text: EPISTOL^ HO-ELIANiE CHARLES I FROM THE PAINTING, AFTER VANDYCK, BY SI PETER LELY IN THE DRESDEN GALLERY Cpistolae HO'CUanae THE FAMILIAR LETTERS OF 3ame0 floujdl With an Introduction by Agnes Repplier VOL. Ill BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY MDCCCCVII COPYRIGHT 1907 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS EDITION CONSISTS OF TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY COPIES OF WHICH THIS IS NUMBER ?^f EPISTOLiE HO-ELIAN^ SECTION VII BOOK II SECTION VII I To Master Tho. Adams I PRAY stir nimbly in the business you imparted to me last, and let it not languish. You know how much it concerns your credit, and the con- venience of a friend who deserves so well of you. I fear you will meet with divers obstacles in the way, which, if you cannot remove, you must over- come. A lukewarm, irresolute man did never any- thing well ; every thought entangles him. There- fore you must pursue the point of your design with heat, and set all wheels a-going. 'T is a true badge of a generous nature, being once embarked in a business, to hoist up and spread every sail, main, mizzen, sprit and topsail ; by that means he will sooner arrive at his port. If the winds be so cross, and that there be such a fate in the thing that it can take no effect, yet you shall have wherewith to satisfy an honest mind, that you left nothing unattempted to compass it, for in the conduct of human affairs it is a rule that a good conscience hath always within doors enough to reward itself. 4 FAMILIAR LETTERS though the success fall not out according to the merit of the endeavour. I was, according to your desire, to visit the late new-married couple more than once,- and to tell you true, I never saw such a disparity between two that were made one flesh in all my life, he hand- some outwardly but of odd conditions ; she excel- lently qualified, but hard favoured. So that the one may be compared to a cloth of tissue doublet cut upon coarse canvas, the other to a buckram petti- coat lined with satin. I think Clotho had her fin- gers smutted in snuffing of the candle, when she began to spin the thread of her life, and Lachesis frowned in twisting it up ; but Aglaia, with the rest of the Graces, were in a good humour when they formed her inward parts. A blind man is fittest to hear her sing ; one would take delight to see her dance if masked ; and it would please you to discourse with her in the dark, for there she is best company, if your imagination can forbear to run upon her face. When you marry, I wish you such an inside of a wife, but from such an outward physiognomy the Lord deliver you, and your faithful friend to serve you, J. H. Westminster, 25 of August 1633. OF JAMES HOWELL F. B., II To Mr B. J. THE fangs of a bear and the tusks of a wild boar do not bite worse, and make deeper gashes, than a goose quill sometimes ; no, not the badger himself, who is said to be so tenacious of his bite that he will not give over his hold till he feels his teeth meet, and the bone crack. Your quill hath proved so to Mr Jones, but the pen wherewith you have so gashed him, it seems, was made rather of a porcupine than a goose quill, it is so keen and firm. You know Anser, Apis, Vitulus, Populos et Regna gubernant — The goose, the bee and the calf (meaning wax, parchment and the pen), rule the world, but of the three the pen is most predominant. I know you have a commanding one, but you must not let it tyrannise in that manner, as you have done lately. Some give out there was a hair in it, or that your ink was too thick with gall, else it could not have so bespattered and shaken the reputation of a royal architect, for reputation, you know, is like a fair structure, long time a-rear- ing, but quickly ruined. If your spirit will not let you retract, yet you shall do well to repress any more copies of the satire, for, to deal plainly with you, you have lost some ground at Court 6 FAMILIAR LETTERS by it, and, as I hear from a good hand, the King, who hath so great a judgment in poetry (as in all other things else), is not well pleased therewith. Dispense with this freedom of your respectful S. and servitor, J. H. Westminster, 3 July 1635. Ill Ti? Z). C, Esquire IN my last I wrote to you that Ch. Mor. was dead (I meant in a moral sense). He is now alive again, for he hath abjured that club which was used to knock him in the head so often, and drown him commonly once a day. I discover divers symptoms of regeneration in him, for he rails bitterly against Bacchus, and swears there 's a devil in every berry of his grape, therefore he resolves hereafter, though he may dabble a little sometimes, he will be never drowned again. You know Kit hath a poetic fancy, and no unhappy one, as you find by his compositions ; you know also that poets have large souls, they have soci- able, free, generous spirits, and there are few who use to drink of Helicon's water, but they love to mingle it with some of Lyseus liquor to heighten their spirits. There 's no creature that *s kneaded of clay but hath his frailties, extravagances and excesses some way or other, for you must not think that man can be better out of Paradise than OF JAMES HOWELL 7 he was within it. Nemo sine crimine. He that censures the good fellow commonly makes no con- science of gluttony and gormandising at home, and I believe more men do dig their graves with their teeth than with the tankard. They who tax others of vanity and pride, have commonly that sordid vice of covetousness attend them, and he who traduceth others of being a servant to ladies, doth baser things. We are no angels upon earth, but we are transported with some infirmity or other ; and it will be so while these frail, flexible humours reign within us ; while we have sluices of warm blood running through our veins, there must be ofttimes some irregular motions in us. This as I conceive is that black bean which the Turks' Alcoran speaks of when they feign that Mahomet being asleep among the mountains of the moon, two angels descended, and ripping his breast they took his heart and washed it in snow, and after pulled out a black bean, which was the portion of the devil, and so replaced the heart. In your next you shall do well to congratulate his resurrection or regeneration, or rather emerg- ency from that course he was plunged in formerly, you know it as well as I ; and truly I believe he will grow newer and newer every day ; we find that a stumble makes one take firmer footing, and the base suds which vice useth to leave behind it, make virtue afterwards far more gustful : no know- ledge is like that of contraries. Kit hath now overcome himself, therefore I think he will be too 8 FAMILIAR LETTERS hard for the devil hereafter. I pray hold on your resolution to be here the next term, that we may tattle a little of Tom Thumb, mine host of An- dover, or some such matters. — So T am your most affectionate servitor, J. H. Westminster, 15 August 1636. IV To T. D., Esquire I HAD yours lately by a safe hand, wherein I find you open unto me all the boxes of your breast. I perceive you are sore hurt, and whereas all other creatures run away from the instrument and hand that wounds them, you seem to make more and more towards both ; I confess such is the nature of love, and which is worse, the nature of women is such, that like shadows the more you follow them, the faster they fly from you. Nay, some females are of that odd humour, that to feed their pride they will famish affection, they will starve those natural passions which are owing from them to man. I confess coyness becomes some beauties if handsomely acted, a frown upon some faces penetrates more and makes deeper impression than the fawning and soft glances of a mincing smile ; yet if this coyness and these frowns savour of pride, they are odious, and it is a rule, that where this kind of pride inhabits honour sits OF JAMES HOWELL 9 not long porter at the gate. There are some beau- ties so strong, that they are leaguer-proof; they are so barricaded that no battery, no petard, or any kind of engine sapping or mining can do good upon them. There are others that are tenable a good while, and will endure the brunt of a siege, but will incline to parley at last, and you know that fort and female which begins to parley is half won. For my part, I think of beauties as Philip, King of Macedon, thought of cities, there is none so inexpugnable but an ass laden with gold may enter into them. You know what the Spaniards saith, " Davidas quebrantan penas " (Presents can rend rocks). Pearls and golden bullets may do much upon the impregnablest beauty that is. It must be partly your way. I remember a great lord of this land sent a puppy with a rich collar of diamonds to a rare French lady, Madame St. L., that had come over hither with an ambassador : she took the dog, but returned the collar ; I will not tell you what effect it wrought afterwards. It is a powerful sex ; they were too strong for the first, the strongest and wisest man that was ; they must needs be strong, when one hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen ; yet for all their strength, in point of value, if you will believe the Italian, a man of straw is worth a wo- man of gold. Therefore if you find the thing per- verse, rather than to undervalue your sex (your manhood), retire handsomely, for there is as much honour to be won at a handsome retreat as at a hot lo FAMILIAR LETTERS onset, it being the difficultest piece of war. By this retreat you will get a greater victory than you are aware of, for thereby you will overcome yourself, which is the greatest conquest that can be. With- out seeking abroad, we have enemies enough within doors to practise our valour upon ; we have tumultuary and rebellious passions with whole hosts of humours within us. He who can discom- fit them is the greatest captain and may defy the devil. I pray recollect yourself, and think on this advice of your true and most affectionate servitor, J. H. Westminster, ^December 1637. To G. G., Esq.^ at Rome 1HAVE more thanks to give you than can be folded up in this narrow paper, though it were all writ in the closest kind of stenography, for the rich and accurate account you please to give me of that renowned city wherein you now sojourn. I find you have most judiciously pried into all mat- ters, both civil and clerical, especially the latter, by observing the poverty and penances of the friar, the policy and power of the Jesuit, the pomp of the prelate and cardinal. Had it not been for the two first, I believe the two last, and that see, had been at a low ebb by this time, for the learning, the pru- dential state, knowledge and austerity of the one, OF JAMES HOWELL ii and the venerable opinion the people have of the abstemious and rigid condition of the other, es- pecially of the mendicants, seem to make some com- pensation for the lux and magnificence of the two last ; besides they are more beholden to the Pro- testant than they are aware of, for unless he had risen up about the latter end of this last century of years, which made them more circumspect and wary of their ways, life and actions, to what an intolerable high excess that court had come to by this time you may easily conjecture. But out of my small reading I have observed that no age since Gregory the Great hath passed, wherein some or other have not repined and murmured at the pontifical pomp of that court, yet for my part I have been always so charitable as to think that the religion of Rome and the Court of Rome were different things. The counterbufF that happened betwixt Leo the Tenth and Francis the First of France is very remarkable, who being both met at Bologna, the King seemed to give a light touch at the Pope's pomp, saying, it was not used to be so in former time. "It may be so," said Leo, "but it was then when kings kept sheep " (as we read in the Old Testament). "No," the King replied, " I speak of times under the Gospel." Then re- joined the Pope, "It was then when kings did visit hospitals," hinting by those words at St Louis, who used oft to do so. It is memorable what is recorded in the life of Robert Grosted, Bishop of Lincoln, who lived in the time of one of the Leos, 12 FAMILIAR LETTERS that he feared the same sin would overthrow Leo as overthrew Lucifer. For news hence, I know none of your friends but are as well as you left them, " H ombres y hembras." You are fresh and very frequent in their memory, and mentioned with a thousand good wishes and benedictions. Amongst others you have a large room in the memory of my Lady Elizabeth Gary, and I do not think all Rome can afford you a fairer lodging. I pray be cautious of your carriage under that meridian ; it is a searching (inquisitive) air. You have two eyes and two ears, but one tongue. You know my meaning. This last you must imprison (as nature hath al- ready done with a double fence of teeth and lips) or else she may imprison you, according to our countryman, Mr Hoskins*, advice when he was in the Tower. Vincula da linguae, vel tibi lingua dabit. Have a care of your health, take heed of the Syrens of excess in fruit, and be sure to mingle your wine well with water. No more now, but that in the large catalogue of friends you have left behind here, there's none who is more mindful of you than your most affectionate and faithful servitor, J.H. OF JAMES HOWELL 13 VI To Dr r. P. 1HAD yours of the tenth current, wherein you write me tidings of our friend, Tom D., and what his desires tend unto. In my opinion they are somewhat extravagant. I have read of one, that loving honey more than ordinary, seemed to complain against nature, that she made not a bee as big as a bull that we might have it in greater plenty ; another, who was much given to fruit, wished that pears and plums were as big as pump- kins. These were but silly vulgar wishes. For if a bee were as big as a bull it must have a sting proportionable, and what mischiefs do you think such stings would do when we can hardly endure the sting of that small infected animal as now it is ? And if pears and plums were as big as pump- kins it were dangerous walking in an orchard about the autumnal equinox (at which time they are in their full maturity) for fear of being knocked in the head. Nature, the handmaid of God Almighty, doth nothing but with good advice if we make researches into the true reason of things. You know what answer the fox gave the ape when he would have borrowed part of his tail to cover his posteriors. The wishes you write that T. D. lately made were almost as extravagant in civil matters as the 14 FAMILIAR LETTERS aforementioned were in natural. For if he were partaker of them they would draw more inconven- iences upon him than benefit, being nothing sort- able either to his disposition or breeding, and for other reasons besides, which I will reserve till my coming up. And I pray let him know so much from me, with my commendations. — So I rest, yours in the perfectest degree of friendship, J.H. Westminster, 5 September 1640. VII To Mr T. B,y Merchant in Seville THOUGH I have my share of infirmities as much as another man, yet I like my own nature in one thing, that requitals to me are as sweet as revenge to an Italian. I thank my stars I find myself far proner to return a courtesy than to resent an injury. This made me most gladly apprehend the late occasion of serving you (not- withstanding the hard measure I have received from your brother), and to make you some re- turn of those frequent favours I received from you in Spain, I have taken away (as you may perceive by the enclosed papers) the weights that hung to that great business in this court. It concerns you now to put wings unto it in that, and I believe you will quickly obtain, what useth to be first in intention, though last in execution, I mean your OF JAMES HOWELL 15 main end. I heartily wish the thing may be pro- sperous unto you, and that you may take as much pleasure in the fruition of it as I did in following of it for you, because I love you dearly well, and desire you so much happiness that you may have nothing but heaven to wish for. In which desires I rest, your constant true friend to serve you, J. H. Whitehall, 3 May 1633. VIII To Doctor B. WHEREAS upon the large theoretical dis- course and bandyings of opinions we had lately at Gresham College you desired I should couch in writing what I observed abroad of the extent and amplitude of the Christian Common- wealth in reference to other religions, I obtained leave of myself to put pen to paper, rather to obey you than oblige you with anything that may add to your judgment or enrich that rare know- ledge I find you have already treasured up. But I must begin with the fulfilling of your desire in a preambular way, for the subject admits it. It is a principle all the earth over, except amongst atheists, that " Omne verum est a Deo, omne falsum est a diabolo, et omnis error ab homine '* (All truth is from God, all falsehood from the devil, and all error from man). The i6 FAMILIAR LETTERS last goes always under the vizard of the first, but the second confronts truth to the face and stands in open defiance of her. Error and sin are con- temporary. When one crept first in at the fore- door the other came in at the postern. This made Trismegistus, one of the great lords of reason, to give this character of man, "Homo est imaginatio quaedam, et imaginatio est supremum menda- cium " (Man is nought else but a kind of imag- ination, and imagination is the greatest lie). Error, therefore, entering into the world with sin among us poor Adamites, may be said to spring from the tree of knowledge itself, and from the rotten kernels of that fatal apple. This, besides the infirmities that attend the body, hath brought in perversity of will, depravation of mind, and hath cast a kind of cloud upon our intellectuals that they cannot discern the true essence of things with that clearness as the protoplast our first parent could, but we are involved in a mist, and grope as it were ever since in the dark, as if truth were got into some dungeon, or, as the old wizard said, into some deep pit which the shallow appre- hension of men could not fathom. Hence comes it that the earth is rent into so many religions, and those religions torn into so many schisms and various forms of devotion, as if the heavenly Majesty were delighted as much in diversities of worship as in diversities of works. The first religion that ever was reduced to exact rules and ritual observances was that of the OF JAMES HOWELL 17 Hebrews, the ancient people of God, called after- wards Judaism, the second Christianity, the third Mahommedanism, which is the youngest of all religions. Touching paganism and heathenish idolatry they scarce deserve the name of religion. But for the former three there is this analogy be- tween them, that they all agree in the First Person of the Trinity and all His attributes. What kind of religion there was before the Flood, it is in vain to make any researches, there having been no monuments at all left (besides that little we find in Moses and the Phoenician story) but Seth's pillars, and those so defaced, that nothing was legible upon them, though Josephus saith that one was extant in his days, as also the oak under which Abraham feasted God Almighty, which was 2000 years after. The religion (or cabal) of the Hebrews was transferred from the patriarchs to Moses, and from him to the prophets. It was honoured with the appearance and promulgations of God Himself, especially the better part of it. I mean the decalogue containing the Ten Com-' mandments, which, being most of them moral and agreeing with the common notions of man, are in force all the world over. The Jews at this day are divided into three sects ; the first, which is the greatest, are called the Tal- mudists, in regard that besides the Holy Scriptures they embrace the Talmud, which is stuffed with the traditions of their rabbins and chacams. The second receive the Scripture alone. The third the 1 8 FAMILIAR LETTERS Pentateuch only, viz., the five Books of Moses, which are called Samaritans. Now, touching what part of the earth is possessed by Je\ys, I cannot find they have any at all peculiar to themselves, but in regard of their murmurings, their frequent idol- atries, defections, and that they crucified the Lord of life, this once select nation of God, and the in- habitants of the land flowing with milk and honey, is become now a scorned, squandered people all the earth over, being ever since incapable of any coal- ition or reducement into one body politic. There where they are most without mixture is Tiberias in Palestine, which Amurath gave Mendez the Jew, whither, and to Jerusalem, upon any conveniency, they convey the bones of their dead friends from all places to be reinterred. They are to be found in all mercantile towns and great marts both in Africa and Asia, and Europe, the dominions of England, of the Spaniard and French excepted, and as their persons, so their profession is despicable, being for the most part but brokers everywhere. Among other places they are allowed to be in Rome herself near St Peter's chair, for they advance trade wheresoever they come, with their banks of money, and so are permitted as necessary evils ; but put the case the whole nation of the Jews now living were united into one collective body, yet, accord- ing to the best conjecture and exactest computation that I could hear made by the knowingest men, they would not be able to people a country bigger than the seventeen provinces. Those that are dis- OF JAMES HOWELL 19 persed now in Christendom, and Turkey, are the remnants only of the tribes of Judah and Benja- min, with some Levites who returned from Baby- lon with Zerubbabel. The common opinion is, that the other ten are utterly lost, but they themselves fancy that they are in India, a mighty nation, environed with stony rivers, which always cease to run their course on their Sabbath, from whence they expect their Messiah, who shall in the ful- ness of time overrun the world with fire and sword, ^d re-establish them in a temporal glorious estate. But this opinion sways most among the Oriental Jews, whereas they of the West attend the coming of their Messiah from Portugal, which language is more common among them than any other. And thus much in brief of the Jews, as much as I could digest and comprehend within the compass of this paper sheet; and let it serve for the accomplishment of the first part of your desire. In my next I shall give you the best satis- faction I can concerning the extent of Christian- ity up and down the globe of the earth, which I shall speedily send ; for now that I have under- taken such a task, my pen shall not rest till I have finished it. — So I am your most affectionate, ready servitor, J. H. Westminster, i August 1635. 20 FAMILIAR LETTERS IX To Doctor B. HAVING in my last sent you something touching the state of Judaism up and down the world, in this you shall receive what extent Christianity hath, which is the second religion in succession of time and truth, a religion that makes not sense so much subject to reason, as reason succumbent to faith. There is no religion so harsh and difficult to flesh and blood, in regard of divers mysterious positions it consists of, as the Incarna- tion, Resurrection, the Trinity, etc., which, as one said, are bones to philosophy, but milk to faith. There is no religion so purely spiritual, and ab- stracted from common natural ideas and sensual happiness, as the Christian. No religion that ex- cites man more to the love and practice of virtue, and hatred of vice, or that prescribes greater re- wards for the one, and punishments for the other. A religion that in a most miraculous manner did expand herself and propagate by simplicity, hum- bleness and by a mere passive way of fortitude, growing up like the palm-tree under the heavy weight of persecution, for never any religion had more powerful opposition by various kinds of pun- ishments, oppressions and tortures, which may be said to have decked her with rubies in her very cradle, insomuch that it is granted by her very OF JAMES HOWELL 21 enemies that the Christian, in point of passive valour, hath exceeded all other nations upon earth. And it is a thing of wonderment how at her very- first growth she flew over the heads of so many interjacent vast regions into this remote isle so soon, that her rays should shine upon the crown of a British king first of any, I mean King Lu- cius, the true proto-Christian king in the days of Eleutherius, at which time she received her pro- pagation. But for her plantation she had it long before by some of the apostles themselves. Now, as Christian religion hath the purest, and most abstracted, the hardest and highest spiritual no- tions, so it hath been most subject to differences of opinions and distractions of conscience. The purer the wheat is the more subject it is to tares, and the most precious gems to flaws. The first bone that the devil flung was into the Eastern Churches, then betwixt the Greek and the Roman, but it was rather for jurisdiction and power than for the fundamentals of faith, and lately betwixt Rome and the North-west Churches. Now the extent of the Eastern Church is larger far than that of the Roman (excluding America), which makes some accuse her as well of uncharitableness as of arro- gance, that she should positively damn so many millions of Christian souls who have the same common symbol of faith with her because they are not within the close of her fold. Of those Eastern and South-east Churches there are no less than eleven sects, whereof the three 22 FAMILIAR LETTERS principalest are the Grecian, the Jacobite, and the Nestorian, with whom the rest have some depend- ence or conformity, and they acknowledge canon- ical obedience either to the Patriarchs of Constan- tinople, of Alexandria, of Jerusalem or Antioch. They concur with the Western Reformed Churches in divers positions against Rome, as in denial of purgatory ; in rejecting extreme unction and cele- brating the sacrament under both kinds ; in ad- mitting their clergy to marry ; in abhorring the use of massive statues and celebrating their liturgy in the vulgar language. Among these the Russian and the Abyssinian emperors are the greatest, but the latter is a Jew also from the girdle downward, for he is both circumcised and christened, having received the one from Solomon and the other from the apostle Saint Thomas. They observe other rites of the Levitical law. They have the cross in that esteem that they imprint the sign of it upon some part of the child's body when he is baptised. That day they take the holy sacrament they spit not till after sunset, and the emperor in his pro- gresses, as soon as he comes to the sight of a church, alights off his camel and foots it all along till he loseth the sight of it. Now touching that proportion of ground that the Christians have on the habitable earth (which is the main of our task), I find that all Europe, with her adjacent isles, is peopled with Christians, except that ruthful country of Lapland where idolaters yet inhabit. Towards the east also that OF JAMES HOWELL 23 region which lieth betwixt Tanais and Boristhenes, the ancient country of the Goths, is possessed by Mahommedan Tartars, but in those territories which the Turk hath betwixt the Danube and the sea, and betwixt Ragusa and Buda, Christians are intermixed with Mahommedans, yet in this co- habitation Christians are computed to make two third parts at least, for here and elsewhere, all the while they pay the Turks the quarter of their increase, and a sultany for every poll, and speak nothing in derogation of the Alcoran, they are permitted to enjoy both their religion and lives securely. In Constantinople herself, under the Grand Signor's nose, they have twenty churches. In Salonika (or Thessalonica) thirty. There are 1 50 churches under the Metropolitan of Philippi, as many under him at Athens, and he of Corinth hath about a hundred suffragan bishops under him. But in Africa (a thing which cannot be too much lamented) that huge extent of land which Christianity possessed of old betwixt the Mediter- ranean Sea and the mountain Atlas, yea, as far as Egypt, with the large region of Nubia, the Turks have overmastered. We read of 200 bishops met in synods in those parts, and in that province where old Carthage stood there were 164 bishops under one metropolitan. But Mahommedanism hath now overspread all thereabout, only the King of Spain hath a few maritime towns under Christian subjection, as Septa, Tangier, Oran and 24 FAMILIAR LETTERS others. But through all the huge continent of Africa, which is estimated to be thrice bigger than Europe, there is not one region entirely Christian but Abyssinia or Ethiopia. Besides there is in Egypt a considerable number of them yet sojourn- ing. Now Abyssinia, according to the itineraries of the observingest travellers in those parts, is thought to be in respective magnitude as big as Germany, Spain, France and Italy conjunctly, an estimate which comes nearer truth than that which some make by stretching it from one tropic to the other, viz., from the Red Sea to the Western Ocean. There are also divers isles upon the coast of Africa that are colonised with Christians, as the Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Verde, and St Thomas. But on the east side there is none but Socotra. In Asia there is the Empire of Russia that is purely Christian, and the mountain Libanus in Syria. In other parts they are mingled with Mahommedans, who exceed them one day more than another in numbers, especially in those pro- vinces (the more is the pity) where the gospel was first preached, as Anatolia, Armenia, Syria, Meso- potamia, Palestine, Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, the north of Arabia and south of India ; in some of these parts, I say, especially in the four first, Christians are thick mixed with Mahommedans, as also in East India since the Portuguese discov- ery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope, Christians by God's goodness have multiplied in OF JAMES HOWELL 25 considerable numbers, as likewise in Goa, since it was made an archbishopric, and the court of a Viceroy. They speak also of a Christian Church in Quinsay in China, the greatest of all earthly cities ; but in the islands thereabouts called the Philippinos, which they say are above iioo in number, in thirty whereof the Spaniard hath taken firm footing, Christianity hath made a good pro- gress, as also in Japan. In the northeast part of Asia, some 400 years since, Christianity had taken deep root under the King of Tenduc, but he was utterly overthrown by Chingis, one of his own vassals, who came thereby to be the first founder of the Tartarian Erhpire. This King of Tenduc was the true Prester John, not the Ethiopian King of the Abyssinians, as Scaliger would have it, whose opinion is as far distant from truth in this point as the southernest part of Africa from the northeast part of Asia, or as a Jacobite is from a Nestorian. Thus far did Christianity find enter- tainment in the Old World. Touching the New, I mean America, which is conjectured to equal well near the other three parts in magnitude, the Spanish authors and merchants (with whom I have conversed) make report of a marvellous growth that Christianity hath made in the kingdoms of Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and Castilia Deloro, as also in the greater islands adjoining, as Hispaniola, Cuba, Porto Rico, and others, insomuch that they write of one ancient priest who had christened himself 700 savages some years after the first dis- 26 FAMILIAR LETTERS covery ; but there are some who, seeming to be no friends to Spain, report that they did not baptise half so many as they butchered. Thus have you, as compendiously as an epistle could make it, an account of that extension of ground which Christians possess upon earth ; my next shall be one of the Mahommedan, wherein I could wish I had not occasion to be so large as I must be. — So I am, sir, your respectful and humble servant, J. H. Westminster, 9 August 1635. X To Doctor B, MY two former were of Judaism and Christ- ianity. I come now to the Mahommedan, the modernest of all religions, and the most mis- chievous and destructive to the Church of Christ, for this fatal sect hath jus tied her out of divers large regions in Africa, in Tartary and other places, and attenuated their number in Asia, which they do wheresoever they come, having a more politic and pernicious way to do it than by fire and fag- got, for they having understood well that the dust of martyrs were the thrivingest seeds of Christian- ity, and observed that there reigns naturally in mankind, being composed all of lump, and carry- ing the same stamp, a general kind of compassion and sympathy, which appears most towards them OF JAMES HOWELL 27 who lay down their lives, and postpone all worldly things for the preservation of their consciences (and never any died so but he drew followers after him), therefore the Turk goes a more cunning way to work : he meddles not with life and limb to pre- vent the sense of compassion which may arise that way ; but he grinds their faces with taxes, and makes them incapable of any offices either of au- thority, profit or honour, by which means he ren- ders them despicable to others, and makes their lives irksome to themselves ; yet the Turks have a high opinion of Christ, that He was a greater prophet than Moses, that He was the Son of a Virgin, who conceived by the smell of a rose pre- sented to her by Gabriel the angel ; they believed He never sinned, nay, in their Alcoran they term Him the breath and Word of God ; they punish all that blaspheme Him, and no Jew is capable to be a Turk but he must be first an Abdula, a Christian ; he must eat hog's flesh, and do other things for three days, then he is made a Mahom- medan, but by abjuring of Christ to be a greater prophet than Mahommed. It is the Alfange that ushers in the faith of Mahommed everywhere, nor can it grow in any place unless it be planted and sown with gunpow- der intermixed. When planted, there are divers ways of policy to preserve it. They have their Alcoran in one only language, which is the Arabic, the mother tongue of their prophet. It is as bad as death for any to raise scruples of the Alcoran. 