I shall perhaps carry my pretensions still further, and affirm it had
been much better if they had been so.
I know what is to be said for the voyagers in ELIZABETH’S time. We
were just then emerging from ignorance and barbarity. Learning and the
Arts were but then getting up; and were best acquired, we will say, in
foreign schools, and the commerce of other nations, which might have
the start of us in such improvements. The state of _Europe_ at that
time was not unlike what I observed of the old world, when knowledge
was in few hands, and the exclusive property, as it were, of particular
persons. So that it was to be travelled for, and fetched home, by such
as would have it. _Italy_, in particular, was in those days, as it had
long been, the theatre of politeness, and without doubt could furnish
us with very much of the learning we most wanted.
This then was the fashionable route of our curious and courtly youth:
and many accomplished persons, I can readily admit, were to be found in
the number of our _Italian_ Travellers. Yet, methinks, they had done
better to stay at home, and at least import the arts of _Italy_, if
they were necessary to them, in sager heads than their own.
I say this, because it is no secret that the civility, we thus
acquired, was dearly paid for; and that irreligion, and even Atheism,
were packed up among their choicest gleanings, and shewn about, at
their return, as curiosities, which could not but very much enhance
the consideration of those who had been to gather them beyond the
mountains[39].