Page 168 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

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168 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST
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' Coryat, wlio was the son of a Rector of Odcombe, in
Somerset, in early life gained an unenviable kind of dis­
tinction as a sort of buffoon at the Court of James I.
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Physical peculiarities, a peaked sugar-loaf formation of
head perched upon an ungainly frame, were added to
mental gifts of the kind which were effective in one who
filled the role of a wit. Not the least of his attainments
was a power of pungent repartee which was exercised at
times with deadly effect when some Court favourite
ventured to enter into an encounter with him. In 1608 he
commenced a prolonged series of wanderings, which took
him into every corner of Europe. On his return he brought
out his work with the aid of patrons, whose support he
secured by “ unwearied pertinacity and unblushing im­
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portunity.” The volume was issued with some mock
heroic verses by Ben Jonson, in which the author is treated
with solemn ridicule.
Sighing for more worlds to conquer, Coryat in 1612
;
r started again on his travels, this time directing his face
> . towards the East. Having had a preliminary peep at
Egypt and the Pyramids, he proceeded to Joppa and from
that port tramped through the Holy Land, thence on to
Nineveh and Babylon, down the Euphrates valley to
Baghdad, thence through Persia to Kandahar, and so to
India. He turned up at 'Agra in 1615, to find an old friend
in Roe, who had known him at James’s Court. The
ambassador, of course, could not do less than befriend the il
wanderer.
Coryat boasted that he had made his way through Asia
at a cost which worked out at no more than twopence per
day, and it would seem from his own confessions that the
bulk of this modest expenditure was covered by benefac-

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