28 FAMILIAJR. LETTERS Thereupon there is a restraint of the study of philosophy and other learning, because the im- postors of it may not be discerned. The mufti is in as great reverence amongst them as the Pope is among the Romanists, for they hold it to be a true principle in divinity, that no one thing pre- serves and improves religion more than a vener- able, high, pious esteem of the chiefest ministers. They have no other guide or law both for tempo- ral and Church affairs than the Alcoran, which they hold to be the rule of civil justice, as well as the divine charter of their salvation, so that their judges are but expositors of that only. Nor do they trouble themselves or puzzle the plaintiff with any moth-eaten records or precedents to entangle the business, but they immediately determine it, according to the fresh circumstances of the action, et secundum allegata^ et probata ^ by witnesses. They have one extraordinary piece of humanity to be so tender of the rational soul as not to put Christian, Jew, Greek or any other to his oath, in regard that if for some advantage of gain or occasion of inconvenience and punishment any should for- swear himself, they hold the imposers of the oath to be accessory to the damnation of the perjured man. By these and divers other reaches of policy (beside their arms) not practised elsewhere, they conserve that huge bulk of the Ottoman Empire which extends without interruption (the Helles- pont only between) in one continued piece of earth two and thirty hundred miles from Buda in Hun- OF JAMES HOWELL 29 gary to a good way into Persia. By these means they keep also their religion from distracting opin- ions, from every vulgar fancy, and schisms in their church, for there is nowhere fewer than here. The difference that is is only with the Persian, and that not in fundamentals of faith, but for priority of government in matters of religion. This so uni- versal conformity in their religion is ascribed as to other politic institutions, so specially to the rigor- ous inhibition they have of raising scruples and disputes of the Alcoran under pain of death, es- pecially among the laity and common people, whose zeal commonly is stronger than their judgment. That part of the world where Mahommed hath furthest expanded himself is Asia, which, as I said before, exceeds Africa in greatness and much more in people. He hath firm footing in Persia, Tartary (upon the latter of which the Mussulman empire is entailed), in Turcomania itself, and Arabia, four mighty kingdoms. The last of these was the nest where that cockatrice egg was hatched, which hath diffused its poison so far and near through the veins of so many regions. All the southerly coasts of Asia, from the Arabian Bay to the river Indus, is infected therewith. The vast kingdom of Cam- bray and Bengal, and about the south part of the inhabitants of Malabar have drunk of this poison, insomuch that by no wrong computation it may well be said that Mahommedanism hath dispersed itself over almost one half of the huge conti- nent of Asia, besides those multitudes of isles es- 30 FAMILIAR LETTERS pecially seven — Moldavia and Ceylon, the sea- coasts of Sumatra, Java, Sunda, the ports of Benda, Borneo, with divers other, whereof there are many thousands about Asia, who have entertained the Alcoran. In Europe the Mahommedans possess all the region betwixt Don and . Meper, called of old Tanais and Boristhenes, being about the twen- tieth part of Europe ; the King of Poland dispen- seth with some of them in Lithuania, touching Greece, Macedon, Thracia, Bulgaria, Servia, Bos- nia, Epirus, the greatest part of Hungary and Dalmatia. Although they be wholly under Turks* obedience, yet Mahommedans scarce make the third part of the inhabitants. In Africa this con- tagion is further spread ; it hath intoxicated all the shore of Ethiopia, as far as Mozambique, w^hich lieth opposite to the midst of Madagascar. It is worse with firm land of Africa on the north and west parts, for from the Mediterranean Sea to the great river Niger, and along the banks of the Nile, all Egypt and Barbary, with Lydia and the Negro's country, are tainted and tanned with this black religion. The vast propagation of this unhappy sect may be ascribed first to the sword, for the conscience commonly is apt to follow the conqueror; then to the loose reins it gives to all sensual liberty, as to have eight wives and as many concubines as one can maintain, with the assurance of venerean delights in a far higher degree, to succeed after death to the religious observers of it, as the frui- OF JAMES HOWELL 31 tion of the beautiful damsels, with large rolling eyes, whose virginity shall renew after every act, their youth shall last always with their lust, and love shall be satiated with only one, where it shall remain inalienable. They concur with the Christian, but only in the acknowledgment of one God and in His attributes. With the Jew they symbolise in many things more, as in circumcision, in refraining from swine's flesh, in detestation of images, and somewhat in the quality of future happiness, which, as was said before, they place in venerean pleasure, as the Jew doth in feasting and banquetings, so that neither of their laws have punishment enough to deter mankind from wickedness and vice ; nor do they promise adequate rewards for virtue and piety, for in the whole Alcoran and through all the writings of Moses there is not a word of an- gelical joys and eternity. And herein Christianity far excels both these religions, for she placeth fu- ture happiness in spiritual, everlasting and uncon- ceivable bliss, abstracted from the fading and faint grossness of sense. The Jew and Turk also agree in their opinion of women, whom they hold to be of an inferior creation to man, which makes the one to exclude them from the mosques and the other from his synagogues. Thus far have I rambled through the vast Ottoman Empire and taken a cursory survey of Mahommed's religion. In my next I shall take the best view I can of pagans and idolaters, with those who go for atheists ; and in this particular, this 32 FAMILIAR LETTERS earth may be said to be worse than hell itself, and the kingdom of the devil, in regard there are no atheists there, for the very damned souls find and feel in the midst of their tortures that there is a God by His justice and punishment ; nay, the prince of darkness himself and all the cacodaemons by a historical faith believe there is a God, where- unto the poet alludes very divinely : Nullus in Inferno est Atheos, ante fuit. So I very affectionately kiss your hand, and rest your faithful ready servitor, J. H. Westminster, 17 August 1635. XI To Doctor B. HAVING in my three former letters washed my hands of the Mahommedan and the Jew, and attended Christianity up and down the earth, I come now to the pagan idolater, or heathen, who (the more to be lamented) make the greatest part of mankind. Europe herself, though the beams of the cross have shined upon her above these sixteen ages, is not free of them, for they possess to this day Lappia, Corelia, Biarmia, Scrifinnia, and the north parts of Finmark. There are also some shreds of them to be found in divers places of Lithuania and Somogitia, which make a region nine hundred miles in compass. OF JAMES HOWELL 33 But in Africa their number is incredible, for from Cape Blanco, the most westerly p^rt of Africa, all southward to the Cape of Good Hope, and thence turning by the back of Africa to the Cape of Mozambique, all these coasts being about the one half of the circumference of Africa, is peopled by idolaters, though in some places inter- mixed with Mahommedans and Christians, as in the kingdom of Congo and Angola. But if we sur- vey the inland territories of Africa between the river of Nile and the west sea of Ethiopia, even all that country from about the north parallel of ten degrees to the south parallel of six degrees, all is held by idolaters; besides, the kingdom of Borneo and a great part of Nubia and Lybia con- tinue still in their old paganism. So that by this account, above one half of that immense continent of Africa is peopled by idolaters. But in Asia, which is far more spacious and more populous than Africa, pagans, idolaters and Gentiles swarm in great numbers, for from the river Petchora eastward to the ocean, and thence southward to the Cape of Cincapura,and from that point returning westward by the south coast to the outlets of the river Indus, all that maritime tract which makes a good deal more than half the circumference of Asia is inhabited by idolaters, so are the inland parts. There are two mighty mountains that traverse all Asia, Taurus and Imaus. The first runs from the west to east, the other from north to south, and so quarter and cut that huge mass of earth into equal 34 FAMILIAR LETTERS parts. This side those mountains most of the people are Mahommedans, but the other side they are all idolaters. And as on the firm continent paganism thus reigns, so in many thousand islands that lie squandered in the vast ocean on the east and southeast of Asia idolatry overspreads all, except in some few islands that are possessed by Spaniards and Arabs. Lastly, if one take a survey of America (as none hath done yet exactly), which is estimated to be as big as all the old earth, idolaters there possess four parts of five. 'T is true, some years after the first navigation thither they were con- verted daily in great multitudes, but afterwards observing the licentious lives of Christians, their greediness for gold, and their cruelty, they came not in so fast, which made an Indian answer a Span- ish friar who was discoursing with him of the joys of heaven, and how all Spaniards went thither after this life: Then said the pagan, "I do not desire to go thither if Spaniards be there. I had rather go to hell to be free of their company." America differs from the rest of the earth in this, that she hath neither Jew nor Mahommedan in her, but Christians and Gentiles only. There are, besides all those religions and people before mentioned, an irregular, confused nation in Europe called the Mordites, which occupy the middle confines be- twixt the Tartars and the Russians, that are mingled in rites of religion with all those that have been forespoken, for from the privy mem- OF JAMES HOWELL 35 bers upward they are Christian, in regard they admit of baptism, from the navel downward they are Mahommedans or Jews, for they are circum- cised ; and besides, they are given to the adoration of heathenish idols. In Asia there are the Cardi, which inhabit the mountainous country about Mosul, between Armenia and Mesopotamia and the Druses, in Syria, who are demi-Mahommedans and Christians. Now, concerning pagans and heathenish idol- aters, whereof there are innumerable sorts up and down the surface of the earth, in my opinion those are the excusablest kind who adore the sun and moon with the host of heaven, and in Ireland the cairns of the mountains, with some of the Scotch isles, use a fashion of adoring the new moon to this very day, praying she would leave them in as good health as she found them. This is not so gross an idolatry as that of other heathens, for the adoration of those glorious celestial bodies is more excusable than that of garlic and onions with the Egyptian, who, some think (with the Sicyonian) was the ancientest idolater upon earth, which he makes thrice older than we do ; for Diodorus Siculus reports that the Egyptians had a religion and kings eighteen thousand years since, yet for matter of philosophy and science, he had it from the Chaldean, he from the Gymnosophists and Brahmans of India, which country, as she is the next neighbour to the rising sun, in reference to this side of the hemisphere, so the beams of 26 FAMILIAR LETTERS learning did first enlighten her. Egypt was the nurse of that famous Hermes Trismeglstus, who having no other scale but that of natural reason, mounted very high towards heaven, for he hath very many divine sayings, whereof I think it not impertinent to insert here a few: First he saith, " That all human sins are venial with the gods. Impiety excepted." 2, " That goodness belongs to the gods, piety to men, revenge and wickedness to the devils." 3. "That the Word is 'lucens Dei filius,' the bright Son of God," etc. From Egypt theoretical knowledge came down the Nile and landed at some of the Greek islands, where betwixt the 33d, 34th, and the 35th cen- tury of years after the Creation, there flourished all those renowned philosophers that sway now in our schools. Plato flew highest in divine notions, for some call him another Moses speaking Athe- nian. In one of his letters to a friend of his he writes thus : " When I seriously salute thee, I be- gin my letter with one God ; when otherwise, with many." His scholar Aristotle commended him- self at his death to the " Being of beings," and Socrates may be said to be a martyr for the First Person of the Trinity. These great secretaries of Nature by studying the vast volume of the world came by main strength of reason to the knowledge of one Deity or " primus motor," and of His at- tributes ; they found by undeniable consequences that He was infinite, eternal, ubiquitary, omnipo- tent, and not capable of a definition ; which made OF JAMES HOWELL 37 the philosopher, being commanded by his king to define God, to ask the respite of a day to med- itate thereon, then two, then four. At last he in- geniously confessed that the more he thought to dive into this mystery, the more he was engulfed in the speculation of it : for the quiddity and es- sence of the incomprehensible Creator cannot imprint any formal conception upon the finite intellect of the creature. To this I might refer the altar which St Paul found among the Greeks, with this inscription : rw ayv(x)a-Tco Oeco, to the unknown God. From the Greek isles philosophy came to Italy ; thence to this western world among the Druids, whereof those of this isle were most celebrated, for we read that the Gauls (now the French) came to Brittany in great numbers to be instructed by them. The Romans were mighty great zealots in their idolatry, and their best authors affirm that they extended their monarchy so far and near, by a particular reverence they had of their gods (which the Spaniard seems now to imitate), though those gods of theirs were made of men, and of good fel- lows at first ; besides, in the course of their con- quest, they adopted any strange gods to the so- ciety of theirs, and brought them solemnly to Rome, and the reason as one saith was, that they believed the more gods they had the safer they were, a few being not sufficient to conserve and protect so great an empire. The Roman Gentiles had their altars and sacrifices, their arch-flamins and vestal 38 FAMILIAR LETTERS nuns. And it seems the same genius reigns still in them, for in the Primitive Church, that which the pagans misliked most in Christianity was that it had not the face and form of a religion, in re- gard it had no oblations, altars and images, which may be a good reason why the sacrifices of the mass and other ceremonies were first instituted to allure the Gentiles to Christianity. But to return a little further to our former subject : in the condition that mankind stands now, if the globe of the earth were divided into thirty parts, it is thought that idol- aters (with horror I speak it), having as I said before the one half of Asia and Africa, both for the inland country and maritime coasts, with four parts of five in America, inhabit twenty parts of those regions that are already found out upon earth ; besides, in the opinion of the knowingest and most in- quisitive mathematicians, there is towards the south- ern clime as much land yet undiscovered as may equal in dimension the late New World, in regard as they hold there must be of necessity such a portion of earth to balance the centre on all sides, and it is more than probable that the inhabitants there must be pagans. Of all kind of idolaters those are the horridest who adore the devil, whom they call Tantara, who appears often unto them, specially in a hurricane, though he be not visible to others. In some places they worship both God and the devil — the one that he may do them good : the other that he may do them no hurt ; the first they call Tantum, the other Squantum. OF JAMES HOWELL 39 It were presumption beyond that of Lucifer's or Adam's for man to censure the justice of the Cre- ator in this particular, why He makes daily such innumerable vessels of dishonour. It is a wiser and safer course for to sit down in a humble ad- miration, and cry out, " Oh the profound inscrut- able judgments of God ! His ways are past find- ing out/' and so to acknowledge with the divine philosopher," Quod oculusvespertilionis ad solem, idem est omnis intellectus humanus ad Deum," What the eye of the bat is to the sun, the same is all human understanding to Godwards. Now to draw to a conclusion, touching the re- spective largeness of Christianity and Mahommed- anism upon the earth, I find the first to exceed, taking the New World with the Old, considering the spacious plantations of the Spaniard in Amer- ica, the colonies the English have there in Vir- ginia, New England, and Caribee Islands ; with those of the French in Canada, and of the Hol- lander in East India. Nor do I find that there is any region purely Mahommedan without inter- mixtures, as Christianity hath many ; which makes me to be of a differing opinion to that gentleman, who held that Christianity added little to the gen- eral religion of mankind. Now, touching the latitude of Christian faith in reference to the differing professors thereof, as in my former I showed that the Eastern Churches were more spacious than the Latin or Roman (excepting the two Indies), so they who have 40 FAMILIAR LETTERS fallen off from her in the western parts are not so far inferior to her in Europe as some would make one believe ; which will appear, if we cast them in counterbalance. Among Roman Catholics there is the Emperor, and in him the King of Hungary,- the three kings of Spain, France, and Poland ; all Italy, the Dukes of Savoy, Bavaria, and Lorraine, the three spiritual electors, with some few more. Touching them who have renounced all obedience to Rome, there are the three Kings of Great Britain, Denmark, and Sweden, the Dukes of Saxony, Holstein, and Wurtemberg ; the Marquises of Brandenburg and Baden, the Landgrave of Hesse, most of the Hanseatic Towns, which are eighty-eight in number, some whereof are equal to republics, the (almost) seven provinces the Hollander hath ; the five cantons of Swiss and Geneva ; they of France, who are reputed the fifth part of the kingdom ; the Prince of Transylvania ; they of Hungary, and of the large kingdom of Bohemia, of the marquisates of Lusatia, Moravia, and the dukedom of Silesia ; as also they of the huge kingdom of Poland, wherein Protestants are diffused through all quarters in great numbers, having in every province their public churches and congregations, orderly severed, and bounded with dioceses, whence are sent some of the chief- est and most principal men of worth unto their general synods. For although there are divers sorts of these Polonian Protestants, some embrac- OF JAMES HOWELL 41 ing the Waldensian or the Bohemic, others the Augustine, and some the Helvetian Confession ; yet they all concur in opposition to the Roman Church ; as also they of the Anglican, Scotican, Gallic, Argentine, Saxonic, Wurtembergic, Pala- tine, and Belgiac confessions. They also harmoni- ously symbolise in the principal Articles of Faith, and which mainly concern eternal salvation ; as in the infalHble verity and full sufficiency of the Scriptures, Divine Essence, and unity of the Ever- lasting Godhead, the sacred Trinity of the three glorious Persons, the blessed Incarnation of Christ, the Omnipotent Providence of God, the absolute supreme Head of the Church, Christ Himself, justification by faith through His merits, and touching the nature of lively faith, repentance, regeneration, and sanctification, the difference be- tween the law and the gospel, touching free-will, sin and good works ; the Sacraments, their num- ber, use and efficacy, the marks of the Church, the Resurrection and state of souls deceased. It may seem a rambling wild speech at first view, of one who said, that to make one a complete Christian, he must have the works of a Papist, the words of a Puritan, and the faith of a Protestant, yet this wish if well expounded may bear a good sense, which were unfitting for me to give, you being better able to put a gloss upon it yourself. Thus, learned sir, have I exercised my pen, according to my small proportion of knowledge, and conversation with books, men and maps, to 42 FAMILIAR LETTERS obey your desire, though in comparison of your spacious literature I have held all this while but a candle to the sun, yet by the light of this small candle you may see how ready I am to show my- self your very humble and affectionate servitor, J. H. Westminster, 25 August 1635. XII ro Mr r. W, 1AM heartily glad you have prevailed so far with my lady your mother as to have leave to travel a while, and now that you are bound for France and Italy let me give you this caution to take heed of a speedy friend in the first, and of a slow enemy in the second. The courtesies of an Italian, if you suspect him jealous of you, are dangerous, and so are his compliments ; he will tell you that he kisseth your hand a thousand times over, when he wisheth them both cut oflF. The French are a free and debonnaire, accost- able people, both men and women. Among the one, at first entrance one may have acquaint- ance, and at first acquaintance one may have en- trance. For the other, whereas the old rule was, that there could be no true friendship without commessation of a bushel of salt, one may have enough there before he eat a spoonful with them. I like that friendship which by soft gentle pauses OF JAMES HOWELL 43 steals upon the affection, and grows mellow with time, by reciprocal offices and trials of love ; that friendship is like to last long, and never to shrink in the wetting. So hoping to enjoy you before you go, and to give you a friendly joy, I rest, your most affec- tionate servitor, J. H. Westminster, 28 February 1634. XIII To Sir Tho. Hawk^ Knight 1WAS invited yesternight to a solemn supper by B. J., where you were deeply remembered. There was good company, excellent cheer, choice wines and jovial welcome. One thing intervened which almost spoiled the relish of the rest, that B. began to engross all the discourse, to vapour extremely of himself, and by vilifying others to magnify his own muse. T. Ca. buzzed me in the ear, that though Ben had barrelled up a great deal of knowledge, yet it seems he had not read the " Ethics," which, among other precepts of moral- ity forbid self-commendation, declaring it to be an ill-favoured solecism in good manners. It made me think upon the lady (not very young) who, having a good while given her guests neat enter- tainment, a capon being brought upon the table, instead of a spoon she took a mouthful of claret and spouted it into the poop of the hollow bird. 44 FAMILIAR LETTERS Such an accident happened in this entertainment, you know. " Propria laus sordet in ore " (Be a man's breath ever so sweet, yet it makes one's praises stink if he makes his own mouth the conduit pipe of it). But for my part I am content to dispense with the Roman infirmity of B. now that time hath snowed upon his pericranium. You know Ovid and (your) Horace were subject to this humour, the first bursting out into Jam que opus exegi quod nee Jo vis ira, nee ignis, etc. The other into Exegi monumentum aere perennius, etc. As also Cicero, while he forced himself into this hexameter O fortunatam natam, me consule Romam ! There is another reason that excuseth B., which is, that if one be allowed to love the natural issue of his body, why not that of the brain, which is of a spiritual and more noble extraction ? I preserve your manuscripts safe for you till you return to London. What news the times afford this bearer will impart unto you. — So I am, sir, your very humble and most faithful servitor, J. H. Westminster, 5 April 1636. OF JAMES HOWELL 45 XIV To my cousin, Mr J, P., af Gravesend Cousin, GOD send you a good passage to Holland, and the world to your mind when you are there. Now that you intend to trail a pike and make profession of arms let me give you this caveat that nothing must be more precious to you than your reputation. As I know you have a spirit not to receive wrong, so you must be careful not to offer any, for the one is as base as the other. Your pulse will be quickly felt, and trial made what mettle you are made of after your first com- ing. If you get but once handsomely off you are made ever after, for you will be free from all baffles and affronts. He that hath once got the fame of an early riser may sleep till noon. There- fore be wondrous wary of your first comportments. Get once a good name and be very tender of it afterwards, for it is like Venice glass, quickly cracked, never to be mended. Patched it may be. To this purpose take along with you this fable : It happened that fire, water and fame went to travel together (as you are going now). They con- sulted that if they lost one another how they might be retrieved and meet again. Fire said, " Where you see smoke there you shall find me.*' Water said, " Where you see marsh and moorish 46 FAMILIAR LETTERS low grounds there you shall find me." But fame said, " Take heed how you lose me, for if you do, you will run a great hazard never to meet me again. There is no retrieving of me." It imports you also to conform yourself to your commanders, and so you may more confidently demand obedience when you come to command yourself, as I doubt not but you may do in a short time. The Hoghen Moghen are very exact in their polemical government, their pay is sure, though small, 4s. a week being too little a hire, as one said, to kill men. At your return I hope you will give a better account of your doings than he who being asked what exploits he had done in the Low Countries answered that he had cut off a Span- iard's legs. Reply being made that that was no great matter, it had been something if he had cut off his head; "Oh," said he, "you must consider, his head was off before." — Excuse me that I take my leave of you so pleasantly, but I know you will take anything in good part from him who is so much your truly affectionate cousin, J. H. Westminster, 3 August 1634. T OF JAMES HOWELL 47 XV To Cap. B. Much Endeared Sir, HERE is a true saying, that the spectator oft-times sees more than the gamester. I find that you have a very hazardous game in hand, therefore give it up, and do not vie a farthing upon it. Though you be already embarked, yet there is time enough to strike sail, and make again to the port, otherwise, it is no hard mat- ter to be a prophet. What will become of you ? There be so many ill-favoured quicksands and rocks in the way (as I have it from a good hand) that one may easily take a prospect of your ship- wreck if you go on ; therefore desist as you regard your own safety, and the seasonable advice of your J. H. Westminster, i May 1635. XVI To Mr Thomas W.y at his Chamber in the Temple YOU have much straightened that knot of love which hath been long tied between us, by those choice manuscripts you sent me lately, amongst which I find divers rare pieces, but that 48 FAMILIAR LETTERS which afforded me most entertainment in those miscellanies was Dr Henry King's Poems, wherein I find not only heat and strength, but also an exact concinnity and evenness of fancy. They are a choice race of brothers, and it seems the same genius diffuseth itself also among the sisters. It was my hap to be lately where Mrs A. K. was, and having a paper of verses in her hand I got it from her ; they were an epitaph and an anagram of her own composure and writing, which took me so far, that the next morning, before I was up, my rambling fancy fell upon these lines : For the admitting of Mrs Anne King to he the Tenth Muse Ladies of Helicon, do not repine ; I add one more unto your number nine. To make it even, I among you bring BacriX-A. No meaner than the daughter of a King. Anna Fair Basil-Anna, quickly pass your voice. King I know Apollo will approve the choice. And gladly her install, for I could name Some of less merit goddesses became. F. C. soars higher and higher every day in pur- suance of his platonic love, but T. Man is out with his, you know whom ; he is fallen into that averse- ness to her, that he swears he had rather see a basilisk than her. This shows that the sweetest wines may turn to the tartest vinegar. — No more till we meet, yours inviolably, J.H. Westminster, 3 February 1637. OF JAMES HOWELL 49 XVII To the Lord C. My Lord, THERE are two sayings which are fathered upon Secretary Walsingham and Secretary Cecil, a pair of the best-weighed statesmen this island hath bred ; one was used to say at the Coun- cil table, " My lords, stay a little, and we shall make an end the sooner ; " the other would oft- times speak of himself, " It shall never be said of me that I will defer till to-morrow what I can do to-day." At first view these sayings seemed to clash with one another, and to be diametrically opposite, but being rightly understood, they may be very well reconciled. Touching the first, it is true that haste and choler are enemies to all great actions ; for as it is a principle in chemistry that Omnis fes- tinatio est a Biabolo, All haste comes from Hell, so in the consultations, contrivings, and conduct of any business of State, all rashness and precipi- tation comes from an ill spirit. There cannot be a better pattern for a grave and considerate way of deliberation than the ancient course of our High Court of Parliament, which, when a law is to be made which concerns the welfare of so many thou- sands of men, after a mature debate and long dis- cussion of the point beforehand, cause the bill to be read solemnly three times in the House ere it 50 FAMILIAR LETTERS be transmitted to the Lords, and there also it is so many times canvassed, and then presented to the Prince. That which must stand for law must be long stood upon, because it imposes a universal obedience, and is like to be everlasting, according to the Ciceronian maxim, " Deliberandum est diu quod statuendum est semel." Such a kind of cunc- tation, advisedness, and procrastination is allow- able also in all Councils of State and War ; for the day following may be able commonly to be a mas- ter to the day past, such a world of contingencies human actions are subject unto. Yet under favour, I believe this first saying to be meant of matters while they are in agitation and upon the anvil. But when they have received form and are resolved upon, I believe then nothing is so advantageous as speed. And at this, I am of opinion, the second saying aims at, for when the weights that use to hang to all great businesses are taken away, it is good then to put wings unto them, and to take the ball before the bound, for expedition is the life of action, otherwise time may show his bald occi- put and shake his posteriors at them in derision. Among other nations the Spaniard is observed to have much phlegm, and to be most dilatory in his proceedings ; yet they who have pried narrowly into the sequel and success of his actions, do find that this gravity, reservedness, and tergiversation of his have turned rather to his prejudice than advantage, take one time with another. The two last matrimonial treaties we had with him contin- OF JAMES HOWELL 51 ued long, the first betwixt Ferdinand and Henry the Seventh for Catherine of Arragon seven years ; that betwixt King James and the now Philip the Fourth for Mary of Austria lasted eleven years (and seven and eleven is eighteen). The first took effect for Prince Arthur, the latter miscarried for Prince Charles, and the Spaniard may thank him- self and his own slow pace for it ; for had he mended his pace to perfect the work, I believe his monarchy had not received so many ill-favoured shocks since. The late revolt of Portugal was fore- seen, and might have been prevented if the Span- iard had not been too slow in his purpose to have sent the Duke of Braganza out of the way upon some employment as was projected. Now will I reconcile the former sayings of those two renowned secretaries with the gallant compari- son of Charles the Emperor (and he was of a more temperate mould than a Spaniard, being a Flem- ing born) : He was used to say, that while any great business of State was yet in consultation, we should observe the motion of Saturn, which is plumbeous, long and heavy ; but when it is once absolutely resolved upon, then we should observe the motion of Mercury, the nimblest of ^ ,. all the planets, " Ubi deslnit Saturnus, cum strepi- ibi incipiat Mercurius." Whereunto I *^?