XX.

To the accomplished Youth PETER HEIMBACH.

You have abundantly discharged all the promifes which you made me, except that refpecting your return which you promised fhould take place at fartheft within two months. But if my regard for you do not make me err in my calculation, you have been abfent almost three months. You have done all that I defired refpecting the atlas, of which I wished to know the lowest price. You fay it is an hundred and thirty florins, which I think is enough to purchase the mountain of that name. But fuch is the prefent rage for typographical luxury that the furniture of a library hardly cofts lefs than that of a villa. Paintings and engravings are of little ufe to me. While I roll my blind eyes about the world I fear left I fhould feem to lament the privation of fight in proportion to the exorbitance of the price for which I fhould have purchased the book. Do you endeavour to learn in how many volumes the entire work is contained; and of the two editions, whether that of Blaeu or Janson be the most accurate and complete. This I hope rather to hear verbally from yourself on your return, which will foon take place, than to trouble you to give me the information by another letter. In the mean time adieu, and return as foon as poffible.

Westminster, Nov. 8, 1656.

XXI.

To the accomplished EMERIC BIGOT.

I WAS highly gratified by the distinguished mark's of attention which you paid me on coming into

England,

England, and this gratification is confiderably increased by your kind epiftolary inquiries after fo long an interval. The favourable opinions of others might have prompted your firft vifit, but you would hardly have taken the trouble to write if you had not been prompted by your own judgement or benevolence. Hence I think I may justly congratulate myfelf; many have been celebrated for their compofitions whofe common converfation and intercourfe have betrayed no marks of fublimity or genius. But, as far as is poffible, I will endeavour to seem equal in thought and speech to what I have well written, if I have written any thing well; and while I add to the dignity of what I have written I will, at the fame time, derive from my writings a greater fplendour of reputation. Thus I fhall not feem to have borrowed the excellence of my literary compofitions from others fo much as to have drawn it pure and unmingled from the resources of my own mind and the force of my own conceptions. It gives me pleasure that you are convinced of the tranquillity which I poffefs under this afflicting privation of fight as well as of the civility and kindness with which I receive those who visit me from other countries. And indeed why should I not submit with complacency to this lofs of fight which feems only withdrawn from the body without, to increase the fight of the mind within. Hence books have not incurred my refentment, nor do I intermit the study of books, though they have inflicted fo heavy a penalty on me for my attachment; the example of Telephus king of Micia, who did not refuse to receive a cure from the fame weapon by which he had been wounded, admonishes me not to be fo morofe. With refpect to the book which you have concerning the mode of holding parliaments, I have taken care to have the paffages which were marked, either amended, or, if they were doubtful, confirmed by a MS. of the illuftrious Lord Bradfhaw; and from one of the Cotton MSS. as you will perceive from the paper which I have returned. I fent fome one to inquire of the keeper of the Records in the Tower, who is my intimate friend, whether the original of this work be extant in that

3

collection,

collection, and he replied that there was no copy in the repofitory. I am reciprocally obliged to you for your affistance in procuring me books. My Byzantine Hiftory wants Theophanis Chronographia Græc. Lat. fol. Conftant. Manaffis Breviarium Hiftoricum, and Codini Excerpta de Antiquit. C. P. Græc. Lat. fol. Anaftafii Bibliothecarii Hift. and Vitæ Rom. Pontific. fol. to which I beg you to add Michael Glycas and John Sinnam, and the continuator of Anna Comena, if they have already iffued from the fame prefs. I need not request you to purchase them as cheap as poffible. There is no occafion to do this to a man of your difcretion, and the price of those books is fixed and known to all. Dr. Stuppe has undertook to pay you the money, and to get them conveyed in the most commodious way. Accept my beft withes. Adieu.

Weftminster, March 24, 1658.

XXII.

To the noble Youth RICHARD JONES.

I DID not receive your letter till some time after it was written; it lay fifteen days at your mother's. With pleasure I perceive the emotions of your attachment and your gratitude. I have never ceafed to promote the culture of your genius, and to juftify the favourable opinion which your excellent mother entertains of me, and the confidence fhe places in me, by benevolence the most pure and counfels the moft fincere. In that agreeable and healthy spot, to which you have retired, there are books enough for the purposes of academical education. If beauty of fituation contributed as much to improve the wit of the inhabitants as it does to please the eye, the felicity of that place would be compleat. The library there is rich in books, but unless the minds of the ftudents be improved by a

more

more rational mode of education, it may better deserve the name of a book-repofitory than of a library. You justly acknowledge that all thefe helps to learning fhould be affociated with a tafte for literature, and with diligence in the cultivation. Take care that I may never have occafion to blame you for deviating from that opinion. And this you will readily avoid if you will diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the accomplished Henry Oldenburg, your associate and friend. Adieu, my deareft Richard, and let me incite you like another Timothy to the practice of virtue and of piety, by the example of your mother who is the beft of women.

Weftminster.

XXIII.

To the illuftrious Lord HENRY DE BRAS.

I SEE my Lord that you, unlike most of our modern youth who país through foreign countries, wifely travel, like the ancient philofophers, for the fake of compleating your juvenile ftudies, and of picking up knowledge wherever it is to be found. Though as often as I confider the excellence of what you write you appear to me to have gone among foreigners not fo much for the fake of procuring erudition yourfelf, as of imparting it to others, and rather to exchange than to purchase a ftock of literature. I with it were as eafy for me in every way to promote the increase of your knowledge and the improvement of your intellect, as it is pleafing and flattering to me to have that affiftance requested by talents and genius like yours. I have never attempted, and I fhould never dare to attempt, to folve those difficulties as you request, which feem to have caft a cloud over the writers of history for fo many ages. Of Salluft I will speak as you defire without any hefitation or reVOL. I.

d

ferve.

ferve. I prefer him to any of the Latin hiftorians; which was alfo the general opinion of the ancients. Your favorite Tacitus deferves his meed of praise; but his highest praise, in my opinion, confifts in his having imitated Salluft with all his might. By my converfation with you on this fubject I feem, as far as I can guess from your letter, to have infpired you with fentiments very fimilar to my own, concerning that most energetic and animated writer. As he in the beginning of his Catilinarian war afferted that there was the greatest difficulty in hiftorical compofition because the ftyle fhould correfpond with the nature of the narrative, you ask me how a writer of hiftory may beft attain that excellence. My opinion is, that he who would defcribe actions and events in a way suited to their dignity and importance, ought to write with a mind endued with a fpirit, and enlarged by an experience as extensive as the actors in the fcene, that he may have a capacity properly to comprehend and to eftimate the most momentous affairs and to relate them, when comprehended, with energy and diftinctnefs, with purity and perspicuity of diction. The decorations of ftyle I do not greatly heed; for I require an hiftorian and not a rhetorician. I do not want frequent interfperfions of fentiment, or prolix differtations on tranfactions, which interrupt the ferics of events, and cause the hiftorian to entrench on the office of the politician, who if in explaining counfels, and explaining facts, he follows truth rather than his own partialities and conjectures, excites the difguft or the averfion of his party. I will add a remark of Salluft, and which was one of the excellencies which he himself commended in Cato, that he fhould be able to fay much in a few words; a perfection which I think that no one can attain without the most difcriminating judgment and a peculiar degree of moderation. There are many in whom you have not to regret either elegance of diction or copiousness of narrative, who have yet united copioufnefs with brevity. And among these Salluft is in my opinion the chief of the Latin writers. Such are the virtues which I think that every hiftorian ought to poffefs who would proportion