ger; that you are such I am well persuaded, both because you are the son of a father highly celebrated for his crudition and his piety; and because all good men think you good; and lastly, because you hate the bad. With such persons since it has also been my lot to be at war, Calandrinus very obligingly signified to you, that it would be highly grateful to me if you would lend me your assistance against our common enemy. That you have kindly done in your present letter, of which I have taken the liberty, without mentioning the author's name, to insert a part in my Defence. This work I will send you as soon as possible after the publication; in the mean time do you direct your letters to me under cover to Turrettin a Genoese, living at London, and through whom we may conveniently carry on our correspondence. Be assured that you rank high in my esteem, and that I wish for nothing more than your regard.

Westminster, March 24, 1654.

XVIII.

TO HENRY OLDENBURGH, Aulic Counsellor to the Senate of Bremen.

prevent the completion of my purpose. I afterwards heard that you had made an excursion to the adjoining country. As your excellent mother is on the eve of departing for Ireland, whose loss we have both no small occasion to regret, and who has to me supplied the place of every relative, will herself be the bearer of these letters to you. You may rest assured of my regard, and be persuaded that it will increase in proportion as I see an increasing improvement in your heart and mind. This, by the blessing of God, you have solemnly pledged yourself to accomplish. I am pleased with this fair promise of yourself, which I trust you will never violate. Though you write that you are pleased with Oxford, you will not induce me to believe that Oxford has made you wiser or better. Of that I require very different proof. I would not have you lavish your admiration on the triumphs of the chiefs whom you extol, and things of that nature in which force is of most avail. For why need we wonder if the wethers of our country are born with horns which may batter down cities and towns? Do you learn to estimate great characters, not by the quantity of their animal strength, but by the habitual justice and temperance of their conduct. Adieu, and make my best respects to the accomplished Henry Oldenburgh, your college chum.

Westminster, Sept. 21, 1656.

XX.

To the accomplished Youth PETER HEIMBACH.

YOUR letters which young Ranley brought, found me so much employed that I am compelled to be more brief than I could wish. You have most faithfully fulfilled those promises to write which you made me when you went away. No honest man could discharge his debts with more rigid punctuality. I congratulate you on your retirement, because it gives pleasure to you though it is a loss to me; and I admire that felicity of genius, which can so readily leave the factions or the You have abundantly discharged all the promises diversions of the city for contemplations the most serious which you made me, except that respecting your return, and sublime. I see not what advantage you can have in which you promised should take place at farthest withthat retirement except in an access to a multitude of in two months. But if my regard for you do not make books; the associates in study whom you have found me err in my calculation, you have been absent almost there, were I believe rather made students by their own three months. You have done all that I desired respectnatural inclinations, than by the discipline of the place. ing the atlas, of which I wished to know the lowest But perhaps I am less partial to the place because it de- price. You say it is an hundred and thirty florins, tains you, whose absence I regret. You rightly observe which I think is enough to purchase the mountain of that there are too many there who pollute all learning, that name. But such is the present rage for typogradivine and human, by their frivolous subtleties and bar-phical luxury, that the furniture of a library hardly ren disputations; and who seem to do nothing to decosts less than that of a villa. Paintings and engravserve the salary which they receive. But you are not ings are of little use to me. While I roll my blind so unwise. Those ancient records of the Sinese from eyes about the world, I fear lest I should seem to lathe period of the deluge, which you say are promised ment the privation of sight in proportion to the exorby the Jesuit Martinius, are no doubt on account of bitance of the price for which I should have purchased their novelty expected with avidity; but I do not see the book. Do you endeavour to learn in how many what authority or support they can add to the books of volumes the entire work is contained; and of the two Moses. Our friend to whom you begged to be remem- editions, whether that of Blaeu or Janson be the most bered sends his compliments. Adieu. accurate and complete. This I hope rather to hear Westminster, June 25, 1656, verbally from yourself on your return, which will soon take place, than to trouble you to give me the information by another letter. In the mean time adieu, and return as soon as possible.

XIX.

To the noble Youth RICHARD JONES.

As often as I have taken up the pen to answer your last letter some sudden interruptions have occurred to

Westminster, Nov. 8, 1656.

my

THOUGH I had determined, excellent tutor, to write you an epistle in verse, yet I could not satisfy myself without sending also another in prose. For the emotions of my gratitude, which your services so justly inspire, are too expansive and too warm to be expressed in the confined limits of poetical metre; they demand the unconstrained freedom of prose, or rather the exuberant richness of Asiatic phraseology. Though it would far exceed my power accurately to describe how much I am obliged to you, even if I could drain dry all the sources of eloquence, or exhaust all the topics of discourse which Aristotle or the famed Parisian Logician has collected. You complain with truth, that my letters have been very few and very short; but I do not grieve at the omission of so pleasurable a duty, so much as I rejoice at having such a place in your regard as makes you anxious often to hear from me. I beseech you not to take it amiss, that I have not now written to you for more than three years; but with your usual benignity and candour to impute it rather to circumstances than to inclination. For, heaven knows, that I regard you as a parent, that I have always treated you with the utmost respect, and that I was unwilling to teaze you with my compositions. And I was anxious that if my letters had nothing else to recommend them, they might be recommended by their rarity. And lastly, since the ardour of my regard makes me imagine that you are always present, that I hear your voice and contemplate your looks; and as thus (which is usually the case with lovers) I charm away my grief by the illusion of your presence, I was afraid when I wrote to you the idea of your distant separation should forcibly rush upon my mind; and that the pain of your absence, which was almost soothed into quiescence, should revive and disperse the pleasurable dream. I long since received your desirable present of the Hebrew Bible. I wrote this at my lodg

ings in the city, not as usual, surrounded by my books. If therefore there be any thing in this letter which either fails to give pleasure, or which frustrates expec tation, it shall be compensated by a more elaborate composition as soon as I return to the dwelling of the Muses.