^V ^^ ^^'""^ will add that we should imitate the mul- berry, who of all trees casts out her buds latest, for she doth it not till all the cold weather be passed, and then she is sure they cannot be nipped, but 52 FAMILIAR LETTERS then she shoots them all out in one night; so though she be one way the slowest, she is another way the nimblest of trees. Thus have I obeyed your lordship's command in expounding the sense of these two sayings ac- cording to my mean apprehension ; but this expo- sition relates only to public affairs and political negotiations, wherein your lordship is so excel- lently versed. I shall most willingly conform to any other injunctions of your lordship's, and es- teem them always as favours, while I am J.H. Westminster, 5 September 1633. XVIII Tb Sir y. Brown, Knight ONE would think that the utter falling off of Catalonia and Portugal in so short a com- pass of time should much lessen the Spaniard, the people of both these kingdoms being from subjects become enemies against him, and in actual hostil- ity. Without doubt it hath done so, yet not so much as the world imagines. It is true, in point of regal power, and divers brave subordinate com- mands for his servants, he is a great deal lessened thereby ; but though he be less powerful, he is not a penny poorer thereby, for there comes not a farthing less every year into his exchequer, in re- gard that those countries were rather a charge than OF JAMES HOWELL 53 benefit unto him, all their revenue being drunk up in pensions and payments of officers and garrisons. For if the King of Spain had lost all except the West Indies, and all Spain except Castile herself, it would little diminish his treasury. Touching Catalonia and Portugal, especially the latter, it is true they were mighty members of the Castilian monarchy, but I believe they will sooner want Castile than Castile them, because she filled them with treasure. Now that Barcelona and Lisbon hath shaken hands with Seville, I do not think that either of them hath the tithe of that treasure they had before, in regard the one was the scale whereby the King of Spain sent his money to Italy, the other because all her East Indian com- modities were bartered commonly in Andalusia and elsewhere for bullion. Catalonia is fed with money from France, but for Portugal she hath little or none, therefore I do not see how she could support a war long to any purpose if Castile w^re quiet, unless soldiers would be contented to take cloves and peppercorns for pattacoons and pistoles. You know money is the sinew and soul of wan This makes me think on that blunt answer which Captain Talbot returned Henry the Eighth from Calais, who having received special command from the King to erect a new fort at the water-gate, and to see the town well fortified, sent him word that he could neither fortify nor fiftify without money. There is no news at all stirring here now, and I am of the Italian's mind that said, Nulla nuova, 54 FAMILIAR LETTERS buona nuova" (No news, good news). But it were great news to see you here, whence you have been an alien so long to your most aflFectionate friend, J. H. Holborn, 3 June 1640. XIX To Captain C, Price Cousin, YOU have put me upon such an odd intricate piece of business that I think there was never the like of it. I am more puzzled and entangled with it than oft-times I used to be with my band- strings when I go hastily to bed, and want such a fair female hand as you have to untie them. I must impute all this to the peevish humour of the people I deal withal. I find it true now that one of the greatest tortures that can be in the negotiation of the world is to have to do with per- verse, irrational, half-witted men, and to be worded to death with nonsense. Besides, as much brain as they have is as full of scruples as a burr is of prickles, which is a quality incident to all those that have their heads lightly ballasted, for they are like buoys in a barred port waving perpetually up and down. The father is scrupulous of the son, the son of the sisters, and all three of me, to whose award they referred the business three several times. It is as hard a task to reconcile the fanes OF JAMES HOWELL 55 of St Sepulchre's steeple which never look all four upon one point of the heavens as to reduce them to any conformity of reason. I never remember to have met with father and children, or children among themselves, of a more differing genius and contrariety of humours, insomuch that there cannot be a more pregnant instance to prove that human souls come not ex traduce and by seminal production from the parents. For my part I in- tend to spend my breath no longer upon them, but to wash my hands quit of the business, and so I would wish you to do, unless you love to walk in a labyrinth of briers. So expecting with impa- tience your return to London, I rest, your most faithful servitor. J. H. Westminster, 27 April 1632. XX T(9 my Cousiriy Mr y. P., at Lincoln's Inn Cousin, THE last week you sent me word that you were so cramped with business that you could not put pen to paper. If you write not this week, I shall fear that you are not only cramped but crippled. At least I shall think you are cramped in your affection rather than your fingers, and that you have forgotten how once it was my good for- tune to preserve you from drowning when the cramp took you in St John's Pool at Oxford. The 56 FAMILIAR LETTERS cramp, as I take it, is a sudden convulsion of the nerves. For my part the ligaments and sinews of my love to you have been so strong that they were never yet subject to such spasmodical shrinkings and convulsions. Now, letters are the very nerves and arteries of friendship ; nay, they are the vital spirits and elixir of love which, in case of distance and long absence, would be in hazard to languish, and quite smoulder away without them. Amongst the Italians and Spaniards it is held one of the greatest solecisms that can be in good manners not to answer a letter with like civility. By this they use to distinguish a gentleman from a clown. Be- sides, they hold it one of the most virtuous ways to employ time. I am the more covetous of a punctual correspondence with you in this point be- cause I commonly gain by your letters. Your style is so polite, your expressions so gallant, and your lines interspersed with such dainty flowers of poetry and philosophy. I understand there is a very able doctor that reads the anatomy lecture this term. If Ployden will dispense with you, you cannot spend your hours better than to hear him. So I end for this time, being cramped for want of more matter, and rest, your most affectionate, loving cousin, J. H. Westminster, 3 7«/y 1 63 1. OF JAMES HOWELL 57 XXI To my nephew^ y. P., at St JoAn's, in Oxford Nephew, I HAD from you lately two letters. The last was well freighted with very good stuff, but the other, to deal plainly with you, was not so. There was as much difference between them as betwixt a Scots pedlar's pack in Poland and the magazine of an English merchant in Naples, the one being usually full of taffety, silks and satins, the other of calicoes, thread, ribbands, and such Poldavy ware. I perceive you have good commodities to vent, if you take the pains. Your trifles and bag- atelles are ill bestowed upon me, therefore hereafter I pray let me have of your best sort of wares. I am glad to find that you have stored up so much already ; you are in the best mart in the world to improve them, which I hope you daily do, and I doubt not when the time of your apprenticeship there is expired but you will find a good market to expose them for your own and the public benefit abroad. I have sent you the philosophy books you wrote to me for ; anything that you want of this kind for the advancement of your studies, do but write, and I shall furnish you. When I was a student as you are, my practice was to borrow rather than buy some sort of books, and to be always punctual in restoring them upon the 58 FAMILIAR LETTERS day assigned, and in the interim to swallow of them as much as made for my turn ; this obliged me to read them through with more haste to keep my word, whereas I had not been so careful to peruse them, had thqy been my own books, which were always ready at my disposal. I thank you heartily for your last letter, in regard I found it smelt of the lamp; I pray let your next do so, and the oil and labour shall not be lost which you expend upon your assured loving uncle, J. H. Westminster, i August 1633. XXII To Tho. Haw I THANK you a thousand times for the choice stanzas you pleased to send me lately. I find that you were thoroughly heated, that you were inspired with a true enthusiasm when you com- posed them. And whereas others use to flutter in the lower region, your muse soars up to the upper, and transcending that too, takes her flight among the celestial bodies to find a fancy. Your desires I should do something upon the same subject, I have obeyed, though, I fear, not satisfied in the following numbers : I . Could I but catch those beamy rays. Which Phoebus at high noon displays, I'd set them on a loom, and frame A scarf for Delia of the same. OF JAMES HOWELL 59 2. Could I that wondrous black come near. Which Cynthia, when eclipsed, doth wear. Of a new fashion I would trace A mask thereof for Delia's face. 3. Could I but reach that green and blue. Which Iris decks in various hue. From her moist bow I M drag them down. And make my Delia a summer gown. 4. Could I those whitely stars go nigh. Which make the Milky Way in sky, I 'd poach them, and at moonshine dress To make my Delia a curious mess. 5. Thus would I diet, thus attire. My Delia queen of hearts and fire. She should have everything divine That would befit a seraphin. And 'cause ungirt unblessed we find. One of the zones her waist should bind. They are of the same cadence as yours, and air- able. So I am your humble servitor, J. H. Westminster, 5 September 1633. XXIII To the R. H. the Lady Eliz. Digbye IT is no improper comparison that a thankful heart is like a box of precious ointment, which keeps the smell long after the thing is spent. Madam (without vanity be it spoken), such is my heart to you, and such are your favours to me, 6o FAMILIAR LETTERS the strong aromatic odour they carried with them diffused itself through all the veins of my heart, especially through the left ventricle, where the most illustrious blood lies ; so that the perfume of them remains still fresh within me, and is like to do, while the triangle of flesh dilates and shuts itself within my breast ; nor doth this perfume stay there, but as all smells naturally tend up- wards, it hath ascended to my brain and sweet- ened all the cells thereof, especially the memory, which may be said to be a cabinet also to preserve courtesies ; for though the heart be the box of love, the memory is the box of lastingness ; the one may be termed the source whence the motions of gratitude flow ; the other the cistern that keeps them. But your ladyship will say, these are words only ; I confess it, it is but a verbal acknowledg- ment. But, madam, if I were made happy with an opportunity you should quickly find these words turned to actions, either to go, to run or ride upon your errand. In expectation of such a favourable occasion, I rest, madam, your lady- ship's most humble and enchained servitor, J.H. Westminster, 5 August 1640. OF JAMES HOWELL 6i XXIV To Sir J. B. Noble Sir, THAT old opinion the Jew and Turk have of women, that they are of an inferior creation to man, and therefore exclude them, the one from their synagogues, the other from their mosques, is in my judgment not only partial but profane ; for the image of the Creator shines as clearly in the one as in the other, and I believe there are as many female saints in heaven as male, unless you could make me adhere to the opinion that women must be all masculine before they be capable to be made angels of. Add hereunto that there went better and more refined stuff to the creation of woman than man. It is true, it was a weak part in Eve to yield to the seducements of Satan, but it was a weaker thing in Adam to suffer himself to be tempted by Eve, being the weaker vessel. The ancient philosophers had a better opinion of that sex, for they ascribed all sciences to the Muses, all sweetness and morality to the Graces, and pro- phetic inspirations to the Sybils. In my small re- volving of authors, I find as high examples of virtue in women as in men. I could produce here a whole regiment of them, but that a letter is too narrow a field to muster them in. I must confess, there are also counter-instances of this kind, if 62 FAMILIAR LETTERS Queen Zenobia was such a precise pattern of con- tinency, that after the act of conception, she would know her husband no more all the time of her pregnancy till she had been deliveredy there is another example of a Roman empress that when she found the vessel freighted would take in all passengers. When the barn was full any one might thresh in the haggard, but not till then, for fear the right father should be discovered by the coun- tenance of the child. But what need I go so far off to rake the ashes of the dead ? There are living examples enough pro and con of both sexes, yet woman being (as I said before) the weaker vessel, her failings are more venial than those of man, though man indeed, being more conversant with the world and meeting more opportunities abroad (and opportunity is the greatest bawd) of falling into infirmities as he follows his worldly negotia- tions, may on the other side be judged the more excusable. But you are far fitter than I to discourse of this subject, being better versed in the theory of women, having had a most virtuous lady of your own before and being now linked to another. I wish a thousand benedictions may fall upon this your second choice, and that tarn bona sit quam bona prima fuit. This option shall be my conclu- sion for the present, whereunto I add that 1 am in no vulgar degree of affection your most humble and faithful servitor, J. H. Westminster, 5 August 1632. OF JAMES HOWELL 63 XXV To Mr P. W. THERE are two things which add much to the merit of courtesies, viz., cheerfulness and speed, and the contraries of these lessen the value of them. That which hangs long betwixt the fingers, and is done with difficulty and a sullen supercilious look, makes the obligation of the re- ceivers nothing so strong or the memory of the kindness half so grateful. The best thing the gods themselves liked of in the entertainments they received of those poor wretches Baucis and Phile- mon was open hearty looks. Super omnia vultus, Accessere boni. A clear, unclouded countenance makes a cottage appear like a castle in point of hospitality, but a beetle-browed sullen face makes a palace as smoky as an Irish hut. There is a mode in giving enter- tainment and doing any courtesy else which trebly binds the receiver to an acknowledgment, and makes the remembrance of it far more acceptable. I have known two Lord High Treasurers of Eng- land of quite contrary humours, one successively after the other. The one, though he did the suitor's business, yet he went murmuring ; the other, though he did it not, was used to dismiss the party with some satisfaction. It is true money is 64 FAMILIAR LETTERS welcome, though it be in a dirty clout, but it is far more acceptable if it come in a clean handker- chief. Sir, you may sit in the chair and read lectures of morality to all mankind in this point, you have such a dexterous, discreet way to handle suitors in that troublesome office of yours, wherein, as you have already purchased much, I wish you all in- crease of honour and happiness. Your humble and much obliged servitor, J.H. XXVI To Mr F. Coll, at Naples IT is confessed I have offended by my over-long silence, and abused our maiden friendship. I appear before you now in this white sheet to do penance : pray in your next to send me an absolu- tion. Absolutions they say are as cheap in that town as courtesans, whereof it was said there were 20,000 on the common list when I was there ; at which time I remember one told me a tale of a Calabrian who had buggered a goat, and having bought an absolution of his confessor, he was asked by a friend what it cost him ; he answered, I procured it for four pistolets, and for the other odd one I think I might have had a dispensation to have married the beast. I thank you for the exact relation you sent me OF JAMES HOWELL 65 of the fearful eartfiquakes and fires which hap- pened lately in that country, and particularly about Vesuvius. It seems the huge giant whom the poets say was hurled under the vast mountain by the gods for thinking to scale heaven, had a mind to turn from one side to the other, which he useth to do at the revolution of every hundred years, and stirring his body by that action, he was taken with a fit of the cough, which made the hill shake and belch out fire in that hideous manner. But to repay you in the like coin, they send us stranger news from Lisbon, for they write of a spick and span new island that hath peeped up out of the Atlantic Sea, near the Terceras, which never ap- peared before since the Creation, and it begins to be peopled already. Methinks the King of Spain needs no more countries, he hath too many already, unless they were better united. All your friends here are well, and mind you often in town and country, as doth your true constant servitor, J. H. Westminster, 7 April 1629. XXVII To Mr T. Lucy, in Venice YOUR last you sent me was from Genoa, where you write that gli mariti ingravidano lor moglie cento miglia lontanoy " Husbands get their wives with child a hundred miles off." It is a 66 FAMILIAR LETTERS great virtue, I confess, but it is nothing to what our East India mariners can do here, because they can do so forty times further ; for though their wives be at Ratcliffe and they at the Red Sea ; though they be at Madagascar, the Mogul's Court, or Japan, yet they used to get their wives* bellies up here about London, a strange virtue at such a huge distance ; but I believe the active part is in the wives, and the husbands are merely passive, which makes them among other wares to bring home with them a sort of precious horns, the pow- der whereof, could one get some of it, would be of an invaluable virtue. This operation of our Indian mariner at such a distance is more admirable, in my judgment, than that of the weapon-salve, the unguentum armarium, for that can do no good unless the surgeon have the instrument and blood, but this is done without both, for the husband contributes neither of them. You are now, I presume, in Venice. There also such things are done by proxy; while the husband is abroad upon the galleys, there be oth- ers that shoot his gulf at home. You are now in a place where you may feed all your senses very cheap. I allow you the pleasing of your eye, your ear, your smell and taste, but take heed of being too indulgent of the fifth sense. The poets feign that Venus, the goddess of pleasure, and therefore called Aphrodite, was engendered of the froth of the sea (which makes fish more salacious com- monly than flesh) ; it is not improbable that she OF JAMES HOWELL 67 was got and coagulated of that foam which Nep- tune useth to disgorge upon those pretty islands whereon that city stands. My Lady Miller com- mends her kindly unto you, and she desires you to send her a complete cupboard of the best crys- tal glass Murano can afford by th^ next shipping, besides, she entreats you to send her a pot of the best mithridate, and so much of treacle. All your friends here are well and jovial. T. T. drank your health yesternight, and wished you could send him a handsome Venetian courtesan enclosed in a letter. He would willingly be at the charge of the postage, which he thinks would not be much for such a light commodity. Farewell, my dear Tom, but have a care of your courses, and continue to love him who is yours to the altar, J.H. Westminster, 15 January 1635. XXVIII To Mr T, Jackson, at Madrid THOUGH a great sea severs us now, yet it is not all the water of the ocean can drown the remembrance of you in me but that it floats and flows daily in my brain; I must confess (for it is impossible the mind of man should fix itself always upon one object) it hath sometimes its ebbs in me, but it is to rise up again with greater force. At the writing hereof it was flood, it was 68 FAMILIAR LETTERS spring tide, which swelled so high that the thoughts of you overwhelmed all others within me ; they engrossed all my intellectuals for the time. You write to me fearful news touching the revolt of the Catalan from Castilia, of the tragical murdering of the viceroy, and the burning of his house. Those mountaineers are mad lads. I fear the sparkles of this fire will fly farther, either to Portugal or to Sicily and Italy, all which coun- tries, I observed, the Spaniard holds as one would do a wolf by the ear, fearing they should run away ever and anon from him. The news here is that Lambeth House bears all the sway at Whitehall, and the lord-deputy kings it notably in Ireland. Some that love them best could wish them a little more modera- tion. I pray buy Suarez' works for me of the last edition. Mr William Pawly, to whom I desire my most hearty commends may be presented, will see it safely sent by way of Bilbao. Your friends here are all well, as is, thanks be to God, your true friend to serve you, J.H. Holborn, 3 March 1638. OF JAMES HOWELL 69 XXIX To Sir Edward Sa,, Knight Sir Edward, I HAD a shrewd disease hung lately upon me, proceeding, as the physicians told me, from this long reclused life and close restraint, which had much wasted my spirits and brought me low. When the crisis was past I began to grow doubt- ful that I had but a short time to breathe in this elementary world, my fever still increasing, and finding my soul weary of this muddy mansion, and methought more weary of this prison of flesh than this flesh was of this prison of the Fleet. There- fore, after some gentle slumbers, and unusual dreams about the dawnings of the day, I had a lucid interval, and so I fell a-thinking how to put my little house in order and to make my last will. Hereupon my thoughts ran upon Grunnius Sophista's last testament, who having nothing else to dispose of but his body, he bequeathed all the parts thereof in legacies, as his skin to the tanners, his bones to the dicemakers, his guts to the musi- cians, his fingers to the scriveners, his tongue to his fellow-sophisters (which were the lawyers of those times), and so forth. As he thus dissected his body, so I thought to divide my mind into legacies, having, as you know, little of the outward pelf and gifts of fortune to dispose of, for never yo FAMILIAR LETTERS any was less beholden to that blind baggage. In the highest degree of theoretical contemplation I made an entire sacrifice of my soul to her Maker who by infusing created her, and by creating in- fused her to actuate this small bulk of flesh with an unshaken confidence of the redemption of both in my Saviour, and consequently of the salvation of the one and the resurrection of the other. My thoughts then reflected upon divers of my noble friends, and I fell to proportion unto them what legacies I held most proper. I thought to bequeath unto my Lord of Cherberry and Sir K. Digby that little philosophy and knowledge I have in the mathematics ; my historical observations and crit- ical researches I made into antiquity, I thought to bequeath unto Dr Usher, Lord Primate of Ire- land ; " My Observations Abroad," and " Inspec- tion into Foreign States " I thought to leave to my Lord G. D. ; my poetry, such as it is, to Mistress A. K., who, I know, is a great minion of the Muses. " School Languages " I thought to bequeath unto my dear mother the University of Oxford ; my " Spanish " to Sir Lewis Dives and Master Endymion Porter, for though they are great masters of that language, yet it may stead them something when they read " La Picara Jus- tina." My " Italian " to the worthy company of Turkey and Levantine merchants, from divers of whom I have received many noble favours. My " French " to my most honoured lady, the Lady Cor, and it may help her something to understand OF JAMES HOWELL 71 Rabelais. The little smattering I have in the Dutch, British, and my English I did not esteem worth the bequeathing. My love I had bequeathed to be diffused among all my dear friends, espe- cially those that have stuck unto me in this my long affliction. My best natural affections betwixt the Lord B. of Br., my brother Howell, and my three dear sisters, to be transferred by them to my cousins their children. This little sackful of bones I thought to bequeath to Westminster Abbey, to be interred in the cloister within the south side of the garden, close to the wall, where I would have desired Sir H. F. (my dear friend) to have inlaid a small piece of black marble and caused this motto to have been insculped upon it, Hucusque peregri- nuSy heic domi, or this, which I would have left to his choice, Hucusque erraticus, heicj[ixus^ and instead of strewing my grave with flowers I would have desired him to have grafted thereon some little tree of what sort he pleased that might have taken root downward to my dust, because I have been always naturally affected to woods and groves and those kind of vegetables, insomuch that if there were any such thing as a Pythagorean metempsy- chosis I think my soul would transmigrate into some tree when she bids this body farewell. By these extravagancies and odd chimeras of my brain, you may well perceive that I was not well, but distempered, especially in my intellect- uals. According to the Spanish proverb, " Siempre desvarios con la calentura," Fevers have always 72 FAMILIAR LETTERS their fits of dotage. Among those to whom I had bequeathed my dearest love, you were one to whom I had intended a large proportion, and that love which I would have left you then in legacy, I send you now in this letter, for it hath pleased God to reprieve me for a longer time to creep upon this earth, and to see better days I hope, when this black dismal cloud is dispelled ; but come foul or fair weather, I shall be as formerly your most constant, faithful servitor, J. H. Fleet, 26 March 1643. XXX To the Right Honourable the Lady Wichts SINCE I was hurled amongst these walls, I had divers fits of melancholy and such turbid intervals that use to attend close prisoners, who for the most part have no other companions but confused troops of wandering cogitations. Now, " melancholy is far more fruitful of thoughts than any other humour ; " for it is like the mud of the Nile, which, when that enigmatical vast river is got again to her former bed, engendereth divers sorts of new creatures and some kinds of monsters. My brain in this Fleet hath been often thus over- whelmed, yet I never found it so muddy, nor the region of my mind so much clouded, as it was lately after notice had of the sad tidings of Master Controller's death. The news hereof struck such OF JAMES HOWELL 73 a damp into me, that for some space methought the very pulse of my blood and the motions of my heart were at a stand ; for I was surprised with such a consternation, that I felt no pulsation in the one, or palpitations in the other. Well, madam, he was a brave, solid, wise man, of a noble free dis- position, and so great a controller of his passions, he was always at home within himself; yet I much fear that the sense of these unhappy times made too deep impressions in him. Truly, madam, I loved and honoured him in such a perfection, that my heart shall wear a broad black ribbon for him while I live ; as long as I have a retentive faculty to remember anything, his memory shall be fresh within me. But the truth is, that if the advantageous exchange which he hath made were well considered, no friend of his should be sorry; for in lieu of a white staff in an earthly court, he hath got a sceptre of immortality. He that had been ambassador at the Porte to the greatest monarch upon earth, where he resided so many years an honour to his king and country, is now arrived at a far more glorious Porte than that of Constantinople ; though (as I intimated before) I fear that this boisterous weather hath blown him thither before his time. God Almighty give your ladyship patience for so great a loss, and comfort in your hopeful issue. With this prayer I conclude myself, madam, your ladyship's most humble and sorrowful servant, J. H. From the Fleet, 1 5 April, 74 FAMILIAR LETTERS XXXI To Mr E. S,, Councillor at the Middle Temple 1HAD yours this morning, and I thank you for the news you send me that divers of my fellow-sufferers are enlarged out of Lambeth, Winchester, London and Ely House, whereunto I may answer you as the Cheapside porter did one that related court news unto him, how such a one was made Lord Treasurer, another Chancellor of the Exchequer, another was made an earl, another sworn Privy Councillor. "Ay,'* said he, "yet I am but a porter still." So I may say, "I am but a prisoner still, notwithstanding the releasement of so many.