It may perhaps seem that the absence of knowledge which is ordinary now, indicated by the above illustrations, was extraordinary rather than ordinary even then. But the fact was that, besides the available books being practically always too much behind the times for any but antiquaries' purposes, the writers themselves had so little information at hand that it was only here and there their writings were anything but hopelessly superficial, even when obtained; and to obtain them was no easy matter. There were at least three men who published practical handbooks in English for Continental travelling later than Andrew Boorde and earlier than Howell; yet they, and Howell also, each claim that theirs is the first book of its kind in English. Whether the statement is made in good faith, or for business purposes, it proves equally well that even if a book was written, it was not easy to find.
Or again, take a book which was so often republished as to be easy to obtain, the "Viaggio da Venetia al Santo Sepolcro," for instance, the authorship of the later editions of which is ascribed to one Father Noë, a Franciscan. The first edition seems to be that of 1500, and it continued to be reprinted down to 1781; at least thirty-four editions came out before 1640, when the period under consideration ends. It was not, however, an Italian book originally, having been translated from a German source which was in existence as early as 1465, if not earlier.[17] Since, therefore, its information was never thoroughly revised, at any rate, not before 1640, sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century pilgrims went on buying mid-fifteenth-century information. They were recommended, for instance, to go by the pilgrim galley, which ceased to run about 1586; and also to take part in a festival held yearly on the banks of the Jordan at Epiphany, which must have been abandoned far earlier even than that.
Still, books about what there was to notice in given places did exist just as there were treatises of the Gruberus and Plotius kind unfolding what should be noticed in general, and why. Best known of the earlier kind was Münster's gigantic "Cosmography," which Montaigne regretted he had not brought with him; and by the middle of the seventeenth century several other first-rate geographers, besides minor men, had compiled books of the kind. But the bearing of such books on our subject is only in so far as they reflect the thoughts, and ministered to the needs, of the tourist; and they may therefore be best considered in the works of those who wrote "Itineraries," which not only recorded journeys but were meant to serve as examples of how a journey might be made the most of. Such a book was Hentzner's, a sort of link between Gruberus and Fynes Moryson. Hentzner was a Silesian who acted as guide and tutor to a young nobleman from 1596 to 1600. They began, and ended, their journey at Breslau, and toured through Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, and England; the "Itineraria" being based on notes made by the way. His account of England does him rather more than justice, for there is some first-hand experience there, which is just what is lacking in the rest of his book. Practically everything he says is second-hand, and the fact of his being at a place is merely a peg to hang quotations on. When he is not quoting from books he seems to be quoting from people; and half of what we expect from a guide-book is absent: means of conveyance, for instance. This is an omission, however, which can be explained: he was only concerned with the most respectable form of travelling, and that meant, on horseback. And the rest of his omissions, taken all together, throw into relief the academic character of the book, due, not to himself individually so much as to the period. His preface cannot, naturally, differ much from Plotius, nor add much, except in recommending Psalms 91, 126, 127, and 139 as suitable for use by those about to travel, forgetting, it would seem, the one beginning, "When Israel went forth out of Egypt," which Pantagruel had sung by his crew before they set out to find the "Holy Bottle"; and being a Protestant he cannot recommend the invocation of St. Joseph and St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saints of travellers; all he can do is to pray at the beginning for good angels to guard his footsteps, and, at the end, to acknowledge assistance from one, although it does not appear that he ever went to the length of Uhland's traveller:—