48 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



there, if he were in my place, would make a question, I will sit 

 down and write my travels, and, like Tom Coriate,* print them at 

 my own charge. Pray what do you call this hill we came down ? 



Pisc. We call it Hanson Toot. 



ViAT. Why, farewell Hanson Toot, I'll no more on thee ; I'll 

 go twenty miles about first. Puh ! I sweat, that my shirt sticks 

 to my back. 



* Tom Coriate, frequently spoken of by the writers of that period, was 

 the son of a clergyman, born in 1577, and educated at Oxford ; after which 

 he was received into the family of Henry, Prince of Wales, where his 

 eccentricities, pedantry, and vanity made him, as Anthony Wood says, " the 

 whetstone of all the wits of that age." In 160S, he travelled over almost 

 all Europe on foot, and walked 900 miles with one pair of shoes which he 

 got mended at Zurich ; and, on his return, published an account of his 

 travels, which he called, Crudities, 4to., 1611. The work is full of extra- 

 vagant stories, and egotistical absurdities ; and was recommended by verses 

 from Ben Jonson, Harrington, Inigo Jones, Drayton, and others. Delighted 

 with the success of his book, he determined to travel ten years more, and 

 set out in 1612. He visited Constantinople, Egypt, the Levant, and pene- 

 trated into Persia, and the dominions of the Great Mogul. At Surat, a 

 flux, occasioned by a debauch on sack, carried him off, in 1617. During his 

 absence some letters were published, in 1616, as from him, but bear- 

 ing strong marks of having been written by some other hand or hands, to 

 ridicule him. Prefixed to them is an epigram called " His Parallel with 

 Erasmus : 



" Erasmus did in praise of folly write, 



And Coryate doth in his self-praise endite." 



And under a wood-cut of him riding an elephant : 



" Loe heere the wooden Image of our wits ; 



Borne in first travaile on the back of nits, 



But now on elephants," &c. 

 *' what will he ride, when his yeares expire .' 



The world must ride him or he will all retire." 



Purch;is, in his Pilgrimage, Part I., book fifth, chap, vii., 5, 6 (and not, 

 as Hawkins says, book fourth, chap, xvii., where no mention is made of 

 him), cites from the letters published in 1617, and calls Coryate, " the 

 world's great foot post." The passage referred to occurs in his Crudities, 

 in •' a character of the author," on the reverse of b. 1. — Compiled by the 

 Am. Ed. 