*' Mistake me not, as if I repined here- by at any one's liberty, for I could heartily wish that I were the unic martyr in this kind, that I were the figure of one with never a cipher after it, as God wot there are too many ; I could wish that as I am the least in value, I were the last in number. A day may come that a favourable wind may blow, that I may launch also out of this Fleet. In the meantime, and always after, I am your true constant servitor, J. H. Fleet, I February 1645. OF JAMES HOWELL 75 XXXII To Mr R. B.y at Ipswich Gentle Sir, 1 VALUE at a high rate the sundry respects you have been pleased to show me ; for as you obliged me before by your visits, so you have much endeared yourself unto me since by your late letter of the nth current. Believe it, sir, the least scruple of your love is not lost (because I perceive it proceeds from the pure motions of virtue), but returned to you in the same full pro- portion. But what you please to ascribe unto me in point of merit, I dare not own. You look upon me through the wrong end of the perspective, or rather through a multiplying glass, which makes the object appear far bigger than it is in real dimen- sion ; such glasses as anatomists use in the dis- section of bodies, which can make a flea look like a cow, or a fly as big as a vulture. I presume you are constant in your desire to travel ; if you intend it at all, you cannot do it in a better time, there being little comfort, God wot, to breathe English air as matters are carried. I shall be glad to stead you in anything that may tend to your advantage ; for to tell you truly, I take much contentment in this inchoation of friend- ship, to improve and perfect which I shall lie sen- tinel to apprehend all occasions. J 76 FAMILIAR LETTERS If you meet Master R. Brownrigg in the coun- try, I pray present my very kind respects unto him, for I profess myself to be both his and your most affectionate servitor, J. H. Fleet, 15 August 1646. XXXIII To Capt. C. Price y Prisoner at Coventry Cousin, YOU, whom I held always as my second self in affection, are now so in affliction, being in the same predicament of suffrance, though not in the same prison as L There is nothing sweeteneth friendship more than a participation and identity of danger and durance. The day may come that we may discourse with comfort of these sad times, for adversity hath the advantage of prosperity itself in this point, that the commemoration of the one is oft-times more delightsome than the fruition of the other. Moreover, adversity and prosperity are like virtue and vice ; the two foremost of both which begin with anxieties and pain, but they end comically in contentment and joy ; the other two quite contrary, they begin with pleasure and end in pain ; there *s a difference in the last scene. I could wish, if there be no hopes of a speedy releasement, you would remove your body hither, and rather than moulder away in idleness we would devoutly blow the coal, and try if we can exalt OF JAMES HOWELL 77 gold and bring it over the helm in this Fleet ; we will transmute metals and give a resurrection to mortified vegetables, to which end the green lion and the dragon, the demogorgon and Mercury himself with all the planets shall attend us, till we come to the elixir, the true powder of projection, which the vulgar call the philosopher's stone. If matters hit right, we may thereby get better returns than Cardigan silver mines afford ; but we must not melt ourselves away as J. Meredith did, nor do as your countryman Morgan did. I know when you read these lines, you '11 say I am grown mad, and that I have taken opium in lieu of tobacco. If I be mad I am but sick of the disease of the time, which reigns more among the English than the sweating sickness did some sixscore years since amongst them, and only them, both at home and abroad. There 's a strange maggot hath got into their brains, which possesseth them with a kind of ver- tigo, and it reigns in the pulpit more than any- where else, for some of our preachmen are grown dog mad, there *s a worm got into their tongues as well as their heads. Hodge Powel commends him unto you ; he is here under hatches as well as I ; howsoever I am still, in fair or foul weather, your truly affectionate cousin to serve you, J. H. Fleet, 3 January 1643. 78 FAMILIAR LETTERS XXXIV To the Right Honourable the Lord of Cher berry My Lord, GOD send you joy of your new habitation, for I understand your lordship is removed from the King's Street to the Queen's. It may be with this enlargement of dwelling, your lordship may need a recruit of servants. The bearer hereof hath a desire to devote himself to your Lordship's service ; and I find that he hath a concurrence of such parts that may make him capable of it. He is well studied in men and books, versed in busi- ness of all sorts, and writes a very fair hand. He is well extracted and hath divers good friends that are dwellers in the town who will be responsible for him. Moreover, besides this letter of mine, your Lordship will find that he carrieth one in his countenance, for an honest ingenuous look is a good letter of recommendation of itself. If your Lordship hath not present occasion to employ him, he may be about you a while like a spare watch, which your Lordship may wind up at pleasure. So my aim being to do your Lordship service, as much as him a pleasure by this recommendation, I rest your Lordship's most humble servant, J. H. Fleet, 13 July 1646. OF JAMES HOWELL 79 XXXV To Mr R. Br. YOURS of the fourth current came safely to hand, and I acknowledge with much content- ment the fair respects you please to show me. You may be well assured that the least grain of your love to me is not lost but counterbalanced with the like in full weight. For although I am as frail a piece, and as full of infirmities as another man, yet I like my own nature in one thing, that I could never endure to be in the arrear to any for love. Where my hand came short my heart was bountiful, and helped to make an equal com- pensation. I hope you persist in your purpose for foreign travel to study awhile the world abroad. It is the way to perfect you, and I have already discovered such choice ingredients, and parts of ingenuity in you, that will quickly make a complete gentle- man. No more now, but that I am seriously yours to dispose of, J. H. Fleet, 3 July 1646. 8o FAMILIAR LETTERS XXXVI To Sir L, D,y in the Tower TO help the passing away of your weary hours between those disconsolate walls I have sent you a king of your own name to bear you company, Louis XI 1 1, who, though dead three years since, may peradventure afford you some entertainment ; and I think that dead men of this nature are the fittest companions for such that are buried alive as you and I are. I doubt not but you, who have a spirit to overcome all things, will overcome the sense of this hard condition, that you may survive these sad times and see better days. I doubt not, as weak as I am, but I shall be able to do it myself. In which confidence I style myself your most obliged and ever faithful servant, J. H. Fleet, 15 February 1646. My most humble service to Sir J. St. and Sir H. V. XXXVII To Master R. B. I HAD yours of the second current by Master Bloys, which obligeth me to send you double OF JAMES HOWELL 8i thanks, first for your letter, then for the choice hand that brought it me. When I had gone through it methought your lines were as leaves, or rather so many branches, amongst which there sprouted divers sweet blos- soms of ingenuity, which I find may quickly come to a rare maturity. I confess this clime (as matters go) is untoward to improve such buds of virtue. But the times may mend now that our King with the sun makes his approach unto us more and more. Yet I fear we shall not come yet a good while to our former serenity, therefore it were not amiss, in my judgment, if some foreign air did blow upon the aforesaid blossoms to ripen them under some other meridian in the interim ; it is the opinion of your very respectful friend to dispose of, J. H. Fleet, 3 August 1645. XXXVIII To Mr G. C, at Dublin THE news of this week has been like the waves of that boisterous sea through which this letter is to pass over unto you. Divers re- ports for peace have swollen high for the time, but they suddenly fell low and flat again. Our rela- tions here are like a peal of bells in a windy blus- tering weather: sometimes the sound is strong on this side, sometimes on that side of the steeple. 82 FAMILIAR LETTERS so our relations sound diversely as the air of affec- tion carries them, and sometimes in a whole volley of news we shall not find one true report. There was in a Dunkirk ship taken some months ago, hard by Arundel Castle, amongst other things, a large picture seized upon and carried to West- minster Hall, and put in the Star Chamber to be publicly seen. It was the legend of Conanus, a British prince in the time of Gratian the Emperor, who having married Ursula, the King of Corn walFs daughter, were embarked with ii,ooo virgins for Brittany, in France, to colonise that part with Christians, but being by distress of weather beaten upon the Rhine, because they would not yield to the lusts of the infidels, after the example of Ur- sula, they were all slain. Their bodies were carried to Cologne, where there stands to this day a stately church built for them. This is the story of that picture, yet the common people here take Conanus for our king and Ursula for the queen, and the bishop which stands hard by to be the Pope, and so stare upon it accordingly, notwithstanding that the prince there represented hath sandals on his feet after the old fashion, that the coronets on their heads resemble those of dukes and earls, as also that there are rays about them which never use to be applied to living persons, with divers other incongruities. Yet it cannot be beaten out of the belief of thousands here but that it was intended to represent our king and queen, which makes me conclude with this interjection of wonder. Oh, the OF JAMES HOWELL 83 ignorance of the common people ! Your faithful friend to command, J. H. Fleet, 12 August 1644 XXXIX To Master End. Por.^ at^ Paris I MOST affectionately kiss your hands for the account (and candid opinion) you please to give of the history I sent Her Majesty of the late K., her brother's reign. I return you also a thousand thanks for your comfortable advice, that having been so long under hatches in this Fleet I should fancy myself to be in a long voyage at sea. It is true opinion can do much, and indeed she is that great lady who rules the world. There is a wise saying in that country where you sojourn now, that " ce n'est pas la place, mais la pensee qui fait la prison," it is not the place but opinion that makes the prison ; the conceit is more than the condition. You go on to prefer my captivity in this Fleet to that of a voyager at sea, in regard that he is subject to storms and springing of leaks, to pirates and picaroons, with other casualties. You write I have other advantages also, to be free from plundering and other barbarisms that reign now aboard. It is true, I am secured from all these ; yet touching the first, I could be content to expose myself to all those chances, so that this were a floating Fleet, that I might breathe 84 FAMILIAR LETTERS free air, for I have not been suffered to stir over the threshold of this house this four years. Where- as you say I have a book for my companion ; it is true, I converse sometimes with dead men ; and what fitter associates can there be for one that is buried alive (as I am) than dead men ? And now will I adventure to send you a kind of epitaph I made of myself this morning as I was lolling abed. Here lies entombed a walking thing. Whom Fortune (with the States) did fling Between these walls. Why ? ask not that. That blind whore doth she knows not what. It is a strange world you '11 say when men make their own epitaphs in their graves, but we that are thus buried alive have one advantage above others, that we are like to have a double resurrection. I am sure of one, but if these times hold I cannot ascertain myself of the other, for I may be suf- fered to rot here for aught I know, it being the hard destiny of some in these times, when they are once clapped up, to be so forgotten as if there were no such men in the world. I humbly thank you for your avisos ; I cannot correspond with you in that kind as freely as I would. Only in the general I must tell you that we are come to such a pass that the posy which a young couple did put upon their wedding ring may fit us in the general, which was, God knows what will become of us. But I trust these bad times will be recompensed with better; for my part, that which keeps me alive is your motto OF JAMES HOWELL 85 there of the House of Bourbon, and it is but one word, FEsperance. — So I pray God preserve you and your most faithful humble servitor, Fleet, 1 January 164.6. J. H. XL To Master J. H., at Saint John's College^ in Cambridge Master Hall, YOURS of the thirteenth of this instant came safely, though slowly, to hand, for I had it not till the twentieth of the same, and the next day your essays were brought me. I entertained both with much respect for I found therein many choice and ripe notions, which I hope proceed from a pregnancy rather than precocity of spirit in you. I perceive you have entered the suburbs of Sparta already, and that you are in a fair way to get the town itself. I know you have wherewith to adorn her. Nay, you may in time gain Athens herself, with all the knowledge she was ever mistress of, if you go on in your career with constancy. I find you have a genius for the most solid and severest sort of studies. Therefore when you have passed through the briers of logic, I could wish you to go strongly on in the fair fields of philosophy and the mathematics, which are true academical studies, and they will afford 86 FAMILIAR LETTERS rich matter of application for your inventive spirit to work upon. By all means understand Aris- totle in his own language, for it is the language of learning. Touching poetry, history and other human studies, they may serve you for recreation, but let them not by any means allure your affec- tions from the first. I shall delight to hear some- times of your proceedings, for I possess a great deal of good will unto you, which makes me rest your respectful friend to serve you, J. H. Fleet, 3 December, XLI To my Br,, the L, B, of B,, in France My Good Lord and Br., ALTHOUGH the sense of my own hard condition be enough to make me melan- choly, yet when I contemplate yours (as I often do), and compare your kind of banishment with my imprisonment, I find the apprehension of the first, wherein so many have a share, adds a double weight unto my sufferings, though but single. Truly, these thoughts to me are as so many cor- rosives to one already in a consumption. The world cries you up to be an excellent divine and philosopher. Now is the time for you to make an advantage of both. Of the first, by calling to mind that afflictions are the portion of the best theophiles; of the other, by a well-weighed con- OF JAMES HOWELL 87 sideration that crosses and troubles are entailed upon mankind as much as any other inheritance. In this respect I am no cadet, for you know I have had a double, if not a treble share, and may be rather called the elder brother; but olo-riov KOI iina-Teov, I hope I shall not sink under the burden, but that we shall be both reserved for better days, especially now that the King (with the sun and the spring) makes his approach more and more towards us from the north. God Almighty (the God of our good old fa- ther) still guard you and guide you, that after so long a separation we may meet again with com- fort to confer notes, and recount matters passed. For adverse fortune, among other properties, hath this for one, that her present pressures are not so irksome as the remembrance of them being passed are delightsome. — So I remain your most loving brother, J. H. Fleet, I May 1645. XLII To Sir L, Dives y in the Tower AMONG divers other properties that attend a long captivity, one is, that it purgeth the humours, especially it correcteth choler, and attem- pers it with phlegm, which you know in Spanish is taken for patience. It hath also a chemical kind of quality to refine the dross and feculency of a 88 FAMILIAR LETTERS corrupt nature, as fire useth to purify metals, and to destroy that terram Adamicam in them, as the chemist calls it ; for Demogorgon with his vegeta- bles partook of Adam's malediction as well as other creatures, which makes some of them so foul and imperfect, nature having designed them all for gold and silver at first, and it is fire can only rec- tify and reduce them towards such a perfection. This Fleet hath been such a furnace to me, it hath been a kind of Perillus Bull, or rather, to use the Paracelsian phrase, I have been here in ventre equina^ in the limbec and crucible of affliction. And whereas the chemist commonly requires but 150 days, antequam corvus in columbam vertatuVy before the crow turns to a dove, I have been here five times so many days and upward. I have been here time enough, in conscience, to pass all the degrees and effects of fire, as distillation, sublima- tion, mortification, calcination, solution, discen- sion, dealbation, rubification, and fixation ; for I have been fastened to the walls of this prison any time these fifty-five months. I have been here long enough, if I were matter capable thereof to be made the philosopher's stone, to be converted from water to powder, which is the whole magis- try. I have been, besides, so long upon the anvil that methinks I am grown malleable and ham- mer-proof, I am so habituated to hardship. But indeed you, that are made of choicer mould, are fitter to be turned into the elixir than I, who have so much dross and corruption in me that it will OF JAMES HOWELL 89 require more pains and much more expense to be purged and defecated. God send us both pa- tience to bear the brunt of this fiery trial, and grace to turn these decoctions into aquae vitae, to make sovereign treacle of this viper. The Trojan prince was forced to pass over Phlegethon, and pay Charon his freight, before he could get into the Elysian Fields. You know the moral, that we must pass through hell to heaven, and why not as well through a prison to Paradise ? Such may the Tower prove to you, and the Fleet to me, who am your humble and hearty servant, From the Fleet, 23 February 1645, J. H, XLIII To the Right Honourable the Lord R. My Lord, SURE there is some angry planet hath lowered long upon the Catholic King; and though one of his titles to pagan princes be that he wears the sun for his helmet, because it never sets upon all his dominions in regard some part of them lie on the other side of the hemisphere among the antipodes, yet methinks that neither that great star, or any of the rest, are now propitious unto him. They cast, it seems, more benign fluxes upon the fleur-de-lys, which thrives wonderfully, but how long these favourable aspects will last I 90 FAMILIAR LETTERS will not presume to judge. This, among divers others of late, hath been a fatal year to the said king, for westward he hath lost Dunkirk. Dunkirk, which was the terror of this part of the world, the scourge of the Occidental seas, whose name was grown to be a bugbear for so many years, hath now changed her master, and thrown away the ragged staff. Doubtless a great exploit it was to take this town. But whether this be advantage- ous to Holland (as I am sure it is not to Eng- land) time will show. It is more than probable that it may make him careless at sea, and in the building and arming of his ships, having now no enemy near him. Besides, I believe it cannot much benefit Hans to have the French so con- tiguous to him. The old saying was, "Ayez le Francois pour ton amy, non pas pour ton voisin " (Have the Frenchman for thy friend, not for thy neighbour). Touching England, I believe these distractions of ours have been one of the greatest advantages that ever could befall France. And they hap- pened in the most favourable conjuncture of time that might be, else I believe he would never have as much as attempted Dunkirk, for England, in true reason of state, had reason to prevent nothing more in regard no one place could have added more to the naval power of France. This will make his sails swell bigger, and I fear make him claim in time as much regality in these narrow seas as England herself. OF JAMES HOWELL 91 In Italy the Spaniard hath also had ill suc- cesses at Piombino and Porto Longone. Besides, they write that he hath lost " II prete et il medico " (The priest and the physician), to wit, the Pope and the Duke of Florence (the House of Med- ici), who appear rather for the French than for him. Add to these disasters that he hath lost within the revolution of the same year the Prince of Spain, his unique son, in the very flower of his age, being but seventeen years old. These, with the falling off of Catalonia and Portugal, with the death of his queen not above forty, are heavy losses to the Catholic king, and must needs much enfeeble the great bulk of his monarchy, fall- ing in so short a compass of time one upon the neck of another, and we are not to enter into the secret councils of God Almighty for a reason. I have read it was the sensuality of the flesh that drove the kings out of Rome, the French out of Sicily, and brought the Moors into Spain, where they kept firm footing above seven hundred years. I could tell you how, not long before her death, the late Queen of Spain took off^ one of her cha- pines and clowted Olivarez about the noddle with it because he had accompanied the King to a lady of pleasure, telling him that he should know she was sister to a King of France as well as wife to a King of Spain. For my part, France and Spain is all one to me in point of afl^ection. I am one of those indiflferent men that would have the 92 FAMILIAR LETTERS scales of power in Europe kept even. I am also a Philerenus, a lover of peace, and I could wish the French were more inclinable to it now that the common enemy hath invaded the .territories of Saint Mark. Nor can I but admire that at the same time the French should assail Italy at one side when the Turk was doing it on the other. But had that great naval power of Christians which were this summer upon the coasts of Tus- cany gone against the Mahommedan fleet, which was the same time setting upon Candia, they might in all likelihood have achieved a glorious exploit and driven the Turk into the Hellespont. Nor is poor Christendom torn thus in pieces by the German, Spaniard, French and Swedes, but our three kingdoms have also most pitifully scratched her face, wasted her spirits, and let out some of her illustrious blood by our late horrid distractions, whereby it may be inferred that the Mufti and the Pope seem to thrive in their devo- tion one way, a chief part of the prayers of the one being that discord should still continue betwixt Christian princes ; of the other that divi- sion should still increase between the Protestants. This poor island is a woeful example thereof. I hear the peace betwixt Spain and Holland is absolutely concluded by the plenipotentiary minis- ters at Miinster, who have beat their heads so many years about it. But they write that the French and Swede do mainly endeavour, and set all the wheels of policy a-going to puzzle and OF JAMES HOWELL ^^^ prevent it. If it take effect, as I do not see how the Hollander in common honesty can evade it, I hope it will conduce much to a universal peace, which God grant, for war is a fire struck in the devil's tinder-box. No more now, but that I am, my lord, your most humble servitor, J. H. Fleet, I December 1643. XLIV To Mr E, O., Councillor at Grafs Inn THE sad tidings of my dear friend Doctor Pritchard's death sunk deep into me, and the more I ruminate upon it the more 1 resent it. But when I contemplate the order and those ada- mantine laws which nature put in such strict ex- ecution throughout this elementary world; when I consider that up and down this frail globe of earth we are but strangers or sojourners at best, being designed for an infinitely better country ; when I think that our egress out of this life is as natural to us as our ingress (all which he knew as much as any), these thoughts in a checking way turn my melancholy to a counter passion, they beget another spirit within me. You know that in the disposing of all sublunary things, nature is God's handmaid, fate His commissioner, time His in- strument, and death His executioner. By the first we have generation ; by the second, successes good or bad ; and the two last bring us to our end. 94 FAMILIAR LETTERS Time with his vast scythe mows down all things, and death sweeps away these mowings. Well, he was a rare and a complete judicious scholar as any that I have known born under our meridian. He was both solid and acute, nor do I remember to have seen soundness and quaintness with such sweet strains of morality concur so in any. I should think that he fell sick of the times, but that I knew him to be so good a divine and philoso- pher, and to have studied the theory of this world so much, that nothing could take impression in him to hurt himself, therefore I am content to believe that his glass ran out without any jogging. I know you loved him dearly well, which shall make me the more your most affectionate servitor. Fleet, 3 August. J. H. XLV To y. JV.y Esq,, at Grafs Inn 1 VALUE at a high rate the fair respects you show me, by the late ingenious expressions of your letter, but the merit you ascribe unto me in the superlative, might have very well served in the positive, and it is well if I deserve in that degree. You write that you have singular contentment and profit in the perusal of some things of mine. I am heartily glad they afforded any entertainment to a gentleman of so choice a judgment as yourself. I have a foolish working brain of mine own, in OF JAMES HOWELL 95 labour still with something, and I can hardly keep it from superfetations, though oft-times it produce a mouse in lieu of a mountain. I must confess its best productions are but homely and hard-favoured, yet in regard they appear handsome in your eyes, I shall like them the better. — So I am, sir, yours most obliged to serve you, J. H. Fleet, 3 January 1644. XLVI To Mr Tho. H. THOUGH the times abound with schisms more than ever (the more is our misery), yet, I hope, you will not suffer any to creep into our friendship, though I apprehend some fears thereof by your long silence, and cessation of literal corre- spondence. You know there is a peculiar religion attends friendship ; there is according to the ety- mology of the word, a ligation and solemn tie, the rescinding whereof may be truly called a schism, or a piacle, which is more. There belong to this religion of friendship certain due rites and de- cent ceremonies, as visits, messages and missives. Though I am content to believe that you are firm in the fundamentals, yet I find, under favour, that you have lately fallen short of performing these exterior offices, as if the ceremonial law were quite abrogated with you in all things. Friendship also allows of merits and works of supererogation some- 96 FAMILIAR LETTERS times, to make her capable of eternity. You know that pair which were taken up into the heaven, and placed amongst the brightest stars for their rare constancy and fidelity one to the other ; you know also they are put among the fixed stars, not the erratics, to show there must be no inconstancy in love. Navigators steer their course by them, and they are their best friends in working seas, dark nights, and distresses of weather, whence may be inferred that true friends should shine clearest in adversity, in cloudy and doubtful time. On my part this ancient friendship is still pure, orthodox and incorrupted ; and though I have not the op- portunity (as you have) to perform all the rites thereof in regard of this recluse life, yet I shall never err in the essentials. I am still yours KTujcrei, though I cannot be ^pT^cret, for in statu quo nunc I am grown useless and good for nothing, yet in point of possession I am as much as ever, your firm unalterable servitor, J. H. Fleet, 7 November 1643. XLVII To Mr S. B.y Merchant^ at his house in the Old Jury 1 RETURN you those two famous speeches of the late Queen Elizabeth, with the addition of another from Baudius at an embassy here from OF JAMES HOWELL 97 Holland. It is with languages as it is with liquors which by transfusion use to take wind from one vessel to another, so things translated into another tongue lose of their primitive vigour and strength, unless a paraphrastical version be permitted, and then the traduct may exceed the original, not other- wise, though the version be ever so punctual, es- pecially in these orations which are framed with such art, that like Vitruvius his palace, there is no place left to add one stone more without defacing, or to take any out without hazard of destroying the whole fabric. Certainly she was a princess of rare endowments for learning and languages. She was blessed with a long life, and triumphant reign attended with various sorts of admirable successes, which will be taken for some romance a thousand winters hence, if the world lasts so long. She freed the Scot from the French, and gave her successor a royal pension to maintain his court. She helped to settle the crown on Henry the Great's head ; she gave essence to the State of Holland ; she civilised Ireland, and suppressed divers insurrections there ; she pre- served the dominion of the narrow seas in greater glory than ever. She maintained open war against Spain when Spain was in her highest flourish for divers years together, yet she left a mighty treasure behind, which shows that she was a notable good housewife. Yet I have read divers censures of her abroad, that she was ungrateful to her brother of Spain, who had been the chiefest instrument under 98 FAMILIAR LETTERS God to preserve her from the block, and had left her all Queen Mary's jewels without diminution, accusing her that afterwards she should first in- fringe the peace with him by intercepting his treas- ure in the narrow seas, by suffering her Drake to swim to his Indies and rob him there, by foment- ing and supporting his Belgian subjects against him then when he had an ambassador resident at her court ; but this was the censure of a Spanish author, and Spain had little reason to speak well of her. The French handle her worse by terming her, among other contumelies, r Haquen^e de ses propres vassaux. Sir, I must much value the frequent respects you have shown me, and am very covetous of the improvement of this acquaintance, for I do not remember at home