Theodor Zwinger, who was reputed to be the first to reduce the art of travel into a form and give it the appearance of a science,[47] died a Doctor of Medicine at Basel.  He had no liking for his father’s trade of furrier, but apprenticed himself for three years to a printer at Lyons.  Somehow he managed to learn some philosophy from Peter Ramus at Paris, and then studied medicine at Padua, where he met Jerome Turler.[48] As Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine he occupied several successive professorships at Basel.

Even more distinguished in the academic world was the next to carry on the discussion of travel—­Justus Lipsius.  His elegant letter on the subject,[49] written a year after Zwinger’s book was published, was translated into English by Sir John Stradling in 1592.[50] Stradling, however, has so enlarged the original by whatever fancies of his own occurred to him, that it is almost a new composition.  Philip Jones took no such liberties with the “Method” of Albert Meier, which he translated two years after it was published in 1587.[51] In his dedication to Sir Francis Drake of “this small but sweete booke of Method for men intending their profit and honor by the experience of the world,” Jones declares that he first meant it only to benefit himself, “when pleasure of God, convenient time and good company” should draw him to travel.

The Pervigilium Mercurii of Georgius Loysius, a friend of Scaliger, was never translated into English, but the important virtues of a traveller therein described had their influence on English readers.  Loysius compiled two hundred short petty maxims, illustrated by apt classical quotations, bearing on the correct behaviour and duties of a traveller.  For instance, he must avoid luxury, as says Seneca; and laziness, as say Horace and Ovid; he must be reticent about his wealth and learning and keep his counsel, like Ulysses.  He must observe the morals and religion of others, but not criticise them, for different nations have different religions, and think that their fathers’ gods ought to be served diligently.  He that disregards these things acts with pious zeal but without consideration for other people’s feelings ("nulla ratione cujusque vocationis").[52] James Howell may have read maxim 99 on how to take jokes and how to make them, “joci sine vilitate, risus sine cachinno, vox sine clamore” (let your jokes be free from vulgarity, your laugh not a guffaw, and your voice not a roar).

Loysius reflects the sentiment of his country in his conviction that “Nature herself desires that women should stay at home.”  “It is true throughout the whole of Germany that no woman unless she is desperately poor or ‘rather fast’ desires to travel."[53]

Adding to these earliest essays the Oration in Praise of Travel, by Hermann Kirchner,[54] we have a group of instructions sprung from German soil all characterized by an exalted mood and soaring style.  They have in common the tendency to rationalize the activities of man, which was so marked a feature of the Renaissance.  The simple errant impulse that Chaucer noted as belonging with the songs of birds and coming of spring, is dignified into a philosophy of travel.