able in his travels, is the meagre and bald account which he gives of foreign manners and customs. On the first publication of his book, it must have possessed considerable interest, as Coryate was the first to give the English public a description of many of those parts of the continent which he had visited. This circumstance, no doubt, procured a reputation for our author, which he might otherwise have failed to gain, and gave his travels a value which of course they cannot at the present day possess. There are, notwithstanding, so many curious anecdotes and quaint descriptions mixed up with his " Crudities," that we are sure we shall be performing an acceptable service to our readers in making a selection from them.

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It was our traveller's good fortune to reckon in the number of his friends many of those distinguished men, whose genius has thrown so bright a lustre over our literary history in the reign of James I. In the Elogia, at the commencement of his travels, the names of many of the most celebrated men of his day are to be found; "though," as a brother traveller observes, "if he had not fallen into the smart hands of the wits of those times, he might have fared better." With Lawrence Whitaker, Coryate appears to have been particularly intimate; and he speaks of Ben Jonson with great affection. After mentioning the large reward which the Venetian senate had bestowed on Sannazzaro for some verses, he adds, I would to God my poetical friend, Mr. Benjamin Jonson, were so well rewarded for his poems here in England, seeing he hath made many as good verses, in my opinion, as those of Sannazarius." At Venice, he was honoured with the friendship of the accomplished Sir Henry Wotton, one of the most gallant and chivalrous spirits of the age," who once admitted him to pass with him in his Gondola." From the pens of many of his literary friends, our traveller obtained certain copies of verses, which, despite of the ridicule which they throw upon him, and of which he was not insensible, he has placed at the commencement of his travels. "I have here," says he, "communicated that copious rhapsody of poems which my learned friends have bountifully bestowed upon me, wherein many of them are disposed to glance at me, with their free and merry jests, for which I desire thee (courteous reader) to suspend thy censure of me till thou hast read over my whole book." Many of these singular productions were doubtless the spontaneous offspring of their authors' brains, while others appear to have been composed at the earnest request of our traveller himself. Thus, Sir Dudley Digges complains:

"Our author will not let me rest, he says,
Till I write somewhat in his labour's praise."

From this extraordinary farrago of wit, irony, and folly, in which we find almost every language employed, even down to the Utopian, we select the following sonnet as a specimen :

"Incipit Joannes Harrington de Bath.

"Thou glorious goose that kep'st the capitol,

Afford one quill, that I may write one story yet,
Of this my new-come Odcombe friend Tom Coryet,
Whose praise so worthy wits and pens inroll,

As (with good cause) his custom is to glory it:
So far am I from judging his a sorry wit,
Above earth, sea, air, fire, I'll it extol
To Cinthia's sphere, the next beneath the stars,

Where his vast wit and courage so audacious.
Of equal worth in time of peace and wars,

(As Roland's erst) encumb'ring rooms capacious,
Lie stored, some in hogsheads, some in jars.

This makes the learned of late in foreign parts,
Find Phoebus' face so full of wens and warts.

"Explicit Joannes Harrington de Bath."

So great a master of words, as Coryate was, could not escape the notice of that learned prince, James I., who, we should have expected, would have felt some regard for a man, the pedantry of whose style almost surpassed his own. It seems, however, that this wisest fool in all Christendom," could not bear a rival near his throne; and on being informed by Mr. Steel, an Eastern traveller, that he had seen our author on his journey, the king replied, Is that fool living yet?—a remark which troubled poor Coryate exceedingly. But we must no longer delay giving some account of his peregrina

tions.

On the 14th of May, 1608, our traveller embarked at Dover, and arriving at Calais, proceeded through France to the capital. His observations on this journey possess little interest, nor is there any thing very valuable in his account of Paris. At this city, he added to the number of his friends, "that rare ornament of learning, Isaac Casaubonus, with whom he had much familiar conversation at his house near unto St. Germain's Gate, within the city." Coryate's character of the scholar is curious, and has a slight touch of satire in it. "I found him," says he, " very affable and courteous, and learned in his discourses, and by so much the more willing to give me entertainment, by how much the more I made relation to him of his learned works, whereof some I have read." Amongst

the other remarkable places which our traveller visited in France, he appears to have been delighted with the palace of Fontainebleau, or Fountaine Beleau, as it was then called, of which he gives a very minute description: but as it is too long for an extract, we will, instead of it, give his account of some Gypsies whom he met with.

"I never saw so many roguish Egyptians together in any one place in all my life as in Nevers, where there was a great multitude of men, women, and children of them, that disguise their faces as our counterfeit Western Egyptians in England. For both their hair and their faces looked so black, as if they were raked out of hell, and sent into the world by great Beelzebub to terrify and astonish mortal men: their men are very ruffians and swashbucklers, having exceeding long black hair, curled, and swords or other weapons by their sides. Their women also suffer their hair to hang loosely about their shoulders, whereof some I saw dancing in the streets, and singing lascivious vain songs, whereby they draw many flocks of the foolish citizens about them."

