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History and Anthropology: To Cite This Article: Joan
History and Anthropology: To Cite This Article: Joan
To cite this article: Joan‐Pau Rubiés (1996) Instructions for travellers: Teaching the eye to see,
History and Anthropology, 9:2-3, 139-190, DOI: 10.1080/02757206.1996.9960876
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History and Anthropology, 1996 © 1996 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association)
Vol. 9, Nos. 2-3, pp. 139-190 Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands
Photocopying permitted by license only by Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH
Printed in Malaysia
Joan-Pau Rubiés
University of Reading
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In 1681 Robert Hooke, the secretary of the Royal Society of London for
Improving Natural Knowledge, prefaced Robert Knox's Historical relation
of the island of Ceylon with a clear analysis of the scientific relevance of
travel literature. He began by recognising the distance that separated the
ancient and modern sciences 'of the parts of the world', the former
subjected to the restricted circulation of a number of fragile manuscripts,
the latter benefiting from both a multiplication of new accessions, and
their reproduction through the new art of printing. But he went on to
explain that more was needed to achieve the desirable preservation of all
discoveries. Accounts should be published, separately and in collections.
Travellers should be interviewed by men prepared to ask the right
questions and to help in the writing of proper histories. Above all, it was
necessary to promote 'instructions (to seamen and travellers) to shew
them what is pertinent and considerable to be observed in their voyages
and abodes, and how to make their observations and keep registers or
accounts of them'.
The strong idea expressed by Robert Hooke that his age had witnessed
a new kind of science formed the core of a new institutional rhetoric, but
was more than mere rhetoric: it also responded to the ongoing
transformation of the European system of knowledge. The traditional
education, based on rhetoric and confined by the boundaries of university
disciplines, had given way to a wide variety of empirical discourses
which supported new claims to scientific authority. It is not coincidental
that travel literature formed part of this new science. It was one of the
more obviously empirical discourses which had grown throughout the
sixteenth century, and(its wide-ranging (though often neglected) influence
requires that it should be studied as more than just peripheral to the
139
140 JOAN-PAU RUBIES
from a late sixteenth-century manual of logic, method was 'an art which
demonstrates how every discipline can be reduced to an art and fixed
procedure'). Methods for travellers were in fact a genre through which a
new intellectual elite sought to teach Europeans how to see the world.
The result of Robert Hooke's interview with Robert Knox, a sailor
working for the East India Company who had been a captive in Ceylon
for many years, was the publication of what a modern editor has defined
as a true, detailed, comprehensive description of the island, indeed 'a
scientific document'. Knox had been assisted in ordering his notes and
writing 'methodically' by his cousin John Strype, who was a minister, so
that when Hooke described the contents of the book he merely
summarised the existing headings, suggesting that more could have been
written about the subject. And yet the 'method' already implicit in the
discourse corresponded closely with a plausible list of instructions for
travellers: First came a physical and human geography of the island, with
notes on the economy, flora, fauna, and also a pathbreaking map of the
interior of the island. Then followed a description of the king, his
government and the history of his rule, including a rebellion. A third part
included a wide-ranging description of the people, again illustrated with
pictures, and including their 'humours and qualities', social groups,
religious beliefs and practices, everyday life, language, laws, and almost
every stage from birth to death. Knox concluded with an account of his
personal journey and its various circumstances. Despite the variety of
travel accounts, Knox's relation could be seen to represent a consensus
about the analytical categories that such a genre was supposed to cover.
Robert Hooke's project was conceived as public and institutional. The
Royal Society of which he was a member should act, as it had often done
in the past, to provide the crucial link between the numerous popular
travellers like Robert Knox and the common good of a controlled
scientific project. Robert Hooke's emphasis was less on assisting the
travellers themselves than on supporting the educated middlemen who
prepared instructions and published collections. He belonged to an
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 141
institution which of course generated its own interests (and the Royal
Society also had links with the East India Company, to whose court of
directors Knox dedicated his relation). And yet, it was clear that Hooke's
proposals for collecting and publishing traveller's accounts with
methodical criteria followed well-known models that pre-dated the Royal
Society, as Hooke himself acknowledged when mentioning 'Mr Haclute
and Mr. Purchas'. In fact instructions for travellers did not originally
follow from the initiative of seventeenth-century scientific academies:
instead, the scientific institutions had become depositaries of a concern
for travel literature and for methodical travel which clearly belonged to
the cultural transformations of the late Renaissance.
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Travelling was just one of the many activities and fields of knowledge
that were being 'methodized' in the late sixteenth and the early
seventeenth centuries. We may here recall, for the case of history, the
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 143
did not then consist in the mere fact that the authoritative philosopher
could be criticised (it was in the end the Revelation that wanted
protection) but also that in a new, wide-ranging cultural context, his
contribution could also be revised and adapted to new uses. The arts of
rhetoric and dialectic remained the basis of university education and
previous to any specialisation in, let us say, theology or law, not in order
to perpetuate outmoded scholastic philosophy, but rather the contrary:
they provided an access to new ways of thinking and to new disciplines
with empirical contents. They were as important to politics, morality and
law as mathematics was to physics and navigation. In fact, it is difficult to
imagine the contributions of sixteenth-century scientists without
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headings were not Caesar or Nero, nor even military skill or cowardice,
but rather kinds of political situation in which both wisdom and error
might be displayed). The reader should in fact create new places as he
went on reading and observing every day. This exercise, it was under-
stood, created a store of examples which greatly assisted human memory
and would be useful for morality and politics - for oneself or for the
service of the commonwealth.
Blundeville's treatise was partly based on Francesco Patrizi's typically
humanist dialogues, but he also translated a treatise by his friend
Accontio Tridentino (Aconzio), and Italian Protestant whose precepts
analysing historical discourse were inspired by the new dialectics of a
revised Aristotle. A better known treaties by Aconzio, De methodo (Basel,
1558), was also used by Blundeville in his Arte oflogike (1599) to present a
method more complete than Ramus's. Blundeville considered Aconzio's
logical method superior because it did not limit itself to an analysis from
the general to the particular, but also considered the possibility of going
back from the particular to the general in order to avoid losing sight of
'hidden' possibilities. Aconzio's two treatises, taken as a whole, illustrate
how typically humanistic concerns such as the reading of histories for the
sake of political wisdom were directly influenced by the concern with an
abstract method for the arts and sciences that would cover both discovery
and practical use.
Beyond the obvious frame of rhetorical disciplines like history, loci
communes were also used as a way of organising new encyclopedias, in a
long-term departure which according to Walter Ong reflected the
transition from the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages (which had
insisted on the selective preservation of knowledge) to one dominated by
the printing press. This use of the loci in many ways promoted a 'textual
induction' which thus preceded the empirical induction of Bacon and his
followers. In this sense the common opposition of humanist 'looking at
texts' to scientific 'looking at things' is too simplistic: the key
development should be conceived as the extension of humanistic ways of
analysing texts to all kinds of empirical observation. Peter Ramus'
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 147
certainly constituted a basic 'method' for travellers. The four main topics
selected for the description of a state were its name and position, its
climatic temperament, the character and customs of its people, and the
particulars concerning its prince. Each of these headings included various
special sub-topics. Throughout the following century, the expanding
genre of political cosmographies would often be organised according to
similar topics, although not in an overly rigid manner. The same can be
said about the lists of things to be observed in the 'methods' for travellers.
