Coryat's Crudities

I’m reading Coryat’s crudities at the moment (full title- Coryat’s crudities: hastily gobled up in five moneth’s travels) and the very first page has these wonderful  lines which are now emblazoned on my mind: forever -

“I was imbarked at Douer, about tenne of the clocke in the morning, the fourteenth of may, being Saturday and Whitfun-eue, Anno 1608, and arrived in Calais (which Caefar calleth Iclius portus a maritime towne of that part of Picardy, which is commonly called le pais reconquis, that is, the recouered Prouince, inhabited in former times by the ancient Morini.) about fiue of the clocke in the afternoone, after I had varnished the exterior parts of the ship with the exerementall ebullitions of my tumultuous stomach, as desirirg to satiate the gormandizing paunches of the hungry Haddocks (according as I have hieroglyphically expressed it in the front of my booke) with that wherewilh I had superfluously stuffed my felfe at land, hauing made my rumbling belly their capacious aumbrie.

I just love his style. I mean, you couldn’t get away with writing such wonderful lines today, the publishers would go nuts. Even the title, which is what attracted me to the book in the first place is just pure class.

That’s it. I just thought I’d share..