London, March 26, 1625.

II.

To ALEXANDER GILL.

I RECEIVED your letters and your poem, with which I was highly delighted, and in which I discover the majesty of a poet, and the style of Virgil. I knew how impossible it would be for a person of your genius entirely to divert his mind from the culture of the Muses, and to extinguish those heavenly emotions, and that sacred and ethereal fire which is kindled in your heart. For what Claudian said of himself may be said of you, your "whole soul is instinct with the fire of Apollo" If therefore, on this occasion, you have broken your own promises, I bere commend the want of constancy which you mention; I commend the want of virtue, if any want of virtue there be. But, in referring the merits of your poem to my judgment, you confer on me as great an honour as the gods would if the contending musical immortals had called me in to adjudge the palm of victory; as poets babble that it formerly fell to the lot of Imolus the guardian of the Lydian mount. I know not whether I ought to congratulate Henry Nassau more on the capture of the city or the composition of your poems. For I think that this vie tory produced nothing more entitled to distinction sod to fame than your poem. But since you celebrate e successes of our allies in lays so harmonious and energetic, what may we not expect when our own success call for the congratulations of your muse? Adien. learned Sir, and believe me greatly obliged by the fi

Adieu, and expect to see me, God willing, at London | visit one another; for I hope that you would not be a on Monday among the booksellers. In the mean time, different neighbour to us in the country than you are if you have interest enough with that Doctor who is in town. But this is as it pleases God. I have much the master of the college to promote my business, I to say to you concerning myself and my studies, but I beseech you to see him as soon as possible, and to act would rather do it when we meet, and as to-morrow I as your friendship for me may prompt. am about to return into the country, and am busy in making preparations for my journey, I have but just time to scribble this. Adieu.

From my villa, Decemb. 4, 1634.

To the same.

MOST of my other friends think it enough to give me one farewell in their letters, but I see why you do it so often; for you give me to understand that your medical authority is now added to the potency, and subservient to the completion, of those general expressions of good-will which are nothing but words and air. You wish me my health six hundred times, in as

even more than this.

Truly, you should be appointed butler to the house of Health, whose stores you so lavishly bestow; or at least Health should become your parasite, since you so lord it over her, and command her at your pleasure. I send you therefore my congratulations and my thanks, both on account of your friendship and your skill. I was long kept waiting in expectation of a letter from you, which you had engaged to write; but when no letter came my old regard for you suffered not, I can assure you, the smallest diminution, for I had supposed that the same apology for remissness, which you had employed in the begin

I CLEARLY see that you are determined not to be overcome in silence; if this be so, you shall have the palm of victory, for I will write first. Though, if the reasons which make each of us so long in writing to the other should ever be judicially examined, it will appear that I have many more excuses for not writing than you. For it is well known, and you well know, that I am naturally slow in writing, and averse to write; while you, either from dis-great a quantity as I can wish, as I am able to bear, or position or from habit, seem to have little reluctance in engaging in these literary (poopwvnouc) allocutions. It is also in my favour, that your method of study is such as to admit of frequent interruptions, in which you visit your friends, write letters, or go abroad; but it is my way to suffer no impediment, no love of ease, no avocation whatever, to chill the ardour, to break the continuity, or divert the completion of my literary pursuits. From this and no other reasons it often happens that I do not readily employ my pen in any gratuitous exertions; but I am not, nevertheless, my dear Deodati, a very sluggish correspondent; nor has it at any time happened that I ever left any letter of yours un-ning of our correspondence, you would again employ. answered till another came. So I hear that you write This was a supposition agreeable to truth and to the to the bookseller, and often to your brother, either of intimacy between us. For I do not think that true whom, from their nearness, would readily have for- friendship consists in the frequency of letters or in prowarded any communication from you to me. But fessions of regard, which may be counterfeited; but it what I blame you for is, for not keeping your promise is so deeply rooted in the heart and affections, as to of paying me a visit when you left the city; a promise support itself against the rudest blast; and when it which, if it had once occurred to your thoughts, would originates in sincerity and virtue, it may remain certainly have forcibly suggested the necessity of through life without suspicion and without blame, writing. These are my reasons for expostulation and even when there is no longer any reciprocal interchange You will look to your own defence. But of kindnesses. For the cherishing aliment of a friendwhat can occasion your silence? Is it ill health? Are ship such as this, there is not so much need of letters as there in those parts any literati with whom you may of a lively recollection of each other's virtues. And play and prattle as we used to do? When do you re- though you have not written, you have something that turn? How long do you mean to stay among the Hy- may supply the omission: your probity writes to me in perboreans? I wish you would give me an answer to your stead; it is a letter ready written on the innereach of these questions; and that you may not suppose most membrane of the heart; the simplicity of your that I am quite unconcerned about what relates to you, manners, and the rectitude of your principles, serve as I must inform you that in the beginning of the autumn correspondents in your place; your genius, which is I went out of my way to see your brother, in order to above the common level, writes, and serves in a still learn how you did. And lately when I was accident- greater degree to endear you to me. But now you ally informed in London that you were in town, I in- have got possession of this despotic citadel of medicine, stantly hastened to your lodgings; but it was only the do not alarm me with the menace of being obliged to shadow of a dream, for you were no where to be found. repay those six hundred healths which you have beWherefore, as soon as you can do it without any incon- stowed, if I should, which God forbid, ever forfeit your venience to yourself, I beseech you to take up your friendship. Remove that formidable battery which you quarters where we may at least be able occasionally to seem to have placed upon my breast to keep off all

censure.