Thus what could be described as a local tradition appropriate to the
peculiar conditions of Venice soon became influential in a wider and more
ambitious European context. The genre of 'instructions for travellers' was
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method for travel and for the description of foreign lands and peoples
seems to have been the result of a cumulative process, by which both the
information and its political importance increased. This process must be
related to the fragmentation of political and cultural spaces brought about
by the Reformation. While the humanists had made available new
classical sources and thus provided the basis for a sophisticated lay
science and morality, the crisis of this religious consensus (which affected
political legitimacy within and outside each state) demanded that such
science be put to immediate use, both within Europe and in the new
colonial contexts. The solution given to the need created by this process
followed a pattern which was to characterise the epistemological
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of the practical concerns of merchants and other investors with the more
rhetorical ones of the humanists.
Similar, but more important, were some attempts to publish in a single
volume several texts of related interest which may or may not have
appeared before in print, such as the Paesi novamente retrovati, et novo
mondo da Alberico Vesputio Florentino intitulato (Vicenza, 1507), or the Novus
orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum (Basel, 1532). These two
collections were prefaced by humanist scholars, but must have been
based on the initiative of merchant-patricians and printers, and therefore
express the existence of a continuity between the manuscript collections
of the practical men, the economic interests of printers, and the
intellectual curiosity of humanists. The Paesi, often reprinted and
translated, became a profitable editional enterprise devised to entertain as
well as inform the reader, from an awareness of the contrast between the
newly discovered marvels and Pliny's lists of natural facts. The collection
assembled chronologically various materials and quite often the best
available, ranging from narratives of the first Portuguese and Spanish
voyages to letters written by Venetian merchant-spies trying to smuggle
information on the prospects of Indian trade of Lisbon. The Novus orbis
followed a similar pattern and was based on the same sort of material,
though amplified with new additons which, by combining old and new,
land and sea, and West and East, showed a tendency towards a universal
view of the world (that is, a cosmography) based on travel literature. The
fabulous is still a very significant ingredient in some of the travel
narratives of these collections. It is obvious that, despite some pious
introductory remarks produced by a Protestant humanist (as in the case
of Simon Grynaeus for the Novus orbis), the printer's opportunity to make
some profit out of general curiosity was more urgent than the concern
with distinguishing "truth" from "falsehood" or the adoption of a critical
and reflective attitude towards the reports. There were several
expressions of scepticism and debate, but in general, criticism and
method would only slowly come to clarify the status of the new genre.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 153
This is true even when, as in the case of the Novus orbis, the edition was
expensive and written in Latin, which implies that the intended readers
were the wealthy and the better educated.
Other collections, such as Antonio and Paolo Manuzio's Viaggi fatti da
Vinetia alia Tana, in Persia, in India, et in Constantinopoli... (Venice 1543, and
then reprinted in 1545), were organised with a more local and specific
purpose. Here all accounts deal with Venetian travels to the East, having a
double purpose: to provide information about the Portuguese trade-
system in the Indian Ocean, and to encourage the Venetians to pursue
their business over there regardless of the apparent strength of the Iberian
competitiors, exploiting the traditional routes overland. It is interesting
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that, while the Florentines had been more active than the Venetians in
Lisbon, and in fact had the advantage of an arrangement with the
Portuguse crown to finance and participate in the oriental fleets from the
earliest voyages, many of their letters never found way into print
(materials found for instance in the collection of Piero Vaglienti and, later,
that of Alessandro Zorzi). This suggests that what gave rise to a public
genre was not the mere presence of humanist circles, nor of merchants
active in the East, but rather the way these two elements interacted as
each centre developed a particular cultural strategy in accordance with
the political ethos of its elite. Venice, effectively excluded from the
Atlantic and far behind the Florentines in Lisbon and the Genoese in
Sevile, was not so much a centre of production of new narratives as a
centre of preservation, mediation and publication, characterised by a
solid vocation to maintain both its commercial interests and political
constitution despite changes abroad. In a special way the Viaggi were a
model for future collections, especially that of Richard Hakluyt in
English, because they contributed to the creation of a body of quasi-
mythological discourse inspired by a nationalistic identity, and because
they did so with purpose of both providing practical information and a
political message to a community that may profit from the exploitation of
trade routes.
The genre of travel literature became more central to European culture
through its continuous expansion, and between the middle and the end of
the sixteenth century important collections which combined a systematic
compilation of sources with a critical attitude towards their contents were
published, first in Italy and later in northern Europe. This process was
obviously related to the fact that the activity of travelling had become a
much more common phenomenon. It was not however the mere
accumulation of travels that explains the higher degree of elaboration of
the cultural discourses associated with them, but also the more distinctive
role they played in social and political terms.
154 JOAN-PAU RUBIES
the 1570s in order to collect organized information about the Indies and
his other possessions parallel the Ramist systems of loci communes of the
instructions for travellers. And yet the resulting geographical relations,
or the royal cosmography devised by Juan Lopez de Velasco as part of the
same ambitious system of administrative science, were conceived as
restricted information and did not configure (by entering the world of
books, universities and academies) a public sphere of science for the
commonwealth. This restriction was in accordance not only with Philip
II's authoritarianism, but also with his defensive understanding of his
role as a Catholic prince, which led him also to sponsor indexes of
forbidden books and to prevent his subjects from travelling and studying
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vernacular too. This business dimension was of course missing from the
work of prominent fifteenth-century humanists like Lorenzo Valla and
Marsilio Ficino, more oriented towards theological questions, but also
went beyond the patriotic historiography of Florentine chancellors like
Leonardo Bruni or Poggio Bracciolini, whose approach to history was
pragmatic only insofar as it was rhetorical and educational. Similarly the
Latin cosmography of Pius II, based on the new availability of Ptolemy
and Strabo, was still conceived as an aid to the crusade against the Turks
and was pragmatic within that framework. And it was mainly curiousity
for human moral diversity and the power Fortune that led Poggio
Bracciolini to interrogate Nicolo Conti in 1441, a century before Ramusio
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Ramusio was extending to the whole of Europe what his friend Antonio
Manuzio had done for Venice. Thus the three volumes of the Navigationi
el viaggi, published posthumously and soon afterwards translated into
French, became the starting point for all those who wanted reliable and
complete information about the discoveries, and remained authoritative
for the more critical minds during the second half of the century (its poor
reception in Spain and Portugal was of course conditioned by royal and
ecclesiastical control of cosmographical science). The collection was
fundamental to future cosmographers like Frangios Belleforest and
Giovanni Botero, and could serve as a model to later compilers and
editors like Francesco Sansovino, Richard Hakluyt and Theodor De Bry.
There is also evidence that individual travellers with some education -
such as the Florentine merchant-humanist Filippo Sassetti - tried to
recognize abroad what they had read in Ramusio's volumes, just as
Columbus had relied on Marco Polo or Pius II when he found his Indies.
north American routes, for his own private god and the 'publike benefit
of this Realme'. The favour of the Queen, conductive to stable
prebendial benefits, was secured with the 'Discourse concerning western
discoveries' of 1584, an ideological and strategic blueprint for English
imperialism in the Atlantic. And after the publication of the three
expanded volumes of his Principall Navigations in 1598-1600 he obtained
further appointments at Westminster, became advisor of the East India
company and a chief promoter of the Virginian adventures. This kind of
effective interaction between private initiative and state support was in
the long term essential.