or abroad to have seen in the person of any, a gentleman and a merchant so equally met as in you, which makes me style myself your most affectionate friend to serve you, Fleet, 3 May 1645. J- H- XLVIII To Dr D. Featly 1 RECEIVED your answer to that futilous pam- phlet, with your desire of my opinion touching it. Truly, sir, I must tell you that never poor cur was tossed in a blanket, as you have tossed that poor coxcomb in the sheet you pleased to send me. OF JAMES HOWELL 99 For whereas a fillip might have felled him, you have knocked him down with a kind of Herculean club sans resource. These times (more is the pity) labour with the same disease that France did dur- ing the Ligue, as a famous author hath it, " Prurigo scripturientium erat scabies temporum" (The itch- ing of scribblers was the scab of the time). It is just so now that any triobolatry Pasquiller, every tressis agaso^ any sterquilinious rascal is licensed to throw dirt in the faces of sovereign princes in open printed language. But I hope the times will mend and your man also if he hath any grace : you have so well corrected him. So I rest yours to serve and reverence you, J. H. Fleet, I August 1644. XLIX Ti? Captain T, Z/., in Westchester Captain L., I COULD wish that I had the same advantage of speed to send unto you at this time, that they have in Alexandretta, now called Scanderoon, when upon the arrival of any ships into the bay or any other important occasion they used to send their letters by pigeons, trained up purposely for that use, to Aleppo and other places. Such an airy messenger, such a volatile postillion would I desire now to acquaint you with the sickness of your mother-in-law, who I believe will be in another loo FAMILIAR LETTERS world (and I wish it may be heaven) before this paper comes to your hands, for the physicians have forsaken her, and Dr Burton told me it is a miracle if she lasts a natural day to an end, there- fore you shall do well to post up as soon as you •can, to look to your own aiBFairs, for I believe you will be no more sick of the mother. Master Davies in the mean time told me he will be very careful and circumspect that you be not wronged. I received yours of the tenth current and return a thousand thanks for the warm and melting sweet expressions you make of your respects unto me. All that I can say at present in answer is that I ex- tremely please myself in loving you and I like my own affections the better, because they tell me that I am your entirely devoted friend, J. H. Westminster, lo December 1631. To my Honourable Friend Sir C. C. I WAS upon point of going abroad to steal a solitary walk, when yours of the twelfth cur- rent came to hand ; the high researches and choice abstracted notions I found therein seemed to heighten my spirits and make my fancy fitter for my intended retirement and meditation ; add here- unto, that the countenance of the weather invited me, for it was a still evening, it was also a clear open sky, not a speck or the least wrinkle appeared OF JAMES HOWELL loi in the whole face of heaven, it was such a pure deep azure all the hemisphere over that I won- dered what was become of the three regions of the air with their meteors. So having got into a close field, I cast my face upward, and fell to consider what a rare prerogative the optic virtue of the eye hath, much more the intuitive virtue of the thought, that the one in a moment can reach heaven and the other go beyond it. Therefore sure that philosopher was but a kind of frantic fool, that would have plucked out both his eyes because they were a hindrance to his speculations. Moreover, I began to contemplate as I was in this posture the vast magnitude of the universe and what proportion this poor globe of earth might bear with it, for if those numberless bodies which stick in the vast roof of heaven, though they ap- pear to us but as spangles, be some of them thou- sands of times bigger than the earth — take the sea with it to boot, for they both make but one sphere, surely the astronomers had reason to term this sphere an indivisible point and a thing of no dimension at all being compared to the whole world. I fell then to think that at the second gen- eral destruction, it is no more for God Almighty to fire this earth than for us to blow up a small squib or rather one small grain of gunpowder. As I was musing thus, I spied a swarm of gnats wav- ing up and down the air about me which I knew to be part of the universe as well as I ; and me- thought it was a strange opinion of our Aristotle I02 FAMILIAR LETTERS to hold that the least of those small insected ephp- merans should be more noble than the sun, because it had a sensitive soul in it. I fell to think that the same proportion which those animalillios bore with me in point of bigness, the same I held with those glorious spirits which are near the Throne of the Almighty, what then should we think of the magnitude of the Creator Himself: doubtless it is beyond the reach of any human imagination to conceive it. In my private devotions I presume to compare Him to a great mountain of light, and my soul seems to discern some glorious form therein, but suddenly as she would fix her eyes upon the object, her sight is presently dazzled and disgregated with the refulgency and coruscations thereof. Walking a little farther I espied a young bois- terous bull breaking over hedge and ditch to a herd of kine in the next pasture, which made me think that if that fierce strong animal with others of that kind knew their own strength, they would never suffer man to be their master. Then look- ing upon them quietly grazing up and down, I fell to consider that the flesh which is daily dished upon our tables is but concocted grass, which is recarnified in our stomachs and transmuted to another flesh. I fell also to think what advantage those innocent animals had of man, which, as soon as nature cast them into the world, find their meat dressed, the cloth laid, and the table cov- ered ; they find their drink brewed and the but- OF JAMES HOWELL 103 tery open, their beds made and their clothes ready ; and though man hath the faculty of reason to make him a compensation for the want of those advantages, yet this reason brings with it a thou- sand perturbations of mind and perplexities of spirit, griping cares and anguishes of thought, which those harmless silly creatures were exempted from. Going on, I came to repose myself upon the trunk of a tree, and I fell to consider further what advantage that dull vegetable had of those feeding animals, as not to be so troublesome and beholding to nature, nor to be so subject to starving, to diseases, to the inclemency of the weather, and to be far longer lived. I then espied a great stone, and sitting a while upon it, I fell to weigh in my thoughts that that stone was in a happier condition in some respects than either those sensitive creatures or vegetables I saw be- fore, in regard that that stone, which propagates by assimilation, as the philosophers say, needed neither grass nor hay, or any aliment for restora- tion of nature, nor water to refresh its roots or the heat of the sun to attract the moisture up- wards to increase growth as the other did. As I directed my pace homeward, I espied a kite soar- ing high in the air, and gently gliding up and down the clear region so far above my head, that I fell to envy the bird extremely and repine at his happiness that he should have a privilege to make a nearer approach to heaven than L Excuse me that I trouble you thus with these I04 FAMILIAR LETTERS rambling meditations, they are to correspond with you in some part for those accurate fancies of yours you lately sent me. So I rest your entire and true servitor, J. H. Holborn, 17 March 1639. LI Ti? Master Sergeant Z)., at Lincoln's Inn 1 UNDERSTAND, with a deep sense of sor- row, of the indisposition of your son. I fear he hath too much mind for his body, and that superabounds with fancy, which brings him to these fits of distemper, proceeding from the black humour, melancholy. Moreover, I have observed that he is too much given to his study and self- society, especially to converse with dead men, I mean books. You know anything in excess is naught. Now, sir, were I worthy to give you advice, I could wish he were well married, and it may wean him from that bookish and thoughtful humour. Women were created for the comfort of men, and I have known that to some they have proved the best helleborum against melancholy. As this course may beget new spirits in him, so it must needs add also to your comfort. I am thus bold with you, because I love the gentleman dearly well, and honour you, as being your humble obliged servant, J. H. Westminster, 13 June 1632. OF JAMES HOWELL 105 LII To my Noble Lady^ the Lady M. A, THERE is not anything wherein I take more pleasure than in the accomplishment of your commands, nor had ever any queen more power over her vassals than you have over my intellectuals. I find by my inclinations that it is as natural for me to do your will as it is for fire to fly upward, or any body else to tend to his centre ; but touching the last command your lady- ship was pleased to lay upon me (which is the fol- lowing hymn), if I answer not the fulness of your expectation it must be imputed to the suddenness of the command and the shortness of time. A Hymn to the Blessed Trinity \ To the First Person To Thee, dread Sovereign and dear Lord, Which out of nought didst me afford Essence and life, who mad'st me man. And, oh ! much more, a Christian, Lo ! from the centre of my heart All laud and glory I impart. Hallelujah. To the Second To Thee, blessed Saviour, who didst free My soul from Satan's tyranny. And mad* St her capable to be io6 FAMILIAR LETTERS An angel of Thy hierarchy. From the same centre I do raise All honour and immortal praise. Hallelujah. To the Third To Thee, sweet Spirit, I return That love wherewith my heart doth burn. And these blessed notions of my brain I now breathe up to Thee again : O let them redescend, and still My soul with holy raptures fill. Hallelujah. They are of the same measure, cadence and air as was that angeHcal hymn your ladyship pleased to touch upon your instrument, which, as it so en- chanted me then that my soul was ready to come out at my ears, so your voice took such impressions in me that methinks the sound still remains fresh with your ladyship*s most devoted servitor, J.H. Westminster, i April 1637. LIII Ti? Master P. W.^ at Westminster THE fear of God is the beginning of wis- dom, and the love of God is the end of the law." The former saying was spoken by no meaner man than Solomon, but the latter hath no meaner author than our Saviour Himself Touch- ing this beginning and this end, there is near re- OF JAMES HOWELL 107 lation between them, so near, that the one begets the other. A harsh mother may bring forth sometimes a mild daughter, so fear begets love, but it begets knowledge first ; for " Ignoti nulla cupido," we cannot love God unless we know Him before. Both fear and love are necessary to bring us to heaven ; the one is the fruit of the law, the other of the Gospel. When the clouds of fear have van- ished, the beams of love then begin to glance upon the heart, and of all the members of the body, which are in a manner numberless, this is that which God desires, because it is the centre of love, the source of our affections, and the cistern that holds the most illustrious blood ; and in a sweet and well-devoted harmonious soul. Cor is no other than Camera Omnipotentis Regis ; it is one of God's closets, and indeed nothing can fill the heart of man, whose desires are infinite, but God, who is infinity itself. Love, therefore, must be a necessary attendant to bring us to Him ; but be- sides love there must be two other guides that are required in this journey, which are faith and hope. Now, that fear which the law enjoins us, turns to faith in the Gospel, and knowledge is the scope and subject of both, yet these last two bring us only towards the haven, but love goes along with us to heaven, and so remains an inseparable sem- piternal companion of the soul. Love, therefore, is the most acceptable sacrifice which we can offer our Creator, and he who doth not study the theory of it here, is never like to come to the practice of io8 EAMILIAR LETTERS it hereafter. It was a high hyperphysical expres- sion of St Austin when he fell into this rapture, " That if he were King of Heaven and God Al- mighty Bishop of Hippo, he would exchange places with Him because he loved Him so well/* This vote did so take me, that I have turned it to a paraphrastical hymn, which I send you for your viol, having observed often that you have a harmonious soul within you. The Vote O God, who can those passions tell Wherewith my heart to Thee doth swell : I cannot better them declare. Than by the wish made by that rare Aurelian bishop, who of old Thy oracles in Hippo told. If I were Thou, and Thou wert I, I would resign the Deity ; Thou should' st be God, 1 would be man ; Is *t possible that love more can ? Oh pardon that my soul hath ta'en So high a flight, and grows profane. For myself, my dear Phil, because I love you so dearly well, I will display my very intrinsicals to you in this point. When I examine the motions of my heart, I find that I love my Creator a thousand degrees more than I fear Him. Me- thinks I feel the little needle of my soul touched with a kind of magnetical attractive virtue, that it always moves towards Him as being her summum bonumy the true centre of her happiness. For OF JAMES HOWELL 109 matter of fear, there is none that I fear more than myself, I mean those frailties which lodge within me, and the extravagances of my affections and thoughts ; in this particular I may say that I fear myself more than I fear the Devil, or Death, who is the king of fears. God guard us all, and guide us to our last home through the briars of this cumbersome life. In this prayer I rest, your most affectionate servitor, J. H. Holborn, 21 March 1639. LIV TCo the Right Honourable the Lord Cliff. My Lord, SINCE among other passages of entertain- ment we had lately at the Italian ordinary (where your Lordship was pleased to honour us with your presence) there happened a large discourse of wines, and of other drinks that were used by several nations of the earth, and that your Lordship desired me to deliver what I ob- served therein abroad, I am bold now to confirm and amplify in this letter what I then let drop ex tempore from me, having made a recollection of myself for that purpose. It is without controversy that in the nonage of the world, men and beasts had but one buttery, which was the fountain and river ; nor do we read of any vines or wines till two hundred years after no FAMILIAR LETTERS the Flood; but now I do not know or hear of any nation that hath water only for their drink, except the Japanese, and they drink it hot, too. ■ But we may say, that what beverage soever we make, either by brewing, by distillation, decoction, per- colation, or pressing, it is but water at first, nay, wine itself is but water sublimed, being nothing else but that moisture and sap which is caused either by rain or other kind of irrigations, about the roots of the vine, and drawn up to the branches and berries by the virtual attractive heat of the sun, the bowels of the earth serving as a limbec to that end, which made the Italian vine- yard man (after a long drought and an extremely hot summer which had parched up all his grapes) to complain that " Per mancamento d'acqua, bevo deir acqua, se io havessi acqua, beverei el vino '* (For want of water I am forced to drink water ; if I had water I would drink wine). It may be also applied to the miller when he hath no water to drive his mills. The vine doth so abhor cold that it cannot grow beyond the 49th degree to any purpose. Therefore God and nature hath furnished the northwest nations with other inventions of beverage. In this island the old drink was ale, noble ale, than which, as I heard a great foreign doctor affirm, there is no liquor that more increaseth the radical moisture and preserves the natural heat, which are the two pillars that support the life of man. But since beer hath hopped in amongst us, ale is thought to be much OF JAMES HOWELL iii adulterated and nothing so good as Sir John Old- castle and Smugg the smith was used to drink. Besides ale and beer, the natural drink of part of this isle may be said to be metheglin, braggot and mead, which differ in strength according to the three degrees of comparison. The first of the three, which is strong in the superlative, if taken immod- erately, doth stupefy more than any other liquor and keeps a-humming in the brain, which made one say that he loved not metheglin, because he was used to speak too much of the house he came from, meaning the hive. Cider and perry are also the natural drinks of part of this isle. But I have read in some old authors of a famous drink the ancient nation of the Picts, who lived betwixt Trent and Tweed and were utterly extinguished by the overpowering of the Scot, were used to make of decoction of flowers, the receipt whereof they kept as a secret and a thing sacred to themselves, for it perished with them. These are all the common drinks of this isle and of Ireland also, where they are more given to milk and strong waters of all colours. The prime is usquebagh, which cannot be made anywhere in that perfection, and whereas we drink it here in aqua-vitae measures, it goes down there by beer-glassfuls, being more natural to the nation. In the seventeen provinces hard by, and all Low Germany, beer is the common natural drink and nothing else ; so is it in Westphalia and all the lower circuit of Saxony, in Denmark, Sweden, and 112 FAMILIAR LETTERS Norway. The Prussian hath a beer as thick as honey. In the Duke of Saxe's country- there is beer as yellow as gold made of wheat, and it in- ebriates as soon as sack. In some parts of Ger- many they used to spice their beer, which will keep many years, so that at some weddings there will be a butt of beer drunk out as old as the bride. Poland also is a beer country, but in Russia, Muscovy and Tartary they use mead, which is the naturalest drink of the country, being made of the decoction of water and honey. This is that which *» the ancients called hydromel. Mare*s milk is a great drink with the Tartar, which may be a cause why they are bigger than ordinary, for the physi- cians hold that milk enlargeth the bones, beer strengtheneth the nerves, and wine breeds blood sooner than any other liquor. The Turk when he hath his tripe full of pelaw, or of mutton and rice, will go to nature's cellar, either to the next well or river to drink water, which is his natural common drink, for Mahommed taught them that there was a devil in every berry of the grape, and so made a strict inhibition to all his sect from drinking of wine as a thing profane. He had also a reach of policy therein, because they should not be encum- bered with luggage when they went to war as other nations do, who are so troubled with the carriage of their wine and beverages. Yet hath the Turk peculiar drinks to himself besides, as sherbet made of juice of lemon, sugar, amber and other ingre- dients. He hath also a drink called cauphe, which OF JAMES HOWELL 113 is made of a brown berry, and it may be called their clubbing drink between meals, which, though it be not very gustful to the palate, yet it is very comfortable to the stomach and good for the sight. But notwithstanding their prophet's anathema, thousands of them will venture to drink wine, and they will make a precedent prayer to their souls to depart from their bodies in the interim for fear she partake of the same pollution. Nay, the last Turk died of excess of wine, for he had at one time swallowed three and thirty okes, which is a measure near upon the bigness of our quart, and that which brought him to this was the com- pany of a Persian lord that had given him his daughter for a present, and came with him from Bagdad. Besides one accident that happened to him was that he had a eunuch who was used to be drunk, and whom he had commanded twice upon pain of life to refrain, swearing by Mahommed that he would cause him to be strangled if he found him the third time so ; yet the eunuch still con- tinued in his drunkenness. Hereupon the Turk, conceiving with himself that there must needs be some extraordinary delight in drunkenness, because this man preferred it before his life, fell to it him- self and so drank himself to death. In Asia there is no beer drunk at all, but water, wine and an incredible variety of other drinks made of dates, dried raisins, rice, divers sorts of nuts, fruits and roots. In the Oriental countries, as Cam- bay, Calicut, Narsingha, there is a drink called 114 FAMILIAR LETTERS banque, which is rare and precious, and it is the height of entertainment they give their guests be- fore they go to sleep, Hke that nepenthe which the poets speak so much of, for it provokes pleasing dreams and delightful fantasies. It will accommo- date itself to the humour of the sleeper : as if he be a soldier, he will dream of victories and taking of towns ; if he be in love, he will think to enjoy his mistress ; if he be covetous, he will dream of mountains of gold, etc. In the Moluccas and Philippines there is a curious drink called tampoy, made of a kind of gillyflowers, and another drink called otraqua, that comes from a nut, and is the more general drink. In China they have a holy kind of liquor made of such sort of flowers for ratifying and binding of bargains, and having drunk thereof, they hold it no less than perjury to break what they promise, as they write of a river in Bithynia, whose water hath a peculiar virtue to discover a perjurer, for if he drink thereof, it will presently boil in his stomach, and put him to visi- ble tortures ; this makes me think of the river Styx among the poets which the gods were used to swear by, and it was the greatest oath for performance of anything. Nubila promissi Styx mihi testis erit. It puts me in mind also of that which some write of the river of Rhine for trying the legitimation of a child being thrown in. If he be a bastard he will sink, if otherwise he will not. OF JAMES HOWELL 115 In China they speak of a tree called maguais, which affords not only good drink, being pierced, but all things else that belong to the subsistence of man ; they bore the trunk with an auger and there issueth out sweet potable liquor ; betwixt the rind and the tree there is a cotton or hempy kind of moss which they wear for their clothing. It bears huge nuts which have excellent food in them. It shoots out hard prickles above a fathom long, and those arm them ; with the bark they make tents, and the dotard trees serve for firing. Africa also hath a great diversity of drinks, as having more need of them, being a hotter country far. In Guinea of the Lower Ethiopia there is a famous drink called mingol, which issueth out of a tree much like the palm, being bored. But in the Upper Ethiopia or the Abyssinian's country, they drink mead decocted in a different manner ; there is also much wine there. The common drink of Barbary after water is that which is made of dates. But in Egypt in times past there was beer drunk called zichus in Latin, which was no other than a decoction of barley and water; they had also a famous composition (and they use it to this day) called chiffi, made of divers cordials and pro- vocative ingredients, which they throw into water to make it gustful ; they use it also for fumigation. But now the general drink of Egypt is Nile water, which of all waters may be said to be the best, insomuch that Pindar^s words might be more applicable to that than to any other dpLCTTov fxev ii6 FAMILIAR LETTERS vScop, It doth not only fertilise and extremely fatten the soil which it covers, but it . helps to impregnate barren women, for there is no place on earth where people increase and multiply faster. It is yellowish and thick, but if one cast a few almonds into a potful of it, it will become as clear as rock water ; it is also in a degree of lukewarm- ness as Martiars boy, Tolle puer calices tepidique toreumata Nili. In the New World they have a world of drinks, for there is no root, flower, fruit or pulse but is reducible to a potable liquor, as in the Barbados Island the common drink among the English is mobbi, made of potato roots. In Mexico and Peru, which is in the great continent of America, with other parts, it is prohibited to make wines under great penalties for fear of starving of trade, so that all the wines they have are sent from Spain. Now for the pure wine countries, Greece with all her islands, Italy, Spain, France, one part of four of Germany, Hungary, with divers countries thereabouts, all the islands in the Mediterranean and Atlantic sea are wine countries. The most generous wines of Spain grow in the midland parts of the continent, and Saint Martin bears the bell, which is near the Court. Now as in Spain so in all other wine countries, one cannot pass a day's journey but he will find a differing race of wine. Those kinds that our merchants OF JAMES HOWELL 117 carry over are those only that grow upon the sea- side, as Malagas, Sherries, Tents and Aligants ; of this last there is little comes over right, there- fore the vintners make Tent (which is a name for all wines in Spain, except white) to supply the place of it. There is a gentle kind of white wine grows among the mountains of Galicia, but not of body enough to bear the sea, called Ribadavia. Portugal affords no wines worth the transporting. They have an odd stone we call yef, which they use to throw into their wines, which clarifieth it, and makes it more lasting. There is also a drink in Spain called Alosha, which they drink between meals in hot weather, and it is a hydromel made of water and honey ; much of the taste of our mead. In the Court of Spain there is a German or two that brews beer ; but for that ancient drink of Spain which Pliny speaks of, composed of flowers, the receipt thereof is utterly lost. In Greece there are no wines that have bodies enough to bear the sea for long voyages : some few muscadels and malmsies are brought over in small casks ; nor is there in Italy any wine trans- ported to England but in bottles, as verde and others, for the length of the voyage makes them subject to pricking and to lose colour, by reason of their delicacy. France, participating of the climes of all the countries about her, affords wines of quality ac- cordingly, as towards the Alps and Italy she hath a luscious rich wine called Frontiniac. In the ii8 FAMILIAR LETTERS country of Provence toward the Pyrenees in Lan- guedoCj there are wines congustable with those of Spain ; one of the prime sort of white wines is that of Beaume, and of clarets that of Orleans, though it be interdicted to wine the King's cellar with it, in regard of the corrosiveness it carries with it. As in France, so in all other wine coun- tries, the white is called the female, and the claret or red wine is called the male, because commonly it hath more sulphur, body and heat in it. The wines that our merchants bring over grow upon the river of Gironde near Bordeaux in Gascony, which is the greatest mart for wines in all France, the Scot, because he hath always been a useful con- federate to France against England, hath (among other privileges) right of pre-emption of first choice of wines in Bordeaux ; he is also permitted to carry his ordnance to the very walls of the town, whereas the English are forced to leave them at Blay a good way distant down the river. There is a hard green wine that grows about Rochelle and the islands thereabouts, which the cunning Hollander sometimes used to fetch, and he hath a trick to put a bagof herbs or some other infusions into it (as he doth brimstone in Rhenish) to give it a whiter tincture and more sweetness ; then they re-embark it for England, where it passeth for good bachrag, and this is called stooming of wines. In Normandy there is little or no wine at all grows, therefore the common drink of that country is cider, especially in Low Normandy. There are OF JAMES HOWELL 119 also many beer-houses in Paris and elsewhere, but though their barley and water be better than ours or that of Germany, and though they have Eng- lish and Dutch brewers among them, yet they can- not make beer in that perfection. The prime wines of Germany grow about the Rhine, especially in the Psalts or Lower Palatinate about Bachrag, which hath its etymology from Bachiara, for in ancient times there was an altar erected there to the honour of Bacchus, in regard of the richness of the wines. Here and all France over it is held a great part of incivility for maid- ens to drink wine until they are married, as it is in Spain for them to wear high shoes or to paint till then. The German mothers, to make their sons fall into hatred of wine, do use when they are little to put some owls' eggs into a cup of Rhenish and sometimes a little living eel, which, twingling in the wine while the child is drinking, so scares him, that many come to abhor and have an anti- pathy to wine all their lives after. From Bachrag the first stocks of vines which grow now in the Grand Canary Island were brought, which, with the heat of the sun and the soil, is grown now to that height of perfection that the wines which they afford are accounted the richest, the most firm, and the best bodied and lastingest wines, and the most defecated from all earthly grossness of any other whatsoever ; it hath little or no sulphur at all in it, and leaves less dregs behind though one drink it to excess. French wines may be said but I20 FAMILIAR LETTERS to pickle meat in the stomach, but this is the wine that digests, and doth not only breed good blood, but it nutrifieth also, being a glutinous, substantial liquor: of this wine, if of any other, may be veri- fied that merry induction, that good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humours, good humours cause good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven ; ergOy good wine carrieth a man to heaven. If this be true, surely more English go to heaven this way than any other, for I think there is more canary brought into England than to all the world besides ; I think also there is a hun- dred times more drunk under the name of canary wine than there is brought in, for sherries and malagas well mingled pass for canaries in most taverns more often than canary itself, else I do not see how it were possible for the vintner to save by it or to live by his calling unless he were per- mitted sometimes to be a brewer. When sacks and canaries were brought in first among us they were used to be drunk in aqua-vitae measures, and it was held fit only for those to drink of them who used to carry their legs in their hands, their eyes upon their noses, and an almanac in their bones ; but now they go down every one*s throat, both young and old, like milk. The countries that are freest from excess of drinking are Spain and Italy. If a woman can prove her husband to have been twice drunk, by the ancient laws of Spain she may plead for a di- OF JAMES HOWELL 121 vorce from him. Nor indeed can the Spaniard, being hot brained, bear much drink, yet I have heard that Gondamar was once too hard for the King of Denmark when he was here in England. But the Spanish soldiers that have been in the wars of Flanders will take their cups freely and the Italians also. When I lived on the other side of the Alps, a gentleman told me a merry tale of a Ligurian soldier who had got drunk in Genoa, and Prince Doria going a-horseback to walk the round one night, the soldier took his horse by the bridle and asked what the price of him was, for he wanted a horse. The Prince, seeing