THOMAS CORYAT was not, until the last years of his
life, a traveller in the same sense as the heroes of Hakluyt's famous epic. When in 1611 he spent five months away from his "dear natalitiall " Odeombe, Italy and High Germany were the limits of his journey. But travelling in the seventeenth century was not so easy as to-day, and Coryat's hasty excur- sion may well have seemed to himself and to others a spirited adventure. Moreover, he was animated by the true traveller's feeling. He knew that to wander was to soften manners, and he very properly prefaced his book by Kirchner's oration in praise of travel. Now Kirchner's enthusiasm is somewhat highly pitched, but it strikes the right note. "Who is so crabbed, austere, and angry," says he, "whom the humanity, affability, gentleness, and placa- bility of our consorts and companions, that communicate with us in our journeys and inns, will not change?" Who indeed ? Not Tom Coryat, surely, whose amiability and gentleness were never disturbed, save by theological controversy, and who carried abroad with him a determina- tion to see and enjoy all things. He is not an ideal traveller ; he could not be called " compleat," as the old phrase bath it ; he was neither a profound philosopher nor a very accurate observer. But in all that he did and said be was moved by a real zest for action and speech. No man ever visited a foreign country with a keener curiosity. He landed at Calais with a fresh eye and a fresh mind. He was deter- mined to find all things strange, and to get the best that lie could out of life. The things that might seem common enough to the most of men aroused Coryat's simple-minded wonder. The finest cage-birds that ever he saw in France were at Amiens,—so he writes, and he admired beyond measure the workmanship of the cage, which "was very curious with gilt wires." Here, too, he saw a far greater sight, which doubtless eclipsed the cage-birds and their gold wires in his fickle mind. "The first pilgrim that ever I saw was at Amiens "—we cannot but quote his own words—" a very simple fellow, who spoke so bad Latin that a country Scholar in England should be whipped for speaking the like. He told me that he lived two years at Compostella, a city and University of Galicia in Spaine, where Saint James is much worshipped, wherehence he then came, and was going to Rome. He had a long staff in his hand with a knob in the middle, according to the fashion of these pilgrims' staves, a chain about his neck of extraordinary great beads, wherein was the picture of our Lady and Christ in her arms."
For once curiosity got the better of Coryat's partisanship, and he let his pilgrim go without openly attacking his faith. But he lost few opportunities of setting forth his own opinions, and of fighting for the cause which in all sincerity he had made his own. The ceremonies of Corpus Christi Day, which be witnessed in Paris, and which the passage of the years has not changed, filled him with disgust. "A spectacle very pitiful (methinks) to behold," such is his comment, "though the Papists esteem it holy." Even Mantua, whose perfections he most eloquently praises, had two draw- backs in his esteem : it practised another religion than his own, and it was not Odcombe. But the passage is so clear an index of his style and thought that it is worth quoting in full : "Truly the view of this most sweet Paradise, this domicilium Venerum et Chaiitum did even so ravish my senses, and tickle my spirits with such
• Corpses Craditiss. Hastily gobbled up in five moneths travails by Thomas Coryat. 2 vols. Glasgow J. KloLobosa and Suns. [25a. nat.]
inward delight, that I said unto myself, this is the City which of all other places in the world, I would wish to make my habitation, and spend the remainder of my days in some divine meditations amongst the sacred Muses, were it not for their gross idolatry and superstitious ceremonies, which I detest, and the love of Odcombe in Somersetshire, which is so dear unto me that I prefer the very smoke thereof before the fire of all other places under the Sun." The touch of patriotism is admirably characteristic. Much as he liked to wander in strange places, his heart with perfect fidelity always turned to Odcombe. Wherever he might be—in Rhaetia, commonly called the Grisons country, or Helvetia, alias Switzerland—be liked nothing so well as to remember Odcombe, and the country rectory where first he saw the light. And he always wished Odcombe to share the glory of his exploits. Even on the title-page he tells us that his " Crudities " were "newly digested in the hungry air of Odcombe "; it was in his father's church that he hung up the boots in which he had walked from Venice ; and when he set out upon the long journey from which he never returned, it was at the market-cross of Odcombe that he took a last farewell of his friends and country.
But it was not against those whom he calls " idolaters " that he waged his bitterest war; it was against the Jews, One day at Venice he came by chance into the Ghetto, and there he roundly engaged a Jewish Rabbi, who spoke good Latin, in argument. The Rabbi in the end "seemed to be somewhat exasperated" against Coryat, because he sharply
taxed their superstitious ceremonies, and perhaps the Rabbi's behaviour is not surprising. However, the sequel overturned even Coryat's equanimity :— " After there had passed many vehement speeches to and fro betwixt us," thus he writes, "it happened that some forty or fifty Jews more flocked about me, and some of them began very insolently to swagger with me, because I durst reprehend their religion: Whereupon fearing lest they would have offered me some violence, I withdrew myself by little and little towards the bridge at the entrance into the Ghetto, with an intent to file from them, but by good fortune our noble Ambassador Sir Henry Wotton, passing under the bridge in his Gondola at that very time, espied me somewhat earnestly bickering with them, and so incontinently sent unto me out of his boat one of his principal gentlemen, Master Belford, his secretary, who conveyed me safely from these unchristian miscreants, which perhaps would have given me just occasion to forswear any more coming to the Ghetto."
Here we discover Coryat's two dominant qualities : his discretion and his love of great people. He exasperated the Rabbi so long as he deemed it safe, and then began to edge off for the bridge. And it was a piece of excellent luck that threw him into the way of Sir Henry Wotton, to
whom he carried letters, and whose favour he desired above all things to win. His attitude of mind towards this noble Ambassador may be seen in the pleasure which a mere courtesy gave him. He tells us that the great man once admitted him to pass with him in his gondola, "which," says he, "I will ever most thankfully acknowledge for one of his undeserved favours he afforded me in that noble City." But it must not be forgotten that Coryat was a courtier before he was a traveller. After leaving Oxford, he was attached to the household" of Prince Henry, and as (in Ben Jonson's phrase) he was always "Tongue-major of the Company," his society was eagerly sought by wits and courtiers alike. Nor was this a simple tribute to Coryat's excellence. AU the biographers are quick to tell you that he was not a wit, but a whetstone of wit, and perhaps he created more merriment than he intended. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt of his popularity. When his book seemed in danger of finding no publisher, all the poets of the time came to his aid, and the Commendatory Verses, edited by Ben Jonson, which preface his book are sufficient to make it a literary curiosity for all time. They were written not without a spice of kindly malice ; but the fact that they were written at all proves that Tom Coryat was in his time an amiable and conspicuous personage.
Some years after his" Crudities" were published Coryat set out on a longer voyage. This time India was his goal, and he was prepared to spend years, not months, upon gobbling up languages and impressions. With so fine a success did he devote himself to the study of Oriental tongues that at Ajmere he silenced a brawling laundress in her own vernacular, which is enough to make a reputation for any man. Had he lived to write an account of this longer journey, the world might have taken a more serious view of this intrepid traveller, this "great and bold carpenter of words." But he overtook death at Surat, after a glass of sack. And we must be content with his "Crudities," now made easily accessible for the first time in Messrs. MacLehose's handsome and scholarly reprint.
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