The dedicatory letters and the prefaces to the readers of both editions of
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it can not be denied, but as in all former ages, they [the men of our
nation] have been men full of activity, stirrers abroad, and searchers of
the remote parts of the world, so in this most famous and peerlesse
government of her most excellent Majesty, her subjects through the
speciall assistance and blessing of God, in searching the most opposite
corners and quarters of the world, and to speake plainly, in compassing
the vaste globe of the earth more than once, have excelled all the nations
and people of the earth.48
concept of the English nation was extended to the past disregarding any
major historical discontinuity. In this way sixteenth century cultural
patriotism combined the promise of deeds overseas with a rather
uncritical search for historical origins.
Hakluyt's respect for the reliability of the sources, that explains, for
instance, his rejection of Mandeville for the second edition of his Principall
Navigations, was clearly diminished in the case of the German series of
travel collections initiated by Sigmund Feyeraband in 1567, and
continued with great editiorial success by De Bry from 1590 and Hulsius
from 1598. They were compiled in the tradition of Grynaeus' Novus orbis
and Miinster's Cosmographia. Closely associated with highly imaginative
engravers, the printers of Frankfurt often sacrificed accuracy to the main
purpose of selling books by appealing to the popular taste for the exotic.
The reliability of these books largely depended on how the different texts
had been generated and transmitted. The fact that new material could
thus be treated uncritically, as if the medieval tradition of mirabilia had
not been challenged by earlier editors, suggests that where the
information was not sought for immediate political purposes, and where
there was no real contact with distant lands posing practical problems,
there was little concern with distinguishing truth from falsehood within a
method. This was however quite independent from the regular use of the
topos of empirical truthfulness so crucial to the genre of travel accounts,
which was used with different meanings by different authors. Men like
Iosafa Barbara, Ludovico di Varthema, Francisco Afvares, Bernal Diaz del
Castillo, Girolamo Benzoni, Thomas Harriot or Fernao Mendes Pinto may
or may not distort, invent and plagiarise according to particular
situations, but none could afford to present his account as other than the
'true' expression of direct experience.
The case of Elizabethan England exemplifies the interplay of new social
and economic conditions, on the one hand, and the reception and
reinterpretation of an inherited cultural tradition, on the other. This
produces a change of attitudes with important historical consequences.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 163
'•••»»;*!ft.
Choroera-
phietnh
is either
Figure 1 from Robert Dallington, The view of France (London, 2nd printing c. 1605).
/here of their
Valki* Hrtbage ,
In Tufcj-
'ufca- \
nic I ob- < hirucftjfodc
feme the
the /
Figure 2 from Robert Dallington, A survey of the Great Dukes state of Tuscany (London,
1605).
adequate for France too. Those differences which exist mainly respond to
the addition of general advice on travel to the decription of France. On
the other hand, the similarity of the basic topics for the process of
observation is evident, although the method for Tuscany is more
elaborate. Dallington's books are especially valuable because they
combine historical information with direct observation. The Method for
travell was originally intended as practical advice for Francis Manners
170 JOAN-PAU RUBIES
concerned above all with the increasing importance of travel for young
gentlemen, in particular in England. His argument was that what had
started as a private activity (and his own method was originally for
personal use) had by now achieved the proportions of a collective
phenomenon in which the lack of moral criteria was doing much damage
to the commonwealth. The essay offered a 'perfect rule' so that travel
might be properly practiced and not be confused with disorderly
activities. Palmer's moralistic approach did not prevent him
from framing the questions in a wide and well-informed cosmographical
perspective, in particular when discussing the nature of different peoples,
with a striking use of concepts such as 'civility and barbarousness'.
'freedom and servility', 'religiousness and profanenesse', together with
the more common ones of 'warlike of effeminatenesse' and various
humours and constitutions. In fact, examples from France and Italy were
discussed together with others form the West Indies or Turkey, effectively
breaking the distinction between methods for travel within Europe and
travel outside. The four analytical tables which accompanied the treatise
'as an aid to memory' can therefore be said to include methodical guide to
all different aspects that had come to characterise the genre of instructions
for travellers, that is, both the moral implications and the technical
aspects of travel and observation.
Methods such as those by Dallington and Palmer were not isolated.
Thus, one of the later editions of the travellers breviat prepared by Robert
Johnson on the basis of Botero's Relationi was enlarged to include new
chapters 'Of Observation' and 'Of travell' which constituted yet another
method. Similarly, Fynes Morison began his survey of those states which
he had visited in his travels (each of them systematically discussed 'upon
several heads') with a discourse on 'Travelling in general'. And of
course, private instructions often remained as manuscripts, such as the
method by Edmond Tyllney, which prefaced his 'Topographicall
description of regiments and policies' written c.1600.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 171
Tl!iomas Coryate,
TRAVAILER
Forthe £nglijl)\iiu,and thegood ojrthhKingdom:
Figure 3 The extravagance of Thomas Coryat was a form of popular self-fashioning, but
his generation of travel writers relied upon a serious methodical training based
on the dialectics of Peter Ramus. This portrait is from the English version of his
Logike (London, 1574)
existing consensus about the new type of late Renaissance courtier, who,
following Furio's fundamental intuition, was now, among other things,
necessarily a traveller: '... where may wisdome be had, but from many
men, and in many places?'
It is possible to summarize in two ideas the social and political
movements that connected the reception of humanism with the activity of
travel in a way unique to England. On the one hand the aristocratic,
dominant classes underwent a deep transformation. This affected their
economic resources and attitudes, their relationship with the Crown and
their education and way of living. Parallel to this, a group of London
merchants succeeded in launching England towards overseas expansion
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with the support of some influential courtiers and a few scholars. While
it is true that the country seems to have been developing the economic
structures necessary to become an expanding power, a certain political
and cultural effort was requied to put this potential into practice.
In this respect we can read our documents on travel as having an
important significance: the treatises written by Turler and Palmer, and the
letters from Lipsius, Sidney and Essex, associated travel with the
education of the young aristocrat at a time when English noblemen
initiated what was to become the tradition of the Grand Tour in Europe.
The humanists wanted to teach the right mental attitude, and their project
found many imitators among noblemen who also wanted to moralize.
Eden, Hakluyt and Purchas provided both the logistical information and
(in the case of Hakluyt) the nationalistic mythology necessary to plan
effectively the pirating and trading expeditions and to obtain social and
financial support for them. By the time Purchas published his various
volumes, culminating with the Pilgrimes of 1625, the aim had transcended
practical concerns and addressed the interpretation of the history of the
world in a kind of English-Protestant synthesis that may surpass Botero's
Italian-Catholic Universal relations of thirty years earlier. Other works
dealt specifically with the categories of classification to be used by the
keen observer, as we see in Meier (1589), Davison (1633), Dallington
(c.1605), Peacham (1622) or Bacon (1625). Finally, other treatises, such as
William Bourne's A regiment for the sea (London, 1574) or A book called the
treasure for travailers (London, 1578), both reprinted several times at least
until the middle of the seventeenth century, offered the sort of practical
information for navigation essential to the development of a nautical
81
science.