in what hu- mour he was, caused him to be taken into a house and put to sleep. In the morning he sent for him and asked him what he would give for his horse. " Sir," said the recovered soldier, " the merchant that would have bought him yesternight of your highness went away betimes in the morning." The boonest companions for drinking are the Greeks and Germans, but the Greek is the merrier of the two, for he will sing and dance and kiss his next companion, but the other will drink as deep as he. If the Greek will drink as many glasses as there be letters in his mistress's name, the other will drink the number of his years, and though he be not apt to break out into singing, being not of so airy a constitution, yet he will drink often musically a health to every one of these six notes, Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, which, with this reason, are all comprehended in this hexameter : 122 FAMILIAR LETTERS UT RElevet MIserum FAtum SOLitosque LAbores. The fewest draughts he drinks are three, the first to quench the thirst past, the second to quench the present thirst, the third to prevent the future. I heard of a company of Low Dutch- men that had drunk so deep that, beginning to stagger and their heads turning round, they thought verily they were at sea, and that the upper chamber where they were was a ship, inso- much that, it being foul windy weather, they fell to throwing the stools and other things out of the window, to lighten the vessel, for fear of suffering shipwreck. Thus have I sent your Lordship a dry dis- course upon a fluent subject, yet I hope your lordship will please to take all in good part, be- cause it proceeds from your most humble and ready servitor, J. H. Westminster, 17 October 1634. LV T:o the R. H. the E. R. My Lord, YOUR desires have been always to me as commands, and your commands as binding as Acts of Parliament. Nor do I take pleasure to employ head or hand in anything more than in the exact performance of them. Therefore, if in this crabbed, difficult task you have been pleased OF JAMES HOWELL 123 to impose upon me about languages I come short of your Lordship's expectation, I hope my obedi- ence will apologise for my disability. But whereas your Lordship desires to know what were the original mother tongues of the countries of Eu- rope, and how these modern speeches that are now in use were first introduced, I may answer hereunto that it is almost as easy a thing to dis- cover the source of the Nile as to find out the original of some languages, yet I will attempt it as well as I can, and I will take my first rise in these islands of Great Britain and Ireland : for to be curious and eagle-eyed abroad, and to be blind and ignorant at home (as many of our travellers are nowadays), is a curiosity that carrieth with it more of affectation than anything else. Touching the isle of Albion or Great Britain, the Cambrian or Cymrican tongue, commonly called Welsh (and Italian also is so called by the Dutch), is without controversy the prime mater- nal tongue of this island, and co-natural with it, nor could any of the four conquests that have been made of it by Roman, Saxon, Dane, or Nor- man ever extinguish her, but she remains still pure and incorrupt, of which language there is as exact and methodical a grammar, with as regular precepts, rules and institutions, both for prose and verse, compiled by Dr David Rice, as I have read in any tongue whatsoever. Some of the authenticest annalists report that the old Gauls (now the French) and the Britons understood one i!24 FAMILIAR LETTERS another, for they came thence very frequently to be instructed here by the British Druids, who were the philosophers and divines of those times, and this was long before the Latin tongue came on this side the Alps, or books written, and there is no meaner man than Caesar himself records this. This is one of the fourteen vernacular and in- dependent tongues of Europe, and she hath divers dialects. The first is the Cornish, the second the Armoricans', or the inhabitants of Brittany in France, whither a colony was sent over hence in the time of the Romans. There was also another dialect of the British language among the Picts, who kept in the north parts in Northumberland, Westmorland, Cumberland, and some parts be- yond the Tweed, until the whole nation of the Scot poured upon them with such multitudes that they utterly extinguished both them and their language. There are some who have been curious in the comparison of tongues, who believe that the Irish is but a dialect of the ancient British, and the learnedest of that nation, in a private dis- course I happened to have with him, seemed to incline to this opinion ; but this I can assure your Lordship of, that at my being in that country I observed, by a private collection which I made, that a great multitude of their radical words are the same with the Welsh, both for sense and sound. The tone also of both the nations is consonant, for when I first walked up and down OF JAMES HOWELL 125 Dublin markets, methought verily I was in Wales, when I listened unto their speech ; but I found that the Irish tone is a little more quer- ulous and whining than the British, which, I con- jectured with myself, proceeded from their often being subjugated by the English. But, my lord, you would think it strange that divers pure Welsh words should be found in the new-found world in the West Indies, yet it is verified by some navigators, as grando (hark), nef (heaven), lluynog (a fox), penguin (a bird with a white hea4), with sundry others, which are pure British ; nay, 1 have read a Welsh epitaph which was found there upon one Madoc, a British prince, who, some years before the Norman Conquest, not agreeing with his brother, then Prince of South Wales, went to try his fortunes at sea, em- barking himself at Milford Haven, and so carried on those coasts. This if well proved might well entitle our crown to America, if first discovery may claim a right to any country. The Romans, though they continued here con- stantly above 300 years, yet could they not do as they did in France, Spain and other provinces, plant their language as a mark of conquest, but the Saxons did, coming in far greater numbers under Hengist from Holstein land, in the lower circuit of Saxony, which people resemble the English more than any other men upon earth, so that it is more than probable that they came first from thence ; besides, there is a town there called 126 FAMILIAR LETTERS Lunden, and another place named Angles, whence it may be presumed that they took their new denomination here. Now the English, though, as Saxons (by which name the Welsh and Irish call them to this day) they and their language are ancient, yet in reference to this island they are the modernest nation in Europe, both for habitation, speech and denomination ; which makes me smile at Mr Fox's error in the very front of his epistle before the " Book of Martyrs," where he calls Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, the son of Helen, an Englishwoman, whereas she was purely British, and that there was no such nation upon earth called English at that time, nor above lOO years after, till Hengist invaded this island, and settling himself in it, the Saxons who came with him took the appellation of Englishmen. Now the English speech, though it be rich, copious and significant, and that there be divers dictionaries of it, yet under favour, I cannot call it a regular language, in regard, though often attempted by some choice wits, there could never any grammar or exact syntaxes be made of it, yet hath she divers sub-dialects, as the western and northern English, but her chiefest is the Scottish, which took footing beyond Tweed about the last conquest ; but the ancient language of Scotland is Irish, which the mountaineers and divers of the plain retain to this day. Thus, my lord, according to my small model of observation, have I endeavoured to satisfy you in part. I shall in OF JAMES HOWELL 127 my next go on, for in the pursuance of any command from your Lordship my mind is like a stone thrown into deep water, which never rests till it goes to the bottom, so for this time and always, I rest, my lord, your most humble and ready servitor, J. H. Westminster, 9 August 1630. LVI To the Right Honourable the Earl R. My Lord, IN my last I fulfilled your Lordship's com- mands, as far as my reading and knowledge could extend, to inform you what were the radical primitive languages of those dominions that belong to the Crown of Great Britain, and how the English, which is now predominant, entered in first. I will now hoist sail for the Netherlands, whose language is the same dialect with the English, and was so from the beginning, being both of them derived from the High Dutch. The Danish also is but a branch of the same tree, no more is the Swedish, and the speech of them of Norway and Iceland. Now the High Dutch or Teutonic tongue is one of the prime and most spacious maternal languages of Europe, for besides the vast extent of Germany itself with the coun- tries and kingdoms before mentioned, whereof England and Scotland are two, it was the language 128 FAMILIAR LETTERS of the Goths and Vandals, and continueth yet of the greatest part of Poland and Hungary, who have a dialect of hers for their vulgar tongue, yet though so many dialects and sub-dialects be derived from her, she remains a strong sinewy language pure and incorrupt in her first centre towards the heart of Germany. Some of her writers would make the world believe that she was the language spoken in Paradise, for they produce many words and proper names in the five books of Moses which fetch their etymology from her, as also in Persia to this day divers radical words are the same with her, as fader, moeder, broder, and star. And a German gentleman, speaking hereof one day to an Italian, that she was the language of Paradise, " Sure,'* said the Italian (alluding to her roughness), "then it was the tongue that God Almighty chid Adam in." " It may be so," replied the German, " but the devil had tempted Eve in Italian before." A full- mouthed language she is, and pronounced with that strength as if one had bones in his tongue instead of nerves. Those countries that border upon Germany, as Bohemia, Silesia, Poland and those vast countries north-eastward, as Russia and Muscovy, speak the Slavonic language. And it is incredible what I have heard some travellers report of the vast extent of that language, for beside Slavonia itself, which properly is Dalmatia and Liburnia, it is the vulgar speech of the Macedonians, Epirots, OF JAMES HOWELL 129 Bosnians, Servians, Bulgarians, Moldavians, Rus- sians and Podolians, nay it spreads itself over all the eastern parts of Europe, Hungary and Wala- chia excepted, as far as Constantinople, and is frequently spoken in the seraglio among the Janizaries ; nor doth she rest there, but crossing the Hellespont, divers nations in Asia have her for their popular tongue, as the Circassians, Mon- grelians and Gazurites. Southward, neither in Europe nor Asia doth she extend herself farther than the north parallel of forty degrees. But those nations who celebrate divine service after the Greek ceremony, and profess obedience to the Patriarch of Constantinople, as the Russ, the Muscovite, the Moldavian, Russian, Bosnian, Servian and Bulgarian, with divers other eastern and north-east people that speak Slavonic, have her in a different character from the Dalmatian, Croatian, Istrian, Polonian, Bohemian, Silesian and other nations towards the west. These last have the Illyrian character, and the invention of it is attributed to St Jerome; the other is of CyriFs devising, and is called the Servian character. Now, although there be above threescore several nations that have this vast extended language for their vulgar speech, yet the pure primitive Slavonic dialect is spoken only in Dalmatia, Croa- tia, Liburnia and the countries adjacent, where the ancient Slavonians yet dwell ; and they must needs be very ancient, for there is in a church in Prague an old charter yet extant, given them by I30 FAMILIAR LETTERS Alexander the Great, which I thought not amiss to insert here. "We, Alexander the Great, son of King Philip, founder of the Grecian Empire, con- queror of the Persians, Medes, etc., and of the whole world from east to west, from north to south, son of Great Jupiter by, etc., so called. To you, the noble stock of Slavonians, and to your language, because you have been unto us a help, true in faith, and valiant in war, we confirm all that tract of earth from the north to the south of Italy, from us and our successors, to you and your posterity for ever. And if any other nation be found there, let them be your slaves. Dated at Alexandria the 12 of the goddess Minerva, wit- ness Ethra and the eleven princes whom we ap- point our successors." With this rare and one of the ancientest records in Europe I will put a pe- riod to this second account I send your Lordship touching languages. My next shall be of Greece, Italy, France and Spain, and so I shall shake hands with Europe, till when, I humbly kiss your hands, and rest, my Lord, your most obliged servitor, J. H. Westminster, 1 August 1630. OF JAMES HOWELL 131 LVII To the Right Hon, E. R. My Lord, HAVING in my last rambled through High and Low Germany, Bohemia, Denmark, Poland, Russia, and those vast north-east regions, and given your Lordship a touch of their lan- guages (for it was no treatise I intended at first, but a cursory, short, literal account), I will now pass to Greece, and speak something of that large and learned language, for it is she indeed upon whom the beams of all scientific knowledge did first shine in Europe, which she afterwards dif- fused through all the western world. The Greek tongue was first peculiar to Hellas alone, but in tract of time the kingdom of Mace- don and Epirus had her; then she arrived on the isles of the iEgean Sea, which are interjacent, and divide Asia and Europe that way : then she got into the fifty-three isles of the Cyclades that lie betwixt Negropont and Candia, and so got up the Hellespont to Constantinople. She then crossed over to Anatolia, where, though she prevailed by introducing multitudes of colonies, yet she came not to be the sole vulgar speech anywhere there as far as to extinguish the former languages. Now Anatolia is the most populous part of the whole earth, for Strabo speaks of sixteen several nations 132 FAMILIAR LETTERS that slept in her bosom, and it is thought the two and twenty languages which Mithridates, the great polyglot King of Pontus, did speak, were all within the circumference of Anatolia in regard his do- minions extended but a little farther. She glided then along the maritime coasts of Thrace, and passing Byzantium got into the outlets of Danube, and beyond her also to Taurica, yea, beyond that to the river Phasis, and thence compassing to Trebizond she took footing on all the circumfer- ence of the Euxine Sea. This was her course from east to north, whence we will return to Candia, Cyprus and Sicily ; thence crossing the Phare of Messina, she got all along the maritime coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea to Calabria ; she rested herself also a great while in Apulia. There was a popu- lous colony of Greeks also in Marseilles in France, and along the sea-coasts of Savoy. In Africa like- wise Cyrene, Alexandria and Egypt, with divers others, were peopled with Greeks ; and three causes may be alleged why the Greek tongue did so ex- pand herself. First, it may be imputed to the conquests of Alexander the Great, and the cap- tains he left behind him for successors. Then the love the people had to the sciences, speculative learning and civility, whereof the Greeks accounted themselves to be the grand masters, accounting all other nations barbarians besides themselves. Thirdly, the natural inclination and dexterity the Greeks had to commerce, whereunto they em- ployed themselves more than any other nation, OF JAMES HOWELL 133 except the Phoenician and Armenian, which may- be a reason why in all places most commonly they colonised the maritime parts, for I do not find they did penetrate far into the bowels of any coun- try, but lived on the seaside in obvious mercan- tile places and accessible ports. Now many ages since the Greek tongue is not only impaired, and pitifully degenerated in her purity and eloquence, but extremely decayed in her amplitude and vulgarness. For first, there is no trace at all left her in France or Italy, the Slavonic tongue hath abolished her in Epirus and Macedon, the Turkish hath ousted her from most parts of Anatolia, and the Arabian hath extin- guished her in Syria, Palestine, Egypt and sundry other places. Now touching her degeneration from her primitive suavity and elegance, it is not alto- gether so much as the deviation and declension of the Italian from the Latin, yet it is so far that I could set foot on no place, nor hear of any people where either the Attic, Doric, iEolic or Bucolic ancient Greek is vulgarly spoken ; only in some places near Heraclea in Anatolia and Pelopon- nesus (now called the Morea) they speak of some towns called the Lacones which retain yet and vulgarly speak the old Greek, but incongruously ; yet though they cannot themselves speak accord- ing to rules, they understand those that do. Nor is this corruption happened to the Greek language as it useth to happen to others, either by the law of the conqueror or inundation of strangers, but it 134 FAMILIAR LETTERS has insensibly crept in by their own supine negli- gence and fantasticnesSj especially by that com- mon fatality and changes which attend time and all other sublunary things; nor is this ancient sci- entifical language decayed only, but the nation of the Greeks itself is as it were mouldered away and brought in a manner to the same condition and to as contemptible a pass as the Jew is; insomuch that there cannot be two more pregnant instances of the lubricity and unstableness of mankind as the decay of these two ancient nations; the one the select people of God, the other the most famous that ever was for arts, arms, civility and govern- ment; so that in statu quo nunc they who termed all the world barbarians in comparison of them- selves in former times, may be now termed (more than any other) barbarians themselves, as having quite lost not only all inclination and aspirings to knowledge and virtue, but likewise all courage and bravery of mind to recover their ancient freedom and honour. Thus have you, my Lord, as much of the Greek tongue as I could comprehend within the bounds of a letter, a tongue that both for knowledge, for commerce and for copiousness was the principalest that ever was. In my next I will return nearer home and give your Lordship account of the Latin tongue, and of her three daughters the French, Italian and Spanish ; in the interim you find that I am still, my Lord, your most obedient servitor, Westminster, 25 July 1630. J. H. OF JAMES HOWELL 135 LVIII To the Right Honourable £. R. My Lord, MY last was a pursuit of my endeavour to com- ply with your Lordship's desires touching languages ; and I spent more oil and labour than ordinary in displaying the Greek tongue, because we are more beholden to her for all philosophical and theoric knowledge, as also for rules of com- merce and commutative justice than unto any other. I will now proceed to the Latin tongue, which had her source in Italy, in Latium, called now Cam- pagna di Roma, and received her growth with the monstrous increase of the city and empire. Touch- ing the one, she came from poor mud walls at Mount Palatine, which were scarce a mile about at first, to be afterwards fifty miles' compass (as she was in the reign of Aurelianus), and her territories, which were hardly a day's journey's extent, came by favourable successes and fortune of war to be above three thousand in length, from the banks of Rhine, or rather from the shores of this island to Euphrates, and sometimes to the river Tigris. With this vast expansion of Roman territories the tongue also did spread ; yet I do not find by those researches I have made into antiquity that she was vulgarly spoken by any nation or in any entire country but Italy itself For notwithstanding that 136 FAMILIAR LETTERS it was the practice of the Roman with the lance to usher in his laws and language as marks of con- quest, yet I believe his tongue never took such firm impression anywhere as to become the vulgar epidemic speech of any people else, or that she was able to null and extinguish the native languages she found in those places where she planted her standard ; nor can there be a more pregnant in- stance thereof than this island, for notwithstanding that she remained a Roman province four hundred years together, yet the Latin tongue could never have the vogue here so far as to abolish the British or Cambrian tongue. It is true that in France and Spain she made deeper impressions ; the reason may be in regard there were far more Roman colonies planted there, for whereas there were but four in this isle, there were nine-and-twenty in France and fifty-seven in Spain, and the greatest entertainment the Latin tongue found out of Italy herself was in these two king- doms ; yet I am of opinion that the pure, congruous, grammatical Latin was never spoken in either of them as a vulgar, vernacular language, common amongst women and children ; no, nor in all Italy itself except Latium. In Africa, though there were sixty Roman colonies dispersed upon that continent, yet the Latin tongue made not such deep impres- sions there, nor in Asia either; nor is it to be thought that in those colonies themselves did the common soldier speak in that congruity as the flamins, the judges, the magistrates, and chief commanders did. OF JAMES HOWELL 137 When the Romans sent legions and planted colo- nies abroad, it was for divers political considerations, partly to secure their new acquests, partly to abate the superfluous numbers and redundancy of Rome; then by this way they found means to employ and reward men of worth, and to heighten their minds, for the Roman spirit did rise up, and take growth with his good successes, conquests, commands and employments. But the reason that the Latin tongue found not such entertainment in the Oriental parts was that the Greek had forestalled her, which was of more esteem among them, because of the learning that was couched in her, and that she was more useful for negotiation and traffic, whereunto the Greeks were more addicted than any people ; there- fore, though the Romans had an ambition to make those foreign nations that were under their yoke to speak, as well as to do what pleased them, and that all orders, edicts, letters and the laws them- selves, civil as well as martial, were published and executed in Latin ; yet I believe this Latin was spoken no otherwise among those nations than the Spanish or Castilian tongue is now in the Nether- lands, in Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, the two Indies, and other provincial countries which are under that king. Nor did the pure Latin tongue continue long at a stand of perfection in Rome and Latium itself among all sorts of people, but she received changes and corruption; neither do I believe that she was born a perfect language at first, but she received 138 FAMILIAR LETTERS nutriment and degrees of perfection with time, which matures, refines and finisheth all things. The verses of the Salii composed by Numa Pompilius were scarcely intelligible by the flamins and judges themselves in the wane of the Roman commonwealth, nor the laws of the Decemviri. And if that Latin wherein were couched the capit- ulations of peace betwixt Rome and Carthage a little after the expulsion of the kings, which are yet extant upon a pillar in Rome, were com- pared to that which was spoken in Caesar's reign, 140 years after, at which time the Latin tongue was mounted to the meridian of her perfection, she would be found as differing as Spanish now diifereth from the Latin. After Csesar and Cicero's time the Latin tongue continued in Rome and Italy in her purity four hundred years together, until the Goths rushed into Italy first under Alaric, then the Huns under Attila, then the Vandals under Gensericus, and the Heruli under Odoacer,who was proclaimed King of Italy. But the Goths a little after, under Theodoric, thrust out the Heruli, whose Theodo- ric was by Zeno, the Emperor, formally invested King of Italy, who with his successor reigned there peaceably sixty years and upwards ; so that in all probability the Goths cohabiting so long among the Italians must adulterate their language as well as their women. The last barbarous people that invaded Italy, about the year 570, were the Lombards, who, having taken firm rooting in the very bowels of OF JAMES HOWELL 139 the country above 200 years without interruption, during the reign of twenty kings, must of neces- sity alter and deprave the general speech of the natural inhabitants, and among others one argu- ment may be that the best and midland part of Italy changed its name and took its appellation from these last invaders, calling itself Lombardy, which name it retains to this day. Yet before the intrusions of these wandering and warlike people into Italy, there may be a precedent cause of some corruption that might creep into the Latin tongue in point of vulgarity : first, the incredible confluence of foreigners that came daily far and near, from the colonised provinces to Rome ; then the infinite number of slaves, which surpassed the number of free citizens, might much impair the purity of the Latin tongue ; and lastly, those inconstancies and humour of novelty, which is naturally inherent in man, who, according to those frail elementary prin- ciples and ingredients whereof he is composed, is subject to insensible alterations and apt to receive impressions of any change. Thus, my Lord, as succinctly as I could digest it into the narrow bounds of an epistle, have I sent your Lordship this small survey of the Latin, or first Roman tongue. In my next I shall fall aboard of her three daughters, viz., the Italian, the Spanish and the French, with a diligent investiga- tion what might be the original nativ.e languages of those countries from the beginning before the Latin gave them the law; in the interim I crave I40 FAMILIAR LETTERS a candid Interpretation of what is past, and of my studiousness in executing your Lordship's injunc- tions. — So I am, my Lord, your most humble and obedient servant, J. H. Westminster, July 1 6, 1630. LIX T(9 the Right Honourable the E. R. My Lord, MY last was a discourse of the Latin or prim- itive Roman tongue, which may be said to be expired in the market, though living yet in the schools ; I mean she may be said to be defunct in point of vulgarity any time these 1000 years past. Out of her urine have sprung up the Italian, the Spanish and the French, whereof I am now to treat, but I think it not improper to make a re- search first what the radical prime mother tongues of these countries were before the Roman eagle planted her talons upon them. Concerning Italy, doubtless there were divers before the Latin did spread all over that country. The Calabrian and Apulian spoke Greek, whereof some relics are to be found to this day, but it was an adventitious, no mother language to them. It is confessed that Latium itself and all the terri- tories about Rome had the Latin for its maternal and common first vernacular tongue, but Tuscany and Liguria had others quite discrepant, viz., the OF JAMES HOWELL 141 Etruscan and Mesapian, whereof though there be some records yet extant, yet there are none alive that can understand them. The Oscan, the Sabine and Tusculan, are thought to be but dialects to these. Now the Latin tongue, with the coincidence of the Goths' language and other northern people, who like waves tumbled off one another, did more in Italy than anywhere else, for she utterly abolished (upon that part of the continent) all other maternal tongues as ancient as herself, and thereby their eldest daughter, the Italian, came to be the vulgar universal tongue to the whole coun- try ; yet the Latin tongue had not the sole hand in doing this, but the Goths and other septen- trional nations who rushed into the Roman diction had a share in it as I said before, and pegged in some words which have been ever since irremove- able, not only in the Itahan, but also in her two younger sisters, the Spanish and the French, who felt also the fury of those people. Now the Italian is the smoothest and softest running language that is, for there is not a word except some few monosyllables, conjunctions and prepositions, that ends with a consonant in the whole language, nor is there any vulgar speech which hath more sub- dialects in so small a tract of ground, for Italy itself affords above eight. There you have the Roman, the Tuscan, the Venetian, the Milanese, the Neapolitan, the Calabreze, the Genoese, the Piedmontese ; you have the Corsican, Sicilian, 142 FAMILIAR LETTERS with divers other neighbouring islands ; and as the cause why from the beginning there were so many differing dialects in the Greek tongue was because it was sliced into so many islands, so the reason why there be so many sub-dialects in the Italian is the diversity of governments that the country is squandered into, there being in Italy at this day two kingdoms, viz., those of Naples and Calabria ; three republics, viz., Venice, Genoa and Lucca, and divers other absolute princes. Concerning the original language of Spain, it was without any controversy the Basque or Can- tabrian, which tongue and territory neither Ro- man, Goth (whence this king hath his pedigree, with divers of the nobles) nor Moor could ever conquer, though they had overrun and taken firm footing in all the rest for many ages ; therefore as the remnant of the old Britons here, so are the Biscayners accounted the ancientest and unques- tionablest gentry of Spain, insomuch that when any of them is to be dubbed knight, there is no need of any scrutiny to be made whether he be clear of the blood of the Moriscos, who had mingled and incorporated with the rest of the Spaniards about 700 years ; and as the Arcadians and Atticans in Greece for their immemorial anti- quity are said to vaunt of themselves, that the one are UpooreX'qvoi, before the moon, the other avToxOove^, issued of the earth itself, so the Bis- cayner hath such like rodomontades. The Spanish or Castilian language hath but few OF JAMES HOWELL 143 sub-dialects ; the Portuguese is most consider- able. Touching the Catalan and Valencian ; they are ratherdialectsof the French, Gascon or Aquitanian. The purest dialect of the Castilian tongue is held to be in the town of Toledo, which above other cities of Spain hath this privilege to be arbiters in the decision of any controversy that may arise touching the interpretation of any Castilian word. It is an infallible rule, to find out the mother and ancientest tongue of any country, to go among those who inhabit the barrenest and most mountainous places, which are posts of security and fastness, whereof divers instances could be produced ; but let the Biscayner in Spain, the Welsh in Great Britain, and the mountaineers in Epirus serve the turn, who yet retain their ancient unmixed mother tongues, being extinguished in all the country be- sides. Touching France, it is not only doubtful, but left yet undecided what the true genuine Gallic tongue was ; some would have it to be the German, some the Greek, some the old British or Welsh, and the last opinion carrieth away with it the most judicious antiquaries. Now all Gallia is not meant by it, but the country of the Celtse that inhabit the middle part of France, who are the true Gauls. Caesar and Tacitus tell us that these Celtae and the old Britons (whereof I gave a touch in my first letter) did mutually understand one another, and some do hold that this island was tied to France, as Sicily was to Calabria and Denmark to Germany, 144 FAMILIAR LETTERS by an isthmus or neck of land betwixt Dover and Boulogne, for if one do well observe the rocks of the one and the cliffs of the other he will judge them to be one homogeneous piece, and that they were cut and shivered asunder by some act of vio- lence. The French or Gallic tongue hath divers dia- lects : the Picard, that of Jersey and Guernsey (ap- panages once to the Duchy of Normandy) ; the Provencal, the Gascon or speech of Languedoc, which Scaliger would etymologise from Langue- doc, whereas it comes rather from Langue de Got, for the Saracens and Goths, who, by their incur- sions and long stay in Aquitaine corrupted the language of that part of Gallia. Touching the Bre- ton and they of Beam, the one is a dialect of the Welsh, the other of the Basque. The Wallon, who is under the King of Spain, and the Liegois, is also a dialect of the French, which in their own country they call Roman. The Spaniard also terms his Castilian Roman, whence it may be inferred that the first rise and derivation of the Spanish and French were from the Roman tongue, not from the Latin, which makes me think that the language of Rome might be degenerated and be- come a dialect to our own mother tongue (the Latin) before she brought her language to France and Spain. There is, besides these sub-dialects of the Italian, Spanish and French, another speech that hath a great stroke in Greece and Turkey called Frank, OF JAMES HOWELL 145 which may be said to be composed of all the three, and is at this day the greatest language of commerce and negotiation in the Levant. Thus have I given your Lordship the best ac- count I could of the sister-dialects of the Italian, Spanish and French. In my next I shall cross the Mediterranean to Africa, and the Hellespont to Asia, where I shall observe the generallest lan- guages of those vast continents where such num- berless swarms and differing sorts of nations do crawl up and down this earthly globe, therefore it cannot be expected that I should be so punctual there as in Europe. — So I am still, my Lord, your obedient servitor, J. H. Westminster, 7 July 1630. LX To the Right Hon, the £. R. My Lord, HAVING in my former letters made a flying progress through the European world, and taken a view of the several languages, dialects and sub-dialects whereby people converse one with another, and being now wind-bound for Africa, I held it not altogether supervacaneous to take a review of them, and inform your Lordship what languages are original independent mother tongues of Christendom, and what are dialects, derivations or degenerations from their originals. 