Our itinerating author, after leaving France, proceeded through Savoy into Italy, where he found an ample field for his antiquarian researches. Amongst the curious customs which he noted in this country, was the following:

"I observed a custom in all these Italian cities and towns through the which I had passed, that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels; neither do I think that any other nation of Christendom doth use it, but only Italy. The Italian, and also most strangers, that are commorant in Italy, do always at their meals use a little fork, when they eat their meat. For while, with their knife, which they hold in one hand, they cut the meat out of the dish, they fasten their fork, which they hold in their other hand, upon the same dish, so that whatsoever he be that sitting in the company of any others at meal, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meat with his fingers, from which all at the table do cut, he will give occasion of offence unto the company, as having transgressed the laws of good manners, in so much, that for his error, he shall be at least browbeaten, if not reprehended in words. This form of feeding, I understand, is generally used in all places of Italy, their forks being for the most part made of iron or steel, and some of silver, but those are used only by gentlemen. The reason of this their curiosity is because the Italian cannot by any means endure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike clean. Hereupon, I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this forked cutting of meat, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and often times in England since I came home. Being once quipped for that frequent using of my fork by a certain learned gentleman, Mr. Lawrence Whitaker, who, in his merry humour, doubted not to

call me at table furcifer, only for using a fork at feeding, but for no other cause."

This passage explains what Montaigne tells us, when he says, that out of his great greediness, he used sometimes to bite his own fingers severely. In fact, the delicate manners now observed at table, are quite of modern date. Even so late as the reign of Louis XIV. all the company at a French dinner party, used to dip their spoons into the same common tureen of soup. It appears from another passage, that umbrellas were not known in England when our author wrote. Indeed, we apprehend, that some of our more antique readers may remember the introduction of them.

"Also, many of them do carry other fine things of a far greater price, which will cost at the least a ducat, which they commonly call in the Italian tongue umbrellaes, that is, things which minister shadow unto them for shelter against the scorching heat of the sun. These are made of leather, something answering to the form of a little canopy, and hooped in the inside with divers little wooden hoops, that extend the umbrella in a pretty large compass. They are used especially by horsemen, who carry them in their hands when they ride, fastening the end of the handle upon one of their thighs, and they impart so long a shadow unto them, that it keepeth the heat of the sun from the upper part of their bodies."

"did

Proceeding on his Italian tour, at Cremona, Coryate eat fried frogs, which is a dish much used in many cities of Italy; they were so curiously dressed, that they did exceedingly delight his palate, the head and the fore-part being cut off." At Mantua, he witnessed the tricks of a mountebank; and, at Padua, he visited the tomb of St. Anthony, a Portuguese saint, where he was present at a curious experiment.

"It is reported that his tomb hath the virtue to expel devils, which I do hardly believe. For I saw an experiment of it when I was in the church, which came to no effect. For a certain demoniacal person prayed at the sepulchre upon his knees, who had another appointed to attend him, that he should not irreligiously behave himself at so religious a place. And a priest walked about the tomb while the demoniac was praying, to the end, to help to expel the devil with his exorcisms, but the effect thereof turned to nothing."

From Padua, our " Legge-stretcher" journeyed on to Venice," which," says he, "yieldeth the most glorious and heavenly show upon the water that ever any mortal eye beheld, a show as did even ravish me both with delight and admiration." Here he remained for the space of six weeks, the sweetest time he ever spent in his life; and, accordingly, he describes

all the wonders which he surveyed in this peerless and maiden city with infinite particularity. He especially recommends the traveller to "go up to the top of St. Mark's Tower before he cometh out of the city: for it will cost him but a gazet, which is not fully an English penny." His description of the gondola is worth extracting.

"None of them are open above, but fairly covered, first, with some fifteen or sixteen little round pieces of timber, that reach from one end to the other, and make a pretty kind of arch or vault in the gondola; then, with fair black cloth, which is turned up at both ends of the boat, to the end, that if the passenger meaneth to be private, he may draw down the same, and after row so secretly, that no man can see him in the inside, the benches are Anely covered with black leather, and the bottoms of many of them, together with the sides under the benches, are very neatly garnished with fine linen cloth, the edge whereof is laced with bonelace: the ends are beautified with two. pretty and ingenious devices. For each end hath a crooked thing made in the form of a dolphin's tail, with the fins very artificially represented, and it seemeth to be turned over. The watermen that row these, never sit as ours do in London, but always stand, and that at the farther end of the gondola, sometimes one, but most commonly two: and, in my opinion, they are altogether as swift as our rowers about London. Of these gondolas, they say there are ten thousand about the city, whereof six thousand are private, serving for the gentlemen and others, and four thousand for mercenary men, which get their living by the trade of rowing."

The description of a curious piece of mechanism, which Coryate observed over a gate at the entrance of St. Mark's Place, will remind our readers of the two punctual individuals who notify the hour of the day to such of the good citizens of London as happen to be passing St. Dunstan's Church. We give insertion more readily to our traveller's anecdote, as, if it should meet the eye of the sexton of that venerable edifice, it may perchance preserve him from the fate of that unfortunate person whose melancholy end is here recounted.

"There is a fair gate at one end of this street, even as you enter into St. Mark's Place, when you come from the Rialto Bridge, which is decked with a great deal of fair marble; in which gate, are two pretty conceits to be observed, the one at the very top, which is a clock with the images of two wild men by it, made in brass, a witty device, and very exactly done. At which clock, there fell out a very tragical and rueful accident on the twenty-fifth day of July, being Monday, about nine of the clock in the morning, which was this-A certain fellow that had the charge to look to the clock, was very busy about the bell, according to his usual custom every day, to the end, to amend something in it that was amiss. But, in the mean time, one of those wild men, that at the quarters of the hours do use to strike