English navigational books were usually updated versions of such
works as Pedro de Medina's Arte de navegar (Valladolid, 1545) and Martin
Cortes' Breve compendio de la sphera y arte de navegar (Sevilla, 1551). This
genre had developed in the Iberian peninsula (in Portugal since at least
the late fifteenth century) in relationship with the voyages that had
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 175
figure of the traveller and the new empirical sciences exists not only in a
general sense of the substitution of theological assumptions and
hierarchies by formalised, institutionalised, critical and empirical
"common-sense" vernacular genres. A more precise connection can also
be established by looking at the genesis of scientific ideals and
programmes, and their inspiration in humanistic educational concerns
revised in the light of the theory and practice of travel and travel writing.
To be more specific, the concept of "method" which underlies the several
works of Turler, Zwinger and Palmer as well as those by Meier,
Dallington and Davison, and which also informs pieces superficially
belonging to a different genre, such as Fulke Greville's letter or Bacon's
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essay, not only has a recognised source of inspiration in the new humanist
dialectics (a connection quite evident in Zwinger's work) but also its
radical development in Francis Bacon's Advancement of learning.
Bacon's discussion of method in this work is illustrative: a part of logic,
but clearly addressing rhetorical practices, 'method' is thus concerned
with exposition insofar as it affects not only 'use of knowledge', but
likewise the progression of knowledge'. Bacon was worried that some
methods, by presenting a final product of knowledge rather than its roots
(i.e. by being too rhetorical), actually hindered its own progression. He
therefore thought that Ramus' fundamental intuition was right, even
though his development went astray: 'method considereth not only the
disposition of the argument or subject, but likewise the propositions: not
as to their truth or matter, but as to their limitation and manner'.
This attempt to organize kinds or propositions is certainly what the
authors of "instructions for travellers" tried and, sometimes, achieved, by
suggesting what categories should frame a description of a foreign
country. Bacon was concerned that a method should not constrain the
particular observations and propositions of different subject matters to
take the form of homogenous, fruitless generalities. He wanted to see (to
return to a fundamental distinction) the "roots" of induction and
invention, rather than just the "body of the tree" presented as a final
product. The problem of truth was best left to the quality of the traveller,
who was meant to respond with honesty (and, one should add, freed
from Bacon's famous "idols" or prejudices) to direct experiences. This
would of course produce a large quantity of measurable and convertible
observations, in a massive programme of inductive, progressive
construction of knowledge.
And this is, I believe, where we found Robert Hooke some three-
93
Notes
1. Quoted from Jerome Turler, The traveller (London, 1575), p. 22. The attribution to
Heraclitus belongs to Clemens of Alexandria. This article is part of an earlier piece
which received useful suggestions from various people in 1988, in particular from
Peter Burke, Anthony Pagden and Justin Stagl. I also wish to thank David Armitage,
Peter Miller and Chris Pinney for comments on various drafts of this version. This
article now forms the introduction to a longer manuscript on the same subject.
2. Robert Knox, An historical relation of Ceylon, edited by S.D. Saparadamu, (Dehiwala,
1958), p.lxxiv.
3. 'Quid est methodus? Ars quae quemadmodum disciplina omnis redigi in artem et
certain rationem possit demonstrat', a definition by Francis Hotman. Quoted from N.
Gilbert, Renaissance concepts of method, (New York, 1960), p.75.
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Thomas Blundeville as Of counsells and counselers, London 1570 (Facs ed. K.L. Selig,
Florida 1963); Hieronymus Turlerus, De peregrinationis et agro Neapolitano libri II,
(Argentorati 1574), translated in English by William Howe as The traveller of Jerome
Turler (London, 1575); Justus Lipsius, Epistolarium seledarum centuria prima, (London
1586), translated (only epist. xxii) in English by John Stradling as A direction for
travailers (London, 1592); Albertus Meierus, Methodus describendi regiones, urbes et
arces..., (Helmstadt 1587), translated in English by Philip Jones as Certain briefe and
speciall instructions for gentlemen, merchants, students, souldiers, marriners etc. (London.
1589); Robert Dallington, The view of France (London 1604; reprinted with 'Method for
travell' c.1605) and A survey of the Great Dukes state of Tuscany (London, 1605);
Mercurius Britannicus [Rev. Joseph Hall] Mundus alter et idem... (1605), translated in
English by the author as The discovery of a new world; Thomas Palmer, An essay of the
meanes how to make our travailes into forraine countries the more profitable and honourable
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(London, 1606); Thomas Coryate, Coryate's crudities, hastily gobbled up (London, 1611);
Richard Johnson trans. [from Giovanni Botero], The travellers' breviat (5th edition,
London, 1616); Fynes Morison, An itinerary (...) containing his ten years' travel (London,
1617); Joseph Hall, Quo vadis? a just censure of travell as it is commonly undertaken by the
gentlemen of our nation (London,1617); Henry Peacham, The complete gentleman
(London, 1622); Francis Bacon, Essays (London, 1625); Secretary Davison, Robert
Devereux and Philip Sidney (B.F. ed. [Francis Bacon?]), Profitable instructions
describing what speciall observations are to be taken by travellers in all nations, states and
countries (London, 1633).
8. I will discuss and illustrate this concept throughout the article. Among special sudies
see in particular Gilbert (1960), whose analysis of Renaissance concepts of method is
the logical starting point for any study of the humanistic transformation of Greek
methodology (mainly, but not exclusively, Aristotelian) into something much wider.
Gilbert's book is especially valuable because he also identifies the late Renaissance as
the central period of cultural transition leading to modern epistemology. He focuses
on concepts of method in what Renaissance writers understood as 'the arts', in
particular the processes of 'finding out', 'presenting' and 'demonstrating' within the
range of disciplines inherited from classical thought. Gilbert thus marks a distance
between sixteenth-century methods and seventeenth-century science. He is aware of
of the wide range of applications of the concept of method at the end of the sixteenth
century (which makes it difficult to give a single definition), but limits his analysis to
the more strictly pihlosophical definitions. While exploring a practical and rather
original use of 'method' neglected by Gilbert, I will here take for granted much of his
discussion of philosophical controversies.
9. The study of the science of the period and its transformation, of course in the wide
cultural context conditioned by the different forms of Christianity and by the
humanist inheritance, has a strong relevance for the argument of this article. Among
the vast bibliography, some recent studies have proved especially illuminating: James
R. Jacob, '"By an Orphean Charm": science and the two cultures in seventeenth-
century England', in Ph. Mack and M.C.Jacob (eds.) Politics and culture in early-modern
Europe. Essays in honour of H.G. Koenigsberger (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 231-49; L.Giard,
'Remapping knowledge, reshaping institutions', in S. Pumfrey, P.Rossi and
M.Slawinski (eds.) Science, culture and popular belief in Renaissance Europe (Manchester,
1991), pp. 19-47; M.Slawinski, 'Rhetoric and science/rhetoric of science/rhetoric as
science', in ibid. pp. 71-99; More arguable, but also useful, is B.Vickers' introduction
to Vickers (ed.) Occult and scientific mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1984),
where he counterpoises occult and scientific "mentalities", strangely forgetting
religious ones. Among earlier studies discussing late Renaissance rhetoric and
180 JOAN-PAU RUBIES
dialectic, W.Ong, Ramus, method and the decay of dialogue (Cambridge Mass. 1958),
Gilbert (1960) and L.Jardine, Francis Bacon: discovery and the art of discourse
(Cambridge, 1974) are particularly important. More recently A.Grafton and L.Jardine
From humanism to the humanities. (London, 1986).
