John Taylor the Water Poet_, being sixty-three in number, collected into one volume by the Author, London, 1630. See p. 76, _Three Weekes, three Dayes, and three Houres Observations from London to Hamburgh in Germanie_ ... dedicated to Sr. Thomas Coriat, Great Brittaines Error, and the World's Mirror, Aug. 17, 1616.

Footnote 411: _Coryal's Crudities_, Glasgow, 1905, vol. i. pp. 216, 226, 255; vol. ii. pp. 57, 176.

Footnote 412: Hermannus Kirchnerus in _Coryat's Crudities_, vol. ii. p. 74.