Poisoned Figs and Italian Sallets: Nation, Diet, And the Early Modern English Traveler‪.‬

Suffer not thy sons to pass the Alps, for they shall learn nothing but pride, blasphemy, and atheism. And if by travel they attain to some few broken languages, they will profit them no more than to have one meat served in divers dishes. (Wright 11) Here, in one of early modern England's most often quoted epistles of practical advice, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, quite significantly chooses a dietary metaphor to represent the moral and cultural dangers widely believed to inhere in the perilous but often necessary practice of overseas educational travel, especially travel to Italy. To Cecil, just as a single foodstuff served in "divers dishes" is no improvement over "one meat" served more appropriately in one dish, the accumulation of "some few broken languages" is not worth the ever-present risk of cultural pollution that follows from compromising one's own language and, by extension, one's self.