10. Jardine (1974) ch. 1 stresses the ambiguities of the idea of method in the dialectical
tradition, and contains important precisions on the differences between the rhetorical
and pedagogic tradition of the humanists (to which the instructions for travellers
belong), the neo-Aristotelian thought of Padua, and Francis Bacon's ideas of scientific
method. C.Vasoli ' La logica' in G.Arnaldi and M.Pastore Stocchi (eds.) Storia della
cultura Veneta vol.III (1980), pp.35-73, also insists that Zabarella's methodus, as
opposed to Ramus', was conceived of as part of a demonstrative rather than empirical
science.
11. For England see W.S.Howell Logic and rhetoric in England 1500-1700 (Princeton, 1956)
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16. Blundeville, The arte of logike (London, 1599), pp. 56-58. Aconzio, like Bacon later,
defined 'method' as both research and exposition: 'method is a certaine right way
whereby we may search out the knowledge of any thing and, having attained it, how
to teach the same commodiously to any other...' (ibid, p.56) which can be usefully
compared to a contemporary English translation of Ramus: 'the methode is a
disposition by the which amonge many propositions of one sorte, and by their
disposition knowen, that thing which is absolutely more clear is first placed, and
secondly that which is next (...) from the most generall to the speciall and singular' (P.
Ramus, The logike of the moste excellent philosopher P. Ramus Martyr, London 1574,
p.94). Aconzio's method has been discussed by Gilbert (1960),pp.l81-6. Gilbert
stresses that Aconzio seems more modern than he actually is and that he remained a
marginal figure. Certainly his language of causes in his discussion of history is
heavily Aristotelian. On the other hand, his emphases on systematic analysis, reliance
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on inductive processes, and practical uses are all interesting - as it is his repeated use
by Blundeville.
17. W. Ong, 'Commonplace rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger and Shakespeare' in
R.Bolgar (ed.) Classical influences on European culture A.D.1500-1700 (Cambridge, 1976),
pp. 91-118.
18. Concerning Bodin's Theatrum there is now an interesting study by Ann Blair, who
identifies this encyclopdia of the natural world as essentially a specialised book of
commonplaces. This establishes a clear link between the basic tools of humanist
learning and later scientific concerns, in particular Baconian science. See A.Blair,
'Humanist methods in natural philosophy: the commonplace book', in Jounal of the
History of ideas LIII, 4 (1992) : 541-51. What makes Bodin's contribution particularly
relevant is of course his central position in the fundamental political and religious
debates of the time. It is also worth remarking that his combined works on history
and natural philosophy demonstrate the basic methodological analogy between the
human and physical sciences (both conceived as historical) in the mind of the
humanist thinker of the late Renaissance.
19. J.R.Hale (ed.) The travel journal of Antonio de Beatis (London, 1979), p.56.
20. See Pellegrini Scrittori. Viaggatori toscani del trecento in Terrasanta a cura di Antonio
Lanza e Marcelina Troncarelli (Firenze, 1990) and Francesco Suriano, Il trattato di terra
Santa e dell 'Oriente (Venezia, 1524), respectively.
21. Hale (1979), pp. 22-41, 'The sources of the Renaissance travel journal'.
22. Iosafa Barbaro 'Viaggio di Iosafa Barbaro alla Tana e nella Persia' in Giovanni Battista
Ramusio (ed.), Navigazioni e viaggi a cura di M.Milanesi, VI vols. (Torino, 1978-), III,
pp.485-6.
23. Ludovico de Varthema, Itinerario ed. P.Giudici (Milano, 2nd ed. 1929), p. 335.
24. On the special character of Venetian humanism see M.L.King, Venetian humanism in
an age of patrician dominance (Princeton, 1986). For the sixteenth century W.J.Bouwsma,
Venice and the defence of republican liberty. Renaissance values in the age of the Counter
Reformation (Berkeley, 1968), pp. 135-167, offers a useful overview. More generally, on
Venetian culture of this period, see G.Arnaldi and M.Pastore Stocchi (eds.) 1980, vol.
III, 'Dal primo quattrocento al concilio di Trento'. On travel literature, M.Zancan
'Venezia e il Veneto' in Letteratura Italiana. Storia e Geografia, II (Torino, 1988), pp. 624-
657, although it is too often derivative. On the economic and political context,
V.Magalhães Godinho, 'Venise: les dimensions d'une presence face à un monde
tellement changé , XVe-XVe siècles', in H. -G.Beck, M.Manoussacas and A.Pertusi
(eds.) Venezia centro di mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (secoli XV-XVI) (Firenze, 1977),
I, pp. 11-50.
182 JOAN-PAU RUBIES
25. For the Venetian relations to the senate see the Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al
senato edited by A.Segarizzi (three vols. in four, Bari, 1912-16. From this A.Ventura
published a valuable anthology in 1980). Some Florentine examples of embassy
journals range from Giovanni di Tommaso Ridolfi, who accompanied his father to
northern Italy in 1480 (see P.J. Jones, 'Travel notes of an apprentice Florentine
statesman...' in P. Denley and C.Elam (eds.) Florence and Italy. Renaissance studies in
honour of Nicolai Rubinstein, London 1988, pp. 263-280) to the better known relation of
Francesco Guicciardini in Spain in 1512-13. Still in Italy, a different case is represented
by Antonio de Beatis, who accompanied Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona across the Alps in
1517-18 (see Hale 1979). From the same years, but in an altogether different genre, is
the fascinating account of a journey through Europe written by an anonymous
Milanese merchant in 1517-19 (see L.Monga, Un mercante di Milano in Europa. Diario di
viaggio del primo Cinquecento, Milano 1985).
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historical analysis of this wide and complex change. See for instance M.Foucault, Les
mots et les choses (Paris, 1966), and from the perspective of the history of ideas Ch.
Taylor, Sources of the self (Cambridge, 1989).
31. These early publications all have obscure origins and questions of authorship remain
unsettled, although by now various sensible hypotheses have been proposed. It
seems, for instance, that Scyllacius adapted a letter by his friend the Catalan doctor
Guillem Coma, one of whose informants was Margarit, a leading dissenter from
Columbus' colonial adventure. It is also likely that Vespucci's letters were adapted in
order to produce the Mundus Novus, although it is not so clear whether Vespucci
himself engineered this. See, respectively, J.Gil and C.Varela (eds.) , Cartas de
particulares a Colón y relaciones coetáneas (Madrid, 1984), pp.177-203 and M.Pozzi (ed.)
Il mondo novo di Amerigo Vespucci (Torino, 1993) pp. 7-29.
32. A general survey of Renaissance travel collections can be found in D.F.Lach, Asia in
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the making of Europe, vol. I 'A century of discovery' (Chicago, 1965), pp.204-217.