146 FAMILIAR LETTERS The mother tongues of Europe are thirteen, though Scaliger would have but eleven. There is the Greek, i, the Latin, 2, the Dutch, 3, the Slavonian, 4, the Welsh or Cambrian, 5, the Basque or Cantabrian, 6, the Irish, 7, the Alban- ian in the mountains of Epirus, 8, the Tartarian, 9, the old Illyrian, 10, remaining yet in Liburnia, the Jazygian, 11, on the north of Hungary, the Cauchian, 12, in East Friezeland, the Finnic, 13, which I put last with good reason, because they are the only heathens of Europe, all which were known to be in Europe in the time of the Roman Empire. There is a learned antiquary that makes the Arabic to be one of the mother tongues of Europe, because it was spoken in some of the mountains of South Spain. It is true it was spoken for divers hundred years all Spain over after the conquest of the Moors, but yet it could not be called a mother tongue, but an adventitious tongue in reference to that part of Europe. And now that I am to pass to Afric, which is far bigger than Europe, and to Asia, which is far bigger than Afric, and to America, which is thought to be as big as all the three, if Europe herself hath so many mother languages quite dis- crepant one from the other, besides secondary tongues and dialects which exceed the number of their mothers, what shall we think of the other three Huge continents in point of differing lan- guages ? Your Lordship knows that there be divers meridians and climes in the heavens whence OF JAMES HOWELL 147 influxes of differing qualities fall upon the inhab- itants of the earth, and as they make men to differ in the ideas and conceptions of the mind, so in the motion of the tongue, in the tune and tones of the voice, they come to differ one from the other. Now, all languages at first were imperfect confused sounds, then came they to be syllables, then words, then speeches and sentences, which by practice, by tradition and a kind of natural instinct from parents to children grew to be fixed. Now to attempt a survey of all the languages in the other three parts of the habitable earth were rather a madness than a presumption, it being a thing of impossibility, and not only above the capacity, but beyond the search of the activest and knowingest man upon earth. Let it there- fore suffice while I behold these nations that read and write from right to left, from the liver to the heart, I mean the Africans and Asians, that I take a short view of the Arabic in the one, and the Hebrew or Syriac in the other, for touching the Turkish language it is but a dialect of the Tartarian, though it have received a late mixture of the Armenian, the Persian and Greek tongues, but especially of the Arabic, which was the mo- ther tongue of their prophet, and is now the sole language of their Alcoran, it being strictly inhib- ited and held to be a prophaneness to translate it to any other, which they say preserves them from the encroachment of schisms. Now the Arabic is a tongue of vast expansion. 148 FAMILIAR LETTERS for besides the three Arabias it is become the vulgar speech of Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt ; from whence she stretches herself to the Straits of Gibraltar, through all that vast tract of earth which lieth betwixt the mountain Atlas and the Mediterranean Sea, which is now called Barbary, where Christianity and the Latin tongue, with divers famous bishops, once flourished. She is spoken likewise in all the northern parts of the Turkish Empire, as also in Petty Tartary ; and she above all others hath reason to learn Arabic, for she is in hope one day to have the Crescent and the whole Ottoman Empire, it being entailed upon her in case the present race should fail, which is now in more danger than ever ; in fine, wherever the Mahommedan religion is professed, the Arabic is either spoken or taught. My last view shall be of the first language of the earth, the ancient language of Paradise, the language wherein God Almighty Himself pleased to pronounce and publish the tables of the law, the language that had a benediction promised her, because she would not consent to the building of the Babylonish tower. Yet this holy tongue hath had also her eclipses, and is now degenerated to many dialects, nor is she spoken purely by any nation upon the earth, a fate also which is befallen the Greek and Latin. The most spacious dialect of the Hebrew is the Syriac, which had her begin- ning in the time of the captivity of the Jews at Babylon, while they cohabited and were mingled OF JAMES HOWELL 149 with the Chaldeans, in which tract of seventy years' time the vulgar sort of Jews, neglecting their own maternal tongue (the Hebrew), began to speak the Chaldee, but not having the right accent of it, and fashioning that newly learned language to their own innovation of points, affixes and conjugations, out of that intermixture of He- brew and Chaldee resulted a third language called to this day the Syriac, which also after the time of our Saviour began to be more adulterated by admission of Greek, Roman and Arabic. In this language is the Talmud and Targum couched, and all their rabbins, as Rabbi Jonathan, and Rabbi Onkelos, with others, have written in it, insomuch that, as I said before, the ancient Hebrew had the same fortune that the Greek and Latin tongues had to fall from being naturally spoken anywhere, to lose their general communicableness and vul- garity, and to become only school and book languages. Thus we see, that as all other sublunary things are subject to corruption and decay, as the potent- est monarchies, the proudest republics, the opu- lentest cities have their growth, declinings and periods ; as all other elementary bodies likewise, by reason of the frailty of their principles, come by insensible degrees to alter and perish, and can- not continue long at a stand of perfection, so the learnedest and more eloquent languages are not free from this common fatality, but they are liable to those alterations and revolutions, to those fits I50 FAMILIAR LETTERS of inconstancy, and other destructive contingencies which are unavoidably incident to all' earthly things. Thus, my noble lord, have I eviscerated myself, and stretched all my sinews; I have put all my small knowledge, observations and reading upon the tenter to satisfy your Lordship's desires touch- ing this subject. If it afford you any contentment I have hit the white I aimed at, and hold myself abundantly rewarded for my oil and labour. — So I am, my Lord, your most humble and ever obedient servitor, J. H. Westminster, i July 1630. LXl To the Hon. Master Car, Ra. YOURS of the 7th current was brought me, whereby I find that you did put yourself to the penance of perusing some epistles that go imprinted lately in my name. I am bound to you for your pains and patience (for you write you read them all through), much more for your can- did opinion of them, being right glad that they should give entertainment to such a choice and judicious gentleman as yourself. But whereas you seem to except against something in one letter that reflects upon Sir Walter Raleigh's voyage to Guiana, because I term the gold mine he went to discover an "airy and supposititious mine," and so OF JAMES HOWELL 151 infer that it toucheth his honour, truly, sir, I will deal clearly with you in that point that I never harboured in my brain the least thought to expose to the world anything that might prejudice, much less traduce in the least degree that could be, that rare and renowned knight whose fame shall con- tend in longevity with this island itself, yea, with that great world which he historiseth so gallantly. I was a youth about the town when he undertook that expedition, and I remember most men sus- pected that mine then to be but an imaginary politic thing ; but at his return, and missing of the enterprise, these suspicions turned in most to real beliefs that it was no other. And King James in that declaration, which he commanded to be printed and published afterwards touching the circum- stances of this action (upon which my letter is grounded, and which I have still by me), terms it no less. And if we may not give faith to such public regal instruments, what shall we credit ? Be- sides there goes another printed kind of remon- strance annexed to that declaration which intimates as much. And there is a worthy captain in this town, who was co-adventurer in that expedition, who, upon the storming of St Thomas, heard young Mr Raleigh encouraging his men in these words, "Come on, my noble hearts, this is the mine we come for, and they who think there is any other are fools." Add hereunto that Sir Richard Baker in his last historical collections intimates so much. Therefore, it was far from being any opinion 152 FAMILIAR LETTERS broached by myself, or bottomed upon weak grounds ; for I was careful of nothing more, than that those letters, being to breathe open air, should relate nothing but what should be derived from good fountains. And truly, sir, touching that apo- logy of Sir Walter Raleigh's you write of, I never saw it, and I am very sorry I did not, for it had let in more light upon me of the carriage of that great action, and then you might have been as- sured that I would have done that noble knight all the right that could be. But, sir, the several arguments that you urge in your letters are of that strength, I confess, that they are able to rectify any indifferent man in this point, and induce him to believe that it was no chimera, but a real mine ; for you write of divers pieces of gold brought thence by Sir Walter himself and Captain Kemys, and of some ingots that were found in the governor's closet at St Thomas's, with divers crucibles, and other refining instruments ; yet, under favour, that might be, and the benefit not countervail the charge, for the richest mines that the King of Spain hath upon the whole con- tinent of America, which are the mines of Potosi, yield him but six in the hundred, all expenses de- frayed. You write how King James sent privately to Sir Walter, being yet in the Tower, to intreat and command him, that he would impart his whole design unto him under his hand, promising upon the word of a king to keep it secret, which being done accordingly by Sir Walter Raleigh, that very OF JAMES HOWELL 153 original paper was found in the said Spanish gover- nor's closet at St Thomas's; whereat, as you have just cause to wonder, and admire the activeness of the Spanish agents about our Court at that time, so I wonder no less at the miscarriage of some of his late Majesty's ministers, who, notwithstanding that he had passed his royal word to the contrary, yet they did help Count Gondomar to that paper, so that the reproach lieth more upon the English than the Spanish ministers in this particular. Whereas you allege that the dangerous sickness of Sir Walter being arrived near the place, and the death of (that rare spark of courage) your brother upon the first landing, with other circumstances, dis- couraged Captain Kemys from discovering the mine, but would reserve it for another time, I am content to give as much credit to this as any man can ; as also that Sir Walter, if the rest of the fleet, according to his earnest motion, had gone with him to revictual in Virginia (a country where he had reason to be welcome unto, being of his own discovery), he had a purpose to return to Guiana the spring following to pursue his first design. I am also very willing to believe that it cost Sir Walter Raleigh much more to put himself in equipage for that long intended voyage, than would have paid for his liberty, if he had gone about to purchase it for reward of money at home, though I am not ignorant that many of the co-adventurers made large contributions, and the fortunes of some of them suffer for it at this very day. But although 154 FAMILIAR LETTERS Gondomar, as my letter mentions, calls Sir Walter pirate, I, for my part, am far from thinking so, because, as you give an unanswerable reason, the plundering of St Thomas was an act done beyond the equator, where the articles of peace betwixt the two kings do not extend. Yet, under favour, though he broke not the peace, he was said to break his patent by exceeding the bounds of his commission, as the foresaid declaration relates, for King James had made strong promises to Count Gondomar, that this fleet should commit no out- rages upon the King of Spain's subjects by land, unless they began first, and I believe that was the main cause of his death, though I think if they had proceeded that way against him in a legal course of trial, he might have defended himself well enough. Whereas you allege that if that action had suc- ceeded, and afterwards been well prosecuted, it might have brought Gondomar's great Catholic master to have been begged for at the church doors by friars, as he was once brought in the lat- ter end of Queen Elizabeth's days, I believe it had much damnified him, and interrupted him in the possession of his West Indies, but not brought him under favour to so low an ebb. I have ob- served that it is an ordinary thing in your Popish countries for princes to borrow from the altar when they are reduced to any straits, for they say, "The riches of the Church are to serve as an- chors in time of a storm." Divers of our kings OF JAMES HOWELL 155 have done worse, by pawning their plate and jew- els. Whereas my letter makes mention that Sir Walter Raleigh mainly laboured for his pardon before he went but could not compass it, this is also a passage in the foresaid printed relation ; but I could have wished with all my heart he had ob- tained it, for I believe that neither the transgression of his commission, nor anything that he did beyond the Line, could have shortened the line of his life otherwise, but in all probability we might have been happy in him to this very day, having such a heroic heart as he had, and other rare helps by his great knowledge, for the preservation of health. I believe without any scruple what you write that Sir William St John made an overture unto him of procuring his pardon for ;^ 1500, but whether he could have effected it I doubt a little, when he had come to negotiate it really. But I extremely wonder how that old sentence which had lain dormant above sixteen years against Sir Walter Raleigh could have been made use of to take off his head afterwards, considering that the Lord Chancellor Verulam, as you write, told him positively (as Sir Walter was acquainting him with that proffer of Sir William St John for a pe- cuniary pardon) in these words, " Sir, the knee timber of your voyage is money ; spare your purse in this particular, for upon my life you have a sufficient pardon for all that is passed already, the King having under his broad seal made you admiral of your fleet, and given you power of the 156 FAMILIAR LETTERS martial law over your officers and soldiers." One would think that by this Royal Patent, which gave him power of life and death over the King's liege people, Sir Walter Raleigh should become rectus in curia^ and free from all old convictions. But, sir, to tell you the plain truth. Count Gon- domar at that time had a great stroke in our Court, because there was more than a mere overture of a match with Spain, which makes me apt to believe that that great wise knight, being such an anti-Spaniard, was made a sacrifice to advance the matrimonial treaty. But I must needs wonder, as you justly do, that one and the same man should be condemned for being a friend to the Spaniard (which was the ground of his first con- demnation), and afterwards lose his head for being their enemy by the same sentence. Touch- ing his return, I must confess I was utterly ignorant that those two noble earls, Thomas of Arundel and William of Pembroke, were engaged for him in this particular, nor doth the printed re- lation make any mention of them at all, therefore I must say that envy herself must pronounce that return of his, for the acquitting of his fiduci- ary pledges, to be a most noble act, and waiving that of King Alphonso's Moor, I may more properly compare it to the act of that famous Roman com- mander (Regulus, as I take it), who to keep his promise and faith, returned to his enemies where he had been prisoner, though he knew he went to an inevitable death. But well did that faithless. OF JAMES HOWELL 157 cunning knight who betrayed Sir Walter Raleigh in his intended escape, being come ashore, fall to that contemptible end, as to die a poor distracted beggar in the Isle of Lundey, having for a bag of money falsified his faith, confirmed by the tie of the Holy Sacrament, as you write, as also before the year came about to be found clipping the same coin in the King's own house at Whitehall, which he had received as a reward for his perfidi- ousness, for which being condemned to be hanged, he was driven to sell himself to his shirt to pur- chase his pardon of two knights. And now, sir, let that glorious and gallant cava- lier Sir Walter Raleigh (who lived long enough for his own honour, though not for his country, as it was said of a Roman consul) rest quietly in his grave, and his virtues live in his posterity, as I find they do strongly and very eminently in you. I have heard his enemies confess that he was one of the weightiest and wisest men that this island ever bred. Mr Nath. Carpenter, a learned and judicious author, was not in the wrong when he gave this discreet character of him : " Who hath not known or read of this prodigy of wit and for- tune. Sir Walter Raleigh, a man unfortunate in nothing else but in the greatness of his wit and ad- vancement, whose eminent worth was such, both in domestic policy, foreign expeditions and dis- coveries, in arts and literature, both practical and contemplative, that it might seem at once to con- quer both example and imitation ? " 158 FAMILIAR LETTERS Now, sir, hoping to be rectified in your judg- ment touching my opinion of that illustrious knight your father, give me leave to kiss your hands very affectionately for the respectful men- tion you please to make of my brother, once your neighbour. He suffers, good soul, as well as I, though in a differing manner. I also much value that favourable censure you give of those rambling letters of mine, which indeed are nought else than a legend of the cumbersome life and various for- tunes of a cadet ; but whereas you please to say, that the world of learned men is much beholden to me for them, and that some of them are freighted with many excellent and quaint passages, delivered in a masculine and solid style, adorned with much eloquence, and stuck with the choicest flowers picked from the Muses' garden ; whereas you also please to write that you admire my great travels, my strenuous endeavours, at all times and in all places, to accumulate knowledge, my active laying hold upon all occasions, and on every handle that might (with reputation) advantage either my wit or fortune — these high gallant strains of expres- sions, I confess, transcend my merit, and are a garment too gaudy for me to put on, yet I will lay it up among my best relics, whereof I have divers sent me of this kind. And whereas, in publishing these epistles at this time you please to say that I have done like Hezekiah when he showed his treasures to the Babylonians, that I have discovered my riches to thieves who will bind OF JAMES HOWELL 159 me fast and share my goods : to this I answer that if those innocent letters (for I know none of them but is such) fall among such thieves they will have no great prize to carry away, it will be but petty larceny. I am already, God wot, bound fast enough, having been a long time cooped up between these walls, bereft of all my means of subsistence and employment. Nor do I know wherefore I am here unless it be for my sins. For I bear as upright a heart to my King and coun- try, I am as conformable and well affected to the government of this land, especially to the High Court of Parliament, as any one whatsoever that breathes air under this meridian : I will except none. And for my religion I defy any creature betwixt heaven and earth that will say that I am not a true English Protestant. I have from time to time employed divers of my best friends to get my liberty, at leastwise leave to go abroad upon bail (for I do not expect, as you please also to believe in your letter, to be delivered hence, as St Peter was, by miracle), but nothing will yet pre- vail. To conclude, I do acknowledge in the highest way of recognition the free and noble proffer you please to make me of your endeavours to pull me out of this doleful sepulchre, wherein you say I am entombed alive. I am no less obliged to you for the opinion I find you have of my weak abil- ities, which you pleased to wish heartily may be no longer eclipsed. I am not in despair, but a day i6o FAMILIAR LETTERS will shine that may afford me opportunity to im- prove this good opinion of yours (which I value at a high rate) and let the world know how much I am, sir, your real and ready servitor, J.H. Fleet, 5 May 1645. LXII To Mr T, v., at Brussels My Dear Tom, WHO would have thought poor England had been brought to this pass ? Could it ever have entered into the imagination of man that the scheme and whole frame of so ancient and well- moulded a government should be so suddenly struck off the hinges, quite out of joint, and tumbled into such a horrid confusion ? Who would have held it possible that to fly from Babylon we should fall into such a babel ? That to avoid superstition some people should be brought to belch out such horrid profaneness as to call the temples of God the tabernacles of Satan ? the Lord's Supper a two-penny ordinary ? to make the communion table a manger and the font a trough to water their horses in ? to term the white decent robe of the presbyter the whore's smock ? the pipes, through which nothing came but holy anthems and hymns the devil's bagpipes ? the liturgy of the Church, though extracted most OF JAMES HOWELL i6i of it out of the sacred text, called by some another kind of Alcoran ; by others raw porridge ; by some a piece forged in hell ? Who would have thought to have seen in England the churches shut and the shops open upon Christmas Day ? Could any soul have imagined that this isle would have produced such monsters as to rejoice at the Turk's good successes against Christians, and wish he were in the midst of Rome? Who would have dreamt ten years since, when Archbishop Laud did ride in state through London streets accompanying my Lord of London to be sworn Lord High Treasurer of England, that the mitre should have now come to such a scorn, to such a national kind of hatred, as to put the whole island in a combustion, which makes me call to memory a saying of the Earl of Kildare in Ireland, in the reign of Henry VIII, which earl, having a deadly feud with the Bishop of Cassiles, burnt a church belonging to that diocese, and being asked, upon his examination before the Lord Deputy at the Castle of Dublin, why he had committed such a horrid sacrilege as to burn God's church, he answered, " I had never burnt the church unless I had thought the bishop had been in it." Lastly, who would have imagined that the excise would have taken footing here ? A word I remember in the last Parliament save one, so odious, that when Sir D. Carleton, then Secretary of State, did but name it in the House of Commons, he was like to be sent to the Tower, although he named it to no i62 FAMILIAR LETTERS ill sense but to show what advantage of happiness the people of England had over nations, having neither the gabells of Italy, the taillies of France, or the excise of Holland laid upon them, yet upon this he was suddenly interrupted, and called to the bar. Such a strange metamorphosis poor Eng- land is now come unto, and I am afraid our mis- eries are not come to their height, but the longest shadows stay till the evening. The freshest news that I can write unto you is that the Kentish knight of your acquaintance who I wrote in my last had an apostasy in his brain, died suddenly this week of an imposthume in his breast, as he was reading a pamphlet of his own that came from the press, wherein he showed a great mind to be nibbling with my trees ; but he only showed his teeth, for he could not bite them to any purpose. William Roe is returned from the wars, but he is grown lame in one of his arms, so he hath no mind to bear arms any more. He confesseth himself to be an egregious fool to leave his mer- cership and go to be a musketeer. It made me think upon the tale of the Gallego in Spain, who in the civil wars against Arragon, being in the field he was shot in the forehead, and being carried away to a tent, the surgeon searched his wound and found it mortal, so he advised him to send for his confessor, for he was no man for this world, in regard the brain was touched. The soldier wished him to search it again, which he did, and told him OF JAMES HOWELL 163 that he found he was hurt in the brain and could not possibly escape ; whereupon the Gallego fell into a chafe, and said he lied; for he had no brain at all, porque se tuviera sesso, nunca huiera venido a est a guerra, for if I had had any brain, I would never have come to this war. All your friends here are well, except the maimed soldier, and remember you often, especially Sir J. Brown, a good gallant gentleman, who never forgets any who deserve to have a place in his memory. Farewell, my dear Tom, and God send you better days than we have here, for I wish you as much happiness as possibly man can have. I wish your mornings may be good, your noons better, your evenings and nights best of all. I wish your sorrows may be short, your joys lasting, and all your desires end in success. Let me hear once more from you before you remove thence, and tell me how the squares go in Flanders. — So I rest, your entirely affectionate servitor, J. H. Fleet, 3 August 1644. LXIII To His Majesty y at Oxon 1 PROSTRATE this paper at Your Majesty's feet, hoping it may find way thence to your eyes, and so descend to your royal heart. The foreign Minister of State, by whose con- veyance this comes, did lately intimate unto me. 1 64 FAMILIAR LETTERS that among divers things which go abroad under my name reflecting upon the times, there are some which are not so well taken, Your Majesty being informed that they discover a spirit of in- difference and lukewarm ness in the author. This added much to the weight of my present suf- frances, and exceedingly embittered the sense of them unto me, being no other than a corrosive to one already in a hectic condition. I must confess that some of them were more moderate than others ; yet (most humbly under favour) there were none of them but displayed the heart of a constant, true, loyal subject, and as divers of those who are most zealous to Your Majesty's service told me, they had the good success to rectify mul- titudes of people in their opinion of some things ; insomuch that I am not only conscious, but most confident that none of them could tend to Your Majesty's disservice any way imaginable. Therefore I humbly beseech that Your Majesty would vouchsafe to conceive of me accordingly, and of one who by this recluse, passive condition hath his share of this hideous storm ; yet he is in assurance, rather than hopes, that though divers cross winds have blown, these times will bring in better at last. There have been divers of your royal progenitors who have had as shrewd shocks; and it is well known how the next transmarine kings have been brought to lower ebbs. At this very day he of Spain is in a far worse condition, being in the midst of two sorts of people (the OF JAMES HOWELL 165 Catalain and Portuguese), which were lately his vassals, but now have torn his seals, renounced all bonds of allegiance, and are in actual hostility against him. This great city I may say is like a chessboard, chequered, inlaid with white and black spots, though I believe the white are more in num- ber; and Your Majesty's countenance by returning to your great Council and your Court at White- hall would quickly turn them all white. That Al- mighty Majesty who useth to draw light out of darkness, and strength out of weakness, making man's extremity His opportunity, preserve and prosper Your Majesty according to the prayers early and late of Your Majesty's most loyal sub- ject, servant and martyr, Howel. Fleet, 3 September 1 644. LXIV To E. Ben/owes, Esq,, upon the Receipt of a Table of Exquisite Latin Poems I THANK you in a very high degree for that precious table of poems you pleased to send me. When I had well viewed them, I thought upon that famous table of proportion which Pto- lemy is recorded by Aristaeus to have sent Eliezar to Jerusalem, which was counted a stupendous piece of art and the wonderment of those times. What the curiosity of that table was I have not read, but I believe it consisted in extern mechan- i66 FAMILIAR LETTERS ical artifice