328 
THOMAS CORYATE. 
greater bulk, both which being drawn into an exact conipenel, as 
Munster, Baronius, the Magdeburgians, and otlier famous chronolo- 
gers, have been, may perhaps afford something either worthy thy 
reading, or supply thy need in such cases of extremitie, as nature and 
costume oftentimes enforce men unto. Vale!” 
Among those poets who were concerned in the Odcombian Banquet 
were Ben Jonson, Sir John Harrington, Inigo Jones the architect, 
Chapman, Donne, Drayton, &c. In the same year he published 
Coryate’s Crambe, or his “ Colewort twice sodden, and now served in 
with other Macaronic dishes, as the second course of his Crudities,’^ 
4to. In 1612, after he had taken leave of his countrymen by an oration 
spoken at the cross in Odcombe, he t3ok a large and long journey, 
with intention not to return till he had spent ten years in travelling. 
The first place he went to was to Constantinople, where he made his 
usual desultory observations ; and took from thence opportunities of 
viewing divers parts of Greece. In the Hellespont he took notice of the 
two castles Sestos and Abvdos, w'hich Musaeus has made famous in bis 
poem of Hero and Leander. He saw Smyrna, from whence he found 
a passage to Alexandria inEgypt ; and afterwards he observed the 
pyramids near Grand Cairo. From thence he went to Jerusalem ; 
and soon to the Dead Sea, to Aleppo in Syria, to Babylon in Chaldea, 
to the kingdom of Persia, and to Ispahan, where the king usually 
resided ; to Suras, anciently called Shushan ; to Candahar, the first 
province north-east under the subjection of the great mogul, and so 
to Lahore, the chief city but one belonging to that empire. From 
Lahore he went to Agra ; where being well received by the English 
factory, he made a halt. He staid there till he had learned the Turk- 
ish and Morisco or Arabian languages ; in w hich study he was also 
very apt, and had some knowledge in the Persian and Indostan tongues, 
all of which were of great use to him in his travelling up and down 
the great mogul’s dominions. In the Persian tongue he afterwards made 
an oration to the great mogul ; and in the Indostan he had so great a 
command, that we are gravely told, he actually silenced a boundary- 
woman belonging to the English ambassador in that country, who used 
to scold all the day Ibng. After he had visited several places in that 
part of the world, he went to Surat in East India, vvhere he was seized 
with a diarrhcea, of which he died in 1617. 
This strange man, it is evident, had an insatiable desire to view dis- 
tant and unknown parts of the world, which has never been reckoned 
a symptom of folly ; nor indeed would Coryate have been so much 
despised, if he had not unluckily fallen into the hands of wits, w'ho, 
by way of diverting themselves, imposed upon his weakness and ex- v 
treme vanity, and nothing vexed him more than to have his vanity 
checked. Thus, when one Steel, a merchant, and servant to the East 
India company, came to Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador at 
Mandoa, where the mogul then resided, he told Coryate, that he had 
been in England since he saw him^ and that king James had inquired 
about him ; and that upon telling his majesty that he had met him in 
his travels, the king replied, “ Is that fool living?’^ 
Our traveller was equally hurt at another time, when, upon his de- 
parture from Mandoa, Sir Thomas Roe gave him a letter, and in that 