33. Of course, in the sixteenth century the ideological connotations of patriotic feelings
were different from those derived from the modern concept of nation-state, because
allegiance to a prince often took precedence over other considerations, and it could
not be taken for granted that ultimately there was a single source of public authority
devoted to the exclusive interests of a political community. Still, the idea of the
nation as a community of people identified by a language, customs and laws,
organised as a political body, and settled in a particular territory that was supposed
to convey a special "nature" to its inhabitants, was very much prevalent. It can be
traced to the fifteenth century at least, and was usually associated with a historical
rhetoric.
34. The role of travelling as an activity that expressed the changes experienced by the
European aristocracy must be followed in specialised literature. See A.Maczak, Viaggi
e voaggiatori nell 'Europe moderna (Roma, 1994; the original Polish edition is from 1978;
there is also a recent English edition). This book is useful and has a good
bibliography, although its approach is sometimes superficial. For England, the focus
of this work, the literature is more extensive. See Howard (1914) and Haynes (1986).
J.W.Stoye, English travellers abroad, 1606-1667 (London, 1952) is very usefull but only
deals with the seventeenth century. For Italy in special see G.B.Parks, The English
traveler to Italy The Middle Ages (to 1525) (Roma, 1954) and R.S. Pine-Coffin,
Bibliography of British and American travel in Italy to 1860 (Firenze, 1974). L.Stone, The
crisis of the aristocracy 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965) gives a wide-ranging account of the
evolution of the English élite in this crucial period, discussing also the educational
importance of travel (pp.692-702), while the background of education in Elizabethan
England is generally discussed by the same author in 'The educational revolution in
England, 1560-1640', Past and Present 28 (1964). Here Stone developed a quantitative
approach previously initiated by Hexter and Curtis. Although he tentatively mapped
an expansive trend in education between 1570 and 1630, the fixation with
understanding the causes of the revolution of the 1640s led him to emphasize the
secularization of education at the institutional level, a process 'made possible by the
overthrow of the ancient clerical monopoly of culture'. This analysis missed the
qualitative importance of the idea of a world-wise, practical courtier, that is, the
informal connection between formal education and politics. This was effectively done
by Fritz Caspari in his Humanism and the social order in Tudor England (1968), and by
Denys Hay in his 'Renaissance education and the governors' (repr. in Renaissance
essays, 1988, pp.389-396). Working on the actual contents of the educational literature,
these authors rightly emphasized the influence of humanism and its adaptation to
local political conditions. However, the role of travel is not sufficiently addressed in
any of these works.
184 JOAN-PAU RUBIES
35. Lasseis was a rather exceptional representative of the Grand Tour given his Catholic
leanings, but his treatise marks nevertheless an important stage in a genre that stood
in the end above confessional differences. New light on the evolution of his work
between 1637 and 1668 is contained in E.Chaney, The grand tour and the great rebellion.
Richard Lassels and 'The voyage of Italy' in the seventeenth century (Geneve, 1985).
36. It would be rather pointless to give here a full bibliography on the expansion of
Europe. I shall briefly refer to a few general works. J.H.Parry, The Age of
Reconnaissance (2nd ed. California, 1981) and G.V.Scammell, The world encompassed.
The first European maritime empires c.800-1650 (London, 1981) are useful introductions.
The Portuguese empire is covered by C.R. Boxer The Portuguese seaborne empire,
B.Diffie and G.Winius, Foundation of the Portuguese empire (Oxford, 1977) a n d , for
some finer points, S.Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese empire in Asia 1500-1700 (London
and New York, 1993). For Spain in America L.Bethell (ed.) The Cambridge History of
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Latin America, vols. I and II (Cambridge, 1978) is a valuable starting point, although
for the metropolitan perspective J.Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs (II vols. Oxford,
1964-9) is more adequate (it has recently been reissued with important revisions as
consecutive volumes of 'A history of Spain' edited by the same author, Oxford 1992).
On the growing world-economy see I.Wallerstein The Modern world-system, vol. I
(Orlando, 1974). For a recent comparative perspective on merchant empires, see the
two volumes edited by J.D.Tracy, The rise of merchant empires (Cambridge,1990) and
The political economy of merchant empires (Cambridge,1991). The early English
expansion overseas is well covered in K.R.Andrews, Trade, plunder and settlement
(Cambridge, 1984), while for the Dutch see J.I.Israel, Dutch primacy in world trade,
1585-1740 (Oxford, 1989).
37. See H.Cline, 'The "Relaciones Geográficas" of the Spanish Indies, 1577-1586', in
Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 44, 3 (1964). For the wider context of imperial
science under Philip II, D.C.Goodman, Power and penury: government, technology and
science in Philip Il's Spain (Cambridge, 1988). Many of the geographical relations
prepared in America were published in Spain by Jiménez de la Espada in the
nineteenth century, and others have appeared since.
38. However, the initiative seems to have had an influence beyond the production of
standard geographical relations. J.S.Cummins thinks that an account as important as
Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Mexico 1609) was influenced by the
questionnaire. See Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Pilipinas, translated and
edited by J.S Cummins (Cambridge, 1971), p. 26. More obvious is the case of Juan de
Pomar's relation of Mexico, where the questionnaire sent by the crown legitimized
polemical research into pre-hispanic history by a mestizo from Tetzcoco. It is
published in J.García Icazbalceta, Nueva colección de documentos para la historia de
México, vol. III (México, 1891), pp. 1-69.
39. There were a few exceptions to this rule, because some Catholic universities (Bologna,
Naples, Louvain) were considered "safe" for Spaniards, but the overall restriction
was harsh and, given the international movement of ideas, of great consequence. Two
generations later, the minister Olivares complained that he did not find the thinking
men he needed to serve the state. This was paradoxical, because the very
international nature of the Habsburg monarchy offered an excellent basis for a
cosmopolitan foreign service - the problem was purely educational. In England,
instead, despite the existence of restrictions over foreign travel during the reign of
Elizabeth, Lawrence Stone calculates that between 1570 and 1639 about 65 peers are
known to have spent two or three years travelling in the continent 'and the true
number is probably near 80 or more'. See Stone (1965), p. 702.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 185
40. For the Portuguese policy of secrecy see Lach (1965) I, pp. 150-4. Lach's claim that
there was a systematic restriction of the flow of information is probably too general,
since it is not clear that the circulation of chronicles and descriptions was always
actively prevented by the crown. On the other hand, the tendency to regard certain
kinds of information as a political asset which needed to be controlled was clear,
while the fact that many reports were only used within restricted circles was per-
fectly consistent with the aims of those who wrote or commissioned them. The effects
of religious and political censorship, as well as the rather limited possibilities of the
book market in Portugal, had also a considerable effect and help explain that
chronicles and stories written for a wide public were not easy to publish. Overall,
significant parts of the Portuguese literature of expansion failed to take off as a public
genre in their home country (but this is also true of much that was written in Castilian
and in Italian).
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52. Subsequently I will refer to Meierus and Turlerus (these are the names they employed
for their Latin publications) by their anglicised names, Meier and Turler, which
correspond better to the context of reception of their works with which we are
concerned.
