So, no doubt, felt Fynes Moryson, for much of his life he spent either in travelling or in writing the record of it. Starting in 1591, when he was twenty-five, he passed through Germany, the Low Countries, Denmark, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, spending his winters at Leipzig, Leyden, Padua, and Venice, learning the languages so thoroughly as to be able to disguise his nationality at will. Returning through France, he was robbed, and consequently reached home so disreputable-looking that the servant took him for a burglar. He found his brother planning a journey to Jerusalem. On the 29th of November, 1595, they set out, and on July 10, 1597, he was back in London, in appearance again so strange that the Dogberry of Aldersgate Street wrote him down for a Jesuit. But he returned alone: his brother Henry, twenty-six years old and not strong, fell ill at Aleppo, how ill no one knew till too late, and near Iskenderún he died in his brother's arms, while the Turks stood round, jeering and thieving. Fynes buried him there with stones above him to keep off the jackals, and an epitaph which a later traveller by chance has preserved.[1]
To thee, deare Henry Morison, Thy brother Phines, here left alone, Hath left this fading memorie. For monuments and all must die.
Fynes himself hurried home and never crossed the Channel again. But he extended his knowledge of Great Britain by a visit to Scotland, and by accompanying Sir Charles Blount during the latter's conquest of Ireland. Then he settled down to write all he knew and could get to know about the countries he had seen, and wrote at such length that no one till quite recently has had the courage to reprint his account, although what he printed was by no means all that he wrote. For this reason his work has remained practically unused, even by writers whom it specially concerns. It must form the basis of any description of the countries he saw, at any rate, as seen by a foreigner, going, as he does, more into detail than any one else, and being a thoroughly fair-minded, level-headed, and well-educated man, whose knowledge was the result of experience. His day was not the day of the 'Grand Tourist,' whose habit it was to disguise single facts as general statements, and others' general statements as his own experiences.