53. For the sixteenth century I have only been able to locate a Petit discours de l'utilité des
voyages ou pelegrinages by E.Margriau (Paris 1578). For the seventeenth century there
are, besides the important collection of travels by Thévenot, the discourse on travel
that prefaced one the later editions of the voyage of François Pyrard de Laval in the
Oriental Indies (1679), and De l'utilité des voyages et de l'avantage que la recherche des
antiquités procure aux savants by Baudelot de Darval (1686). On French geographical
literature of the sixteenth century see G.Atkinson, La littérature géographique française
de la Renaissance (Paris, 1927) and Les nouvaux horizons de la Renaissance française (Paris,
1935). For the intellectual history of cosmography and travel in the same period see
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the various works by Frank Lestringant, for instance his L'atelier du cosmographe, ou
l'image du monde à la Renaissance (Paris, 1991). And on the importance of travel as an
educational experience in the early seventeenth century, despite the lack of an explicit
discourse, one may use René Pintard's study of the 'erudite libertins' whose eventual
intellectual regression into conformity he deplores: Le libertinage érudit dans la première
moitié du XVIIè siècle, II vols. (Paris, 1943),
54. A useful reference guide to several works classifiable as instructions for travellers that
were printed in England can be found in E.G.Cox, A reference guide to the literature of
travel III vols. (Seattle, 1935-49) -see vol. 2. Also useful, although less comprehensive,
is Pine-Coffin (1974).
55. It has been reprinted by F.J.Furnivall (ed.) Andrew Borde's introduction and dyetary
(London, 1870). On Borde's life see DNB II, pp. 833-5.
56. See Wilson (1553) ff. 16-17. There are two recent editions of this work, one by
Th.J.Derrick with a valuable introduction analysing Wilson's sources (1982) and
another by P.E.Medine, based on the version of 1560 (1994). Derrick defines the Arte
as 'the first comprehensive rhetorical treatise in England and also the most popular
work of this kind in sixteenth-century England' (Derrick ed. 1982, p.lxiii). On
Wilson's career see also the entry in DNB.
57. Hermannus Kirchnerus' Oration of travel in generall was translated by Thomas Coryat
and included in his encyclopedic Crudities (1611). Kirchner was a civil lawyer and
rhetorician in the University of Marburg, and quite obviously a direct successor of
Turler.
58. Wilson's career, important in its own terms, was also symptomatic of wider patterns.
On English secretaries in Italy see K.R.Bartlett, 'Italian theory and English practice in
the Tudor state', in D.Letocha (ed.) Aequitas, Aequalitas, Auctoritas. Raison theorique et
legitimation de l'autorité dans le XVIè siècle Européen (Vrin, 1992).
59. R.Ascham, The scholemaster (London, 1570) pp. 23-30.
60. See Furió Ceriol (in Méchoulan ed. 1973), pp.140-4 and, in Blundeville's version (Selig
ed. 1963) pp.67-73.
61. On Furió Ceriol see Méchoulan ed. (1973) and, for his later years, R.W.Truman,
'Fadrique Furió Ceriol's return to Spain from the Netherlands in 1564: further
information on its circumstances', in Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 41, 2
(1979). I shall discuss Furió Ceriol's relationship with Jerome Turler and his moral
ideas in a following chapter.
62. The contents of these texts will be discussed with reference to the contexts for the
English translations in the continuation of this work.
63. Stone (1965), p.693. Edward (1549-87) was the third Earl of Rutland.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 187
64. See the letter attributed to Robert Devereux in Davison, Sidney and Essex (1633), a
small collection which also includes a version of one of Sidney's two letters to his
brother Robert (1579-80) and a brief advice attributed to secretary William Davison.
Cox 1935-49 (I,pp 320-2) is alone in thinking that there was an earlier edition in 1613.
Anyhow the texts printed in 1633 were all written before the end of the sixteenth
century, excepting the introduction by a certain B.F., which I believe may have been
written by Francis Bacon. See also Fulke Greville, Certaine learned and elegant workes...
(London, 1933), pp. 295-8. The close relationship between letters written by Essex,
Bacon, Fulke Greville and, only a few years earlier, Sidney, is beyond doubt, not just
at the level of friendship and exchange, but also at the more ticklish level of
authorship. See N.K.Farmer, 'Fulke Greville's letter to a cousin in France and the
problem of authorship in cases of formula writing', in Renaissance Quarterly 22, 2
(1969): 140-147.
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65. It seems that both The view of France as it stoode in the yeare of our lord 1598 and the
Survey of the Great Dukes state of Tuscany in the yeare of our lord 1596 were first
published without Dallington's permission, in 1604 and 1605 respectively, although
the editor of the Survey, Edward Blount, declared his friendship to the author. The
publication of the two treatises is an example of how the products from a private
sphere of aristocratic education served as basis for a public cultural sphere, often
mediated by active printers like Blount himself.
66. Dallington's surveys had already been noted by Taylor (1934), pp.39-41, as
representative examples of 'regional geography or chorography'.
67. Palmer (1606), 'To the reader'.
68. Ibid. pp. 60-81.
69. Johnson trans. (1616), pp. 1-20 and 21-33.
70. Fynes Morison, An itinerary, containing his ten years' travel IV vols (Glasgow, 1907-8),
part III pp. 349 ff. This modern edition, based on the original but incomplete
publication of 1617, needs to be complemented with the manuscripts published by
Ch. Hughes with the title Shakespeare's Europe (London, 1904).
71. Mentioned by Maczak (1994), p.232. The manuscript is now preserved at Illinois
University Library.
72. The Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, was a key patron as well as a key politician in
Elizabeth's court until his death in 1588, and sponsored the activities of men like
Blundeville and Wilson as well as supporting Philip Sidney. Around 1600 the young
Earls of Essex, Bedford and Rutland were Robert Devereux, Edward Russell and
Roger Manners. The multi-formed letter on travel attributed to Essex was published
in 1633, and probably had been composed with the collaboration of Francis Bacon
more than thirty years earlier and possibly from a previous model. In some of the
manuscripts studied by J.Spedding for his edition of the Works of Francis Bacon (XIV
vols. London, 1857-4, II, pp.3-20) this letter was addressed by Essex to the Earl of
Rutland, logically Francis Manners who travelled to France in 1595, although this
may be only the result of a confusion with a previous letter of Lord Burghley
(William Cecil) to Edward, a former Earl of Rutland, written in 1571 (Stone 1965,
p.693). Lipsius' letter to the young nobleman Philip Lanoy was translated by Sir John
Stradling for the Earl of Bedford. Dallington's method was originally intended for the
private use of the sixth Earl of Rutland, Francis Manners. Philip Sidney's career and
influence are well known, as are Ralegh's activities as courtier, privateer and colonist,
or his support for Thomas Harriot.
73. Some names in this list have not been discussed in the text and need some
justification. For instance Harvey did not actually write or translate any method for
travellers, but he was a keen collector of these, and we have the marginalia to his
188 JOAN-PAU RUBIES
Turler. Of course his interest in travel was related to his activities as a Cambridge
educator and rhetorician, who, above everything else, hoped to educate himself
further. The theme kept coming up through his friendship with Thomas Wilson, in
his satires of 'Italianated Englishmen' and in his polemic with Thomas Nashe, whose
narrative prose the Unfortunate traveller (1594) can be read as both exploration and
satire of the literary possibilities of the figure of the traveller to Italy. On Harvey's
role as "facilitator" see Grafton and Jardine, '"studied for action": How Gabriel
Harvey read his Livy' in Past and Present no 129 (1990): 30-78. On his understanding
of dialectics see Lisa Jardine, 'Humanism and dialectic in sixteenth-century
Cambridge: a preliminary investigation' in Bolgar (ed.) 1974, pp. 141-154.
74. The underlying unity of intention among the different court factions during the reign
of Elizabeth (led by Leicester, Walsingham, the Sidneys, Raleigh, Essex and the Cecil-
Burghleys) has been stressed by John Guy in his Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), p. 255.
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Indeed, while William Cecil's more cautious and perhaps self-seeking approach to
foreign policy has often been opposed to the Protestant "activism" of Walsingham,
Leicester and Sidney in the 1570s and 1580s, and their respective positions inherited
by Robert Cecil and the second Earl of Essex in the 1590s, these groups did not
represent two opposing principles as much as shades within a common position in
which the defence of Protestantism, an anti-Spanish continental strategy, and support
for colonial ventures were all active ingredients. It would not be fair to see all
humanistic cultural patronage coming from the same faction either. The literature on
Elizabethan England is of course vast. Guy's book is a good starting point for an
analysis of Elizabethan government and politics, and includes a detailed
bibliography. For cultural aspects one needs to refer to more specialised works. For
the early seventeenth century, K. Sharpe and P.Lake (eds.) Culture and politics in early
Stuart England (London, 1994) includes many valuable articles.
75. See Coryat's extravagant Crudities (1611) or his Travailer for the English wits (1616), a
letter sent to his countrymen from India. For George Sandys see Haynes (1986) and,
for Moryson, Hughes ed. (1904).
76. Peacham (1622), p. 200.
77. The social transformation of the English aristocracy is described in Stone (1965).
78. The general pattern of English economic expansion and its trade overseas is discussed
in Scammell (1981), pp.458-500. See also Andrews (1984) and, for the East India
Company, K.N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: the study of an early joint-
stock company (London, 1965).
79. On the origins of the "Grand Tour" see Stoye (1952) and C. di Seta, 'Italia nello
specchio del " Grand Tour"', in C.di Seta ed. II paesaggio, vol. V of 'Annali di Storia d'
Italia' (Torino, 1982).
80. On the other hand, as is often remarked, Purchas abandoned Hakluyt's careful
editorial methods. On Purchas see Taylor 1934, pp. 53-66 and W.Foster "Samuel
Purchas' in E. Lynam (ed.) Richard Hakluyt and his successors (London, 1946).
81. On navigational literature see Andrews (1984), pp.29-30. There is a modern edition of
William Bourne's A regiment for the sea edited by E.G.R.Taylor (Cambridge, 1963).
82. For England and the mathematical sciences see the exhibition catalogue by
S.A.Johnston, F.H.Willmoth and J.A.Bennett, The grounde of all artes. Mathematical
books of 16th-Century England, (Whipple Museum of the history of science, Cambridge,
1985), which discusses a good number of the most important titles published in this
period; for a more general perspective see D.W.Waters, 'Science and the techniques of
navigation in the Renaissance', in C.Singleton (ed.) Art, science and history in the
Renaissance (Baltimore, 1967); also D.Howse, 'Navigation and Astronomy: the first
three thousand years' in Renaissance and Modern Studies, Nottingham (1986): 60-86. For
INSTRUCTIONS FOR TRAVELLERS 189
the nobility's involment in commercial activities, Stone (1965), pp. 363-84 is valuable,
because it distinguishes quantitative and qualitative aspects. I owe to Will Sherman's
forthcoming monograph my better understanding of the role of John Dee.
83. See Farmer 1969 and nn. 64 and 72 above. The three letters attributed to Bacon are
published in Bacon (Spedding ed.) 1861-72, II, 3-20. I shall call the first letter "first
Essex letter". It was printed in 1633 (profitable instructions...), along with Sidney's 1579
letter to his brother on the same subject, and secretary Davison's instructions (see
Devereux et al. 1633). For Sidney's letter to his brother one must also compare a letter
sent to Sidney by the humanist Hubert Languet in December 1573. Davison's
instructions, which he probably wrote for his son Francis when he travelled in Europe
inl594, are similar to the third letter published by Spedding, a standard "dialectical
method" on what to observe intended to complement the generalities of the first
letter - which focuses on moral advice - and the specific advice on a course of study of
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a second letter, which is more like a reading-list. This second letter is similar in nature
to a second letter of Philip Sidney to his brother Robert of 1580, and is printed in the
fourth place by Spedding (ibid. pp. 21-6) as addressed by Essex to Fulke Greville
when he was in Cambridge. On the other hand, the second "Essex letter" given by
Spedding as sent to the Earl of Rutland is in fact very similar to Fulke Greville's letter
to his cousin Greville Varney in 1609, and published among his works in 1633. It is
also very similar to another latter possibly sent by Thomas Bodleigh to Francis Bacon
c. 1576, and to the letter sent by Lord Burghley (William Cecil) to the Earl of Rutland
in 1571. In other words, this letter to a young gentleman travelling to France was used
throughout the 1570s and all the way to 1633, when it was printed as Fulke Greville's!
The letter mostly emphasized that the traveller should learn about the world without
losing his religion, and linked the profitable with the honest. It encouraged learning
from foreigners rather than mocking them, provided it was all done with a clear
moral attitude, and went on to provide a summary of things to be observed, although
without intending to bring 'all your observations to heads' (that is, it was not a
proper method). Possibly the extraordinary success of this letter, which is neither the
most original nor the most profound, can be related to its combining conventional
moral advice with superficial dialectical guidelines. To summarize, we have four
basic English documents printed in 1633: (1) The first "Essex" letter of moral advice,
in whose composition Bacon may have participated; (2) Philip Sidney's first letter to
Robert Sidney; (3) Secretary Davison's method for observation, which resembles a
manuscript which might be from Francis Bacon; and seperately (4) Fulke Greville's
plagiarised letter, which was originally sent to the Earl of Rutland, at some later point
sent to Bacon, and at another point attributed to the Earl of Essex. There were,
furthermore, the "reading lists" by Philip to Robert Sidney when travelling aboad,
and by the Earl of Essex to Fulke Greville when studying in Cambridge.
84. The Defence of poesy was essentially a rhetorical oration. William Temple, Sidney's
secretary, composed a methodical analysis of the Defence. See J.Webster (ed.) William
Temple's analysis of Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for poetry (New York, 1984).
85. Davison, Essex and Sidney (1633), p.33.
86. Ibid. pp. 40-1.
87. Ibid. pp. 64-5.
88. As noted by J.Spedding in Bacon (1861-72), II, p.4. He also identifies parallels with the
essay "Of travel". On the other hand, his attribution of the three "Essex" letters he
publishes to Bacon is unsatisfactory, according to my discussion above.
89. For instance, the 'Directions about what is to be observed in foreign states by those
who travel', mentioned in ibid. p.3.
190 JOAN-PAU RUBIES
90. 'as the doctrine of syllogisms comprehendeth the rules of judgement upon that which
is invented, so the doctrine of method containeth the rules of judgement upon that
which is to be delivered'. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning and the New
Atlantis, ed. by A.Johnson (Oxford, 1974), p.134.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid. pp.137-8.
93. Robert Boyle had also set out 'General heads for a natural history of a country' in
1665 (in the first number of the Transactions of the Royal Society).
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