only. The beauty of your table is of a far more noble extraction, being a pure spiritual work, so that it may be called the table of your soul, in confirmation of the opinion of that divine, though pagan philosopher, the high-winged Plato, who fancied that our souls at the first infusion were as so many tables, they were abrasae tabulae^ and that all our future knowledge was but a re- miniscence. But under favour, the rich and elab- orate poems which so loudly echo out your worth and ingenuity deserve a far more lasting monu- ment to preserve them from the injury of time than such a slender board, they deserve to be engraven in such durable dainty stuff that may be fit to hang up in the Temple of Apollo. Your *' Echo *' deserves to dwell in some marble or porphyry grotto cut about Parnassus Mount near the source of Helicon, rather than upon such a slight superficies. I much thank you for your visits, and other fair respects you show me, especially that you have enlarged my quarters among these melancholy walls by sending me a whole isle to walk in, I mean that delicate purple island I received from you, where I met with Apollo himself and all his daughters, with other excellent society. I stumble also there often upon myself, and grow better acquainted with what I have within me and with- out me, insomuch that you could not make choice of a fitter ground for a prisoner, as I am, to pass over, than of that " purple isle," that " isle of man " OF JAMES HOWELL 167 you sent me, which, as the ingenious author hath made it is a far more dainty soil than that Scarlet Island which lies near the Baltic Sea. I remain still wind-bound in this Fleet ; when the weather mends and the wind sits that I may launch forth, I will repay you your visits, and be ready to correspond with you in the reciprocation of any other offices of friendship, for I am, sir, your affectionate servitor, J. H. Fleet, 25 August 1645. LXV To my Honourable Lady the Lady A. Smith WHEREAS you were pleased lately to ask leave, you may now take authority to command me. And did I know any of the facul- ties of my mind or limbs of my body that were not willing to serve you, I would utterly renounce them ; they should be no more mine, at least, I should not like them near so well ; but I shall not be put to that, for I sensibly find that by a natural propensity they are all most ready to obey you, and to stir at the least beck of your commands as iron moves towards the loadstone. Therefore, madam, if you bid me go I will run, if you bid me run, I '11 fly (if I can) upon your errand. But I must stay till I can get my heels at liberty from among these walls, till when, I am as perfectly as i68 FAMILIAR LETTERS man can be, madam, your most obedient humble servitor, J. H. Fleet, 5 May 1645. LXVI To Master G. Stone 1 HEARTILY rejoice with the rest of your friends that you are safely returned from your travels, especially that you have made so good re- turns of the time of your travel, being, as I under- stand, come home freighted with observations and languages. Your father tells me that he finds you are so wedded to the Italian and French that you utterly neglect the Latin tongue. That *s not well ; though you have learned to play at backgammon you must not forget Irish, which is a more serious and solid game. But I know you are so discreet in the course and method of your studies, that you will make the daughters to wait upon their mother, and love still your old friend. To truck the Latin for any other vulgar language is but an ill barter, it is as bad as that which Glaucus made with Dio- medes when he parted with his golden arms for brazen ones. The proceeds of this exchange will come far short of any gentleman's expectations, though happily it may prove advantageous to a merchant, to whom common languages are more useful. I am big with desire to meet you, and to mingle a day's discourse with you, if not two : how OF JAMES HOWELL 169 you escaped the claws of the Inquisition, whereun to I understand you were like to fall, and of other traverses of your peregrination. Farewell, my very precious Stone, and believe it, the least grain of those high respects you please to profess unto me is not lost, but answered with so many carats. .So I rest, your most affectionate servitor, J. H. Westminster, 30 November 1635. LXVII ro Mr J. J., Esq. I RECEIVED those sparkles of piety you pleased to send me in a manuscript, and where- as you favour me with a desire of my opinion con- cerning the publishing of them, sir, I must confess that I found among them many most fervent and flexanimous strains of devotion. I found some prayers so piercing and powerful that they are able to invade heaven, and take it by violence, if the heart doth its office as well as the tongue. But, sir, you must give me leave (and for this leave you shall have authority to deal with me in such a case) to tell you that whereas they consist only of requests, being all supplicatory prayers, you should do well to intersperse among them some eucharistical ejaculations and doxologies, some oblations of thankfulness ; we should not be always whining in a puling, petitionary way (which is the tone of the time now in fashion) before I70 FAMILIAR LETTERS the gates of heaven with our fingers in our eyes, but we should lay our hands upon our hearts, and break into raptures of joy and praise. A soul thus elevated is the most pleasing sacrifice that can be offered to God Almighty ; it is the best sort of incense. Prayer causeth the first shower of rain, but praise brings down the second ; the one fruc- tifieth the earth, the other makes the hills to skip. All prayers aim at our own ends and interests, but praise proceeds from the pure motions of love and gratitude, having no other object but the glory of God ; that soul which rightly dischargeth this part of devotion may be said to do the duty of an angel upon earth. Among other attributes of God, pre- science or foreknowledge is one, for He knows our thoughts, our desires, our wants, long before we propound them. And this is not only one of His attributes, but prerogative royal, therefore, to use so many iterations, inculcatings and tautolo- gies, as it is no good manners in moral philosophy, no more is it in divinity ; it argues a pusillani- mous and mistrustful soul. Of the two, I had rather be over-long in praise than prayer ; yet I would be careful it should be free from any phar- isaical babbling. Prayer compared with praise is but a fuliginous smoke issuing from the sense of sin and human infirmities ; praises are the true clear sparkles of piety, and sooner fly upwards. Thus have I been free with you in delivering my opinion touching that piece of devotion you sent me, whereunto I add my humble thanks to OF JAMES HOWELL 171 you for the perusal of it. — So I am yours most ready to be commanded, J. H. Fleet, I September 1645. LXVIII To Captain Willia?n Bridges^ in Amsterdam My Noble Captain, I HAD yours of the tenth current, and besides your avisos, I must thank you for those rich flourishes wherewith your letter was embroidered everywhere. The news under this clime is, that they have mutinied lately in divers places about the excise, a bird that was first hatched there amongst you ; here in London the tumult came to that height that they burnt down to the ground the excise house in Smithfield, but now all is quiet again. God grant our excise here have not the same fortune as yours there, to become per- petual ; or as that new gabell of Orleans, which began in the time of the League, which continu- eth to this day, notwithstanding the cause ceased about threescore years since. Touching this, I re- member a pleasant tale that is recorded of Henry the Great, who some years after peace was estab- lished throughout all the whole body of France, going to his own town of Orleans, the citizens petitioned him that His Majesty would be pleased to abolish that new tax. The King asked 172 FAMILIAR LETTERS who had imposed it upon them. They answered, Monsieur de la Chatre (during the civil wars of the League), who was now dead. The King re- plied, " Monsieur de la Chatre vous a ligue, qu'il vous desligue" (Monsieur de la Chatre leagued you, let him then unleague you for my part). Now that we have a kind of peace the gaols are full of soldiers, and some gentlemen's sons of quality suffer daily. The last week Judge Rives condemned four in your country at Maidstone Assizes, but he went out of the world before them though they were executed four days after. You know the saying in France, that " la guerre fait les latrons, et la paix les amene au gibet " (War makes thieves, and peace brings them to the gal- lows). I lie still here in limbo, in limbo innocen- tiuryiy though not in limbo infantum^ and I know not upon what star to cast this misfortune. Others are here for their good conditions, but I am here for my good qualities, as your cousin Fortescue jeered me not long since. I know none I have, unless it be to love you, which I would continue to do, though I tugged at an oar in a galley, much more as I walk in the galleries of this Fleet. In this resolution I rest your most affectionate servitor, J.H. Fleet, 2 September 1645. OF JAMES HOWELL 173 LXIX To Mr W, B.y at Grundesburgh Gentle Sir, YOURS of the seventh I received yesternight, and read over with no vulgar delight ; in the perusal of it methought to have discerned a gentle strife betwixt the fair respects you pleased to show me therein, and your ingenuity in expressing them, which should have superiority ; so that I knew not to which of the two I should adjudge the palm. If you continue to wrap up our young acquaint- ance, which you say is but yet in fasciis, in such warm choice swaddlings, it will quickly grow up to maturity, and for my part I shall not be wanting to contribute that reciprocal nourishment which is due from me. Whereas you please to magnify some pieces of mine, and that you seem to spy the Muses perching upon my trees, I fear it is but deceptio visuSy for they are but satyrs, or happily some of the home- lier sort of wood-nymphs ; the Muses have choicer walks for their recreation. Sir, I must thank you for the visit you vouch- safed me in this simple cell, and whereas you please to call it the cabinet that holds the jewel of our times, you may rather term it a wicker casket that keeps a jet ring, or a horn lantern that holds a small taper of coarse wax. I hope this taper shall 174 FAMILIAR LETTERS not extinguish here, and if it may afford you any light, either from hence or hereafter, I should be glad to impart it in a plentiful proportion, because I am, sir, your most affectionate friend to serve you, J. H. Fleet, I July 164.6. LXX To y. W.y of Grafs Inn, Esquire 1WAS yours before in a high degree of affection, but now I am much more yours since I perused that parcel of choice epistles you sent me ; they discover in you a knowing and a candid clear soul, for familiar letters are the keys of the mind ; they open all the boxes of one*s breast, all the cells of the brain, and truly set forth the inward man ; nor can the pencil so lively represent the face, as the pen can do the fancy. I much thank you that you would please to impart them unto your most faith- ful servitor, J.H. Fleet, I April 1645. OF JAMES HOWELL 175 LXXI To Captain T. P. ; from Madrid Captain Don Tomas, COULD I write my love unto you, with a ray of the sun, as once Aurelius, the Roman Emperor, wished to a friend of his, you know this clear horizon of Spain could afford me plenty, which cannot be had so constantly all the seasons of the year in your cloudy clime of England. Apollo with you makes not himself so common, he keeps more state, and doth not show his face and shoot his beams so frequently as he doth here, where it is Sunday all the year. I thank you a thousand times for what you sent by Mr Gresley, and that you let me know how the pulse of the times beats with you. I find you cast not your eyes so much southward as you were used to do towards us here, and when you look this way you cast a cloudy coun- tenance with threatening looks, which makes me apprehend some fear that it will not be safe for me to be longer under this meridian. Before I part I will be careful to send you those things you write for by some of my Lord Ambassador Aston's gentlemen. I cannot yet get that grammar which was made for the Constable of Castile, who you know was born dumb, wherein an art is invented to speak with the hands only, to carry the alpha- bet upon one's joints and at his fingers' ends, which 176 FAMILIAR LETTERS may be learned without any great difficulty by any mean capacity, and whereby one may discourse and deliver the conceptions of his mind without ever wagging of his tongue, provided there be a recipro- cal knowledge and co-understanding of the art betwixt the parties, and it is a very ingenious piece of invention. I thank you for the copy of verses you sent me glancing upon the times. I was lately perusing some of the Spanish poets here, and lighted upon two epigrams, or epitaphs more properly, upon our Henry the Eighth, and upon his daughter Queen Elizabeth, which in requital I thought worth the sending you. A Henrique Octavo, Rey de Ingalatierra Mas de esta losa fria Cubre, Henrique, tu valor, De una muger el amor, Y de un error la porfia; Como cupo en tu grandeza, Dezidme enganado Ingles, Querer una muger a los pies, Ser de la yglesia cabesa ? Prosed thus in English, for I had no time to put it on feet: "O Henry, more than this cold pavement covers thy worth, the love of a woman and the pertinacy of error. How could it subsist with thy greatness, tell me, O cozened Englishman, to cast thyself at a woman's feet, and yet to be head of the Church?" That upon Queen Elizabeth was this : OF JAMES HOWELL 177 De Isabela, Reyna de Ingalatierra Aqui yaze lesabel, Aquila nueva Athalia, Del oro Antartico harpia, Del mar incendio cruel : Aqui el ingenio, mas dino De loor que ha tenido el suelo. Si para llegar al cielo No huiera errado el camino. " Here lies Jezabel, here lies the new Athalia, the harpy of the western gold, the cruel firebrand of the sea : here lies a wit the most worthy of fame which the earth had, if to arrive to heaven she had not missed her way." You cannot blame the Spaniard to be satirical against Queen Elizabeth, for he never speaks of her but he fetcheth a shrink in the shoulder. Since I have begun, I will go on with as witty an anagram as I have heard or read, which a gentle- man lately made upon his own name Tomas and a nun called Maria, for she was his devotee. The occasion was, that going one evening to dis- course with her at the grate, he wrung her by the hand, and joined both their names in this anagram, " To Maria mas " (I would take more). I know I shall not need to expound it to you. Here- unto I will add a strong and deep-fetched char- acter, as I think you will confess when you have read it, that one made in this court of a courtesan : 178 FAMILIAR LETTERS Eres puta tan artera Qu'en el vientre de tu madre, Tu tuuistes de manera Que te cavalgue el padre. To this I will join that which was made of de Vaca, husband to Jusepe de Vaca, the famous comedian, who came upon the stage with a cloak lined with black plush and a great chain about his neck, whereupon the Duke of Medina broke into these witty lines : Con tant felpa en la capa Y tanta cadena de oro. El marido de la Vaca Que puede ser sino toro ? The conclusion of this rambling letter shall be a rhyme of certain hard throaty words which I was taught lately, and they are accounted the difficult- est in all the whole Castilian language, insomuch that he who is able to pronounce them is accounted " buen Romancista" (a good speaker of Spanish) : " Abeia y oueia y piedra que rabeia, pendola tras oreia, y lugar en la ygreia, dessea a su hijo la vieia '* (A bee and a sheep, a mill, a jewel in the ear, and a place in the Church, the old woman de- sires her son). No more now, but that I am, and will ever be, my noble captain, in the front of your most affectionate servitors, J.H. Madrid, i August 1622. OF JAMES HOWELL 179 LXXII To Sir Tho. Luke^ Knight HAD you traversed all the world over, espe- cially those large continents and Christian countries which you have so exactly surveyed, and whence you have brought over with you such useful observations and languages, you could not have lighted upon a choicer piece of womankind for your wife. The earth could not have afforded a lady, that by her discretion and sweetness could better quadrate with your disposition. As I heartily congratulate your happiness in this par- ticular, so I would desire you to know that I did no ill offices towards the advancement of the work upon occasion of some discourse with my Lord George of Rutland not long before at Ham- bledon. My thoughts are now puzzled about my voy- age to the Baltic Sea upon the King's service, otherwise I would have ventured upon an epitha- lamium, for there is matter rich enough to work upon ; and now that you have made an end of wooing, I could wish you had made an end of wrangling. I mean of lawing, especially with your mother, who hath such resolution where she once takes. Law is not only a pickpurse, but a purgatory. You know the saying they have in France: " Les plaideurs sont les oyseaux, le palais i8o FAMILIAR LETTERS le Champ, les juges les rets, les avocats les rats, les procureurs les souris de Testat " (The poor clients are the birds, Westminster Hall the field, the judge the net, the lawyer the rats, the attorneys the mice of the commonwealth). I believe this say- ing was spoken by an angry client. For my part, I like his resolution who said he would never use lawyer nor physician but upon urgent necessity. I will conclude with this rhyme — Pouvre playdeur, J' ay gran pitie de ta douleur. J. H. Your most affectionate servitor, Westminster, i May 1629. LXXIII To Mr R. K, YOU and I are upon a journey, though bound for several places — I for Hamburg, you for your last home, as I understand by Doctor Baskervill, who tells me, much to my grief, that this hectical disease will not suffer you to be long amongst us. I know by some experiments which I have had of you, you have such a noble soul within you that will not be daunted by those natural apprehensions which death doth usually carry along with it among vulgar spirits. I do not think that you fear death as much now, though it OF JAMES HOWELL i8i be to some {^^o^epcov ^ojSepoTaTov), as you did to go in the dark when you were a child. You have had a fair time to prepare yourself. God give you a boon voyage to the haven you are bound for (which 1 doubt not will be heaven) and me the grace to follow, when I have passed the boisterous sea and swelling billows of this tumultuary life, wherein I have already shot divers dangerous gulfs, passed over some quicksands, rocks and sundry ill-favoured reaches. While others sail in the sleeve of fortune you and I have eaten a great deal of salt together, and spent much oil in the communication of our studies by literal correspondence and otherwise, both in verse and prose. Therefore I will take my last leave of you now in these few stanzas. 1 . Weak, crazy mortal, why dost fear To leave this earthly hemisphere ? Where all delights away do pass Like thy effigies in a glass. Each thing beneath the moon is frail and fickle. Death sweeps away what time cuts with his sickle. 2. This life, at best, is but an inn. And we the passengers, wherein The cloth is laid to some before They peep out of dame nature's door. And warm lodgings left ; others there are Must trudge to find a room, and shift for fare. 3. This life 's, at longest, but one day; He who in youth posts hence away. Leaves us i' the morn; he who hath run His race till manhood, parts at noon; 1 82 FAMILIAR LETTERS And who at seventy odd forsakes this light. He may be said to take his leave at night, 4. One past maketh up the prince and peasant. Though one eat roots, the other phea-sant. They nothing differ in the stuff. But both extinguish like a snuff: Why then, fond man, should thy soul take dismay. To sally out of these gross walls of clay ? And now my dear friend, adieu, and live eternally in that world of endless bliss, where you shall have knowledge as well as all things else commensurate to your desires, where you shall clearly see the real causes and perfect truth of what we argue with that incertitude, and beat our brains about here below. Yet though you be gone hence, you shall never die in the memory of your J.H. Westminster, 15 August 1630. LXXIV To Sir R. G.y Knight and Bar. Noble Sir, 1HAD yours upon Maundy Thursday late, and the reason that suspended my answer till now was, that the season engaged me to sequester my thoughts from my wonted negotiations to con- template the work of man's redemption, so great, that were it cast in counter-balance with his creation. OF JAMES HOWELL 183 it would outpoise it: for I summoned all my in- tellectuals to meditate upon those passions, upon those pangs, upon that despicable and most dolor- ous death, upon that cross whereon my Saviour suffered, which was the first Christian altar that ever was, and I doubt that he will never have benefit of the sacrifice who hates the harmless re- membrance of the altar whereon it was offered. I applied my memory to fasten upon it, my under- standing to comprehend it, my will to embrace it : from these three faculties methought I found by the mediation of the fancy some beams of love gently gliding down from the head to the heart, and inflaming all my affections. If the human soul had far more powers than the philosophers afford her, if she had as many faculties within the head as there be hairs without, the speculation of this mys- tery would find work enough for them all. Truly, the more I screw up my spirits to reach it the more I am swallowed in a gulf of admiration, and of a thousand imperfect notions, which makes me ever and anon to quarrel v/ith my soul that she cannot lay hold on her Saviour, much more my heart, that my purest affections cannot hug him as much as I would. They have a custom beyond the seas (and I could wish it were the worst custom they had) that during the Passion Week divers of their greatest princes and ladies will betake themselves to some convent or reclused house to wean themselves from all worldly encumbrances, and converse only with 1 84 FAMILIAR LETTERS heaven, with performance of some kind of penances, all the week long. A worthy gentleman that came lately from Italy told me that the Count of Byron, now marshal of France, having been long persecuted by Cardinal Richelieu, put himself so into a mon- astery, and the next day news was brought him of the cardinars death, which I believe made him spend the rest of the week with the more devotion in that way. France brags that our Saviour had His face turned towards her when He was upon the cross ; there is more cause to think that it was towards this island, in regard the rays of Christian- ity first reverberated upon her, her King being Christian 400 years before him of France (as all historians concur), notwithstanding that he arrogates to himself the title of the First Son of the Church. Let this serve for part of my apology. The day following, my Saviour being in the grave, I had no list to look much abroad, but continued my retiredness ; there was another reason also why, because I intended to take the holy sacrament the Sunday ensuing; which is an act of the greatest consolation and consequence that possibly a Chris- tian can be capable of: it imports him so much that he is made or marred by it; it tends to his damnation or salvation to help him up to heaven, or tumble him down headlong to hell. Therefore it behoves a man to prepare and recollect himself, to winnow his thoughts from the chaff and tares of the world beforehand. This then took up a OF JAMES HOWELL 185 good part of that day to provide myself a wedding garment, that I might be a fit guest at so precious a banquet, so precious that manna and angels' food are but coarse viands in comparison of it. I hope that this excuse will be of such validity that it may procure my pardon for not correspond- ing with you this last week. I am now as freely as formerly, your most ready and humble servitor, J.H. Fleet, 30 April 164.6, LXXV To Mr R. Howard THERE is a saying that carrieth with it a great deal of caution, "From him whom I trust God defend me, for from him whom I trust not, I will defend myself." There be sundry sorts of trusts, but that of a secret is one of the great- est ; I trusted T. P. with a weighty one, conjuring him that it should not take air and go abroad, which was not done according to the rules and religion of friendship, but it went out of him the very next day. Though the inconvenience may be mine, yet the reproach is his, nor would I ex- change my damage for his disgrace ; I would wish you take heed of him, for he is such as the comic poet speaks o^yplenus rimarum^ he is full of chinks, he can hold nothing. You know a secret is too much for one, too little for three, and enough for 1 86 FAMILIAR LETTERS two, but Tom must be none of those two, unless there were a trick to solder up his mouth. If he had committed a secret to me, and enjoined me silence, and I had promised it, though I had been shut up in Perillus' brazen bull, I should not have bellowed it out ; I find it now true, that he who discovers his secrets to another sells him his lib- erty and becomes his slave. Well, I shall be warier hereafter and learn more wit. In the in- terim the best satisfaction I can give myself is to expunge him quite ex albo amicorum^ to raze him out of the catalogue of my friends (though I can- not of my acquaintance), where your name is in- serted in great golden characters. I will endeavour to lose the memory of him, and that my thoughts may never run more upon the fashion of his face, which you know he hath no cause to brag of. I hate such blateroons Odi illos seu claustra Erebi I thought good to give you this little mot of advice, because the times are ticklish, of com- mitting secrets to any, though not to your most affectionate friend to serve you, J. H. From the Fleet, 14 February 1647. OF JAMES HOWELL 187 LXXVI To my Hon. Friend^ Mr £. P., at Paris LET me never sally hence, from among these disconsolate walls, if the literal correspond- ence you please to hold so punctually with me be not one of the greatest solaces I have had in this sad condition. For I find so much salt, such endearments and flourishes, such a gallantry and neatness in your lines, that you may give the law of lettering to all the world. I had this week a twin of yours, of the loth and 15th current. I am sorry to hear of your aches, and so often indis- position there. It may be very well (as you say) that the air of that dirty town doth not agree with you because you speak Spanish, which language you know is used to be breathed out under a clearer clime. I am sure it agrees not with the sweet breezes of peace, for it is you there that would keep poor Christendom in perpetual whirl- winds of wars. But I fear that while France sets all wheels a-going, and stirs all the cacodaemons of hell to pull down the House of Austria, she may chance at last to pull it upon her own head. I am sorry to understand what they write from Venice this week, that there is a discovery made in Italy how France had a hand to bring in the Turk to invade the territories of St Mark and puzzle the peace of Italy. I want faith to believe 1 88 FAMILIAR LETTERS it yet. Nor can I entertain in my breast any such conceit of the Most Christian .King, and First Son of the Church as he terms himself. Yet I pray in your next to pull this thorn out of my thoughts, and tell me whether one may give any credit to this report. We are now Scot-free as touching the northern army, for our dear brethren have trussed up their baggage, and put the Tweed betwixt us and them, once again. Dear indeed, for they have cost us first and last above nineteen hundred thousand pounds sterling, which amounts to near eight millions of crowns with you there. Yet if reports be true they left behind them more than they lost, if you go to number of men, which will be a brave race of mestisos hereafter, who may chance meet their fathers in the field and kill them unwittingly. He will be a wise child that knows his right father. Here we are like to have four-and-twenty seas emptied shortly, and some do hope to find abund- ance of treasure in the bottom of them, as no doubt they will, but many doubt that it will prove but aurum I'olosanum to the finders. God grant that from Acreans we turn not to be Arians. The Earl of Strafford was accounted by his very ene- mies to have an extraordinary talent of judgment and parts (though they say he wanted moderation), and one of the prime precepts he left his son upon the scaffold was that he should not meddle with Church-lands, for they would prove a canker to his estate. Here are started up some great knowing OF JAMES HOWELL 189 men lately that can show the very track by which our Saviour went to hell. They will tell you pre- cisely whose names are written in the Book of Life, whose not. God deliver us from spiritual pride, which of all sorts is the most dangerous. Here are also notable star-gazers, who obtrude on the world such confident bold predictions, and are so familiar with heavenly bodies that Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe were ninnies to them. We have likewise multitudes of witches among us, for in Essex and Suffolk there were above two hundred indicted within these two years, and above the one- half of them executed, more, I may well say, than ever this island bred since the Creation. I speak it with horror. God guard us from the devil, for I think he was never so busy upon any part of the earth that was enlightened with the beams of Christianity. Nor do I wonder at it, for there is never a cross left to frighten him away. Edinburgh, I hear, is fallen into a relapse of the plague. The last they had raged so violently that the fortieth man or woman lives not of those that dwelt there four years since. But it is all peopled with new faces. Don and Hans, I hear, are absolutely accorded. Nor do I believe that all the artifices of policy that you use there can hinder the peace, though they may puzzle it for a while. If it be so the people which button their doublets upward will be better able to deal with you there. Much notice is taken that you go on there too fast in your acquests, and now that the eagle's I90 FAMILIAR LETTERS wings are pretty well clipped. It is time to look that your fleur-de-lys grow not too rank, and spread too wide. Whereas you desire to know how it fares with your master, I must tell you that like the glorious sun, he is still in his own orb, though clouded for a time that he cannot show the beams of majesty with that lustre he was wont to do. Never did cavalier woo fair lady as he woos the Parliament to a peace; it is much the head should so stoop to the members. Farewell, my noble friend, cheer up, and reserve yourself for better days ; take our royal master for your pattern, who for his longanimity, patience, courage and constancy is admired of all the world, and in a passive way of fortitude hath outgone all the nine worthies. If the cedar be so weather- beaten, we poor shrubs must not murmur to bear part of the storm. I have had my share and I know you want not yours. The stars may change their aspects, and we may live to see the sun again in his full meridian. In the interim come what will, I am, entirely yours, J. H. ¥\ttty February 3, 1646. OF JAMES HOWELL 191 LXXVII To Sir K. D., at Rome THOUGH you know well that in the carriage and course of my rambling life I had occa- sion to be, as the Dutchman saith, a landloper, and to see much of the world abroad, yet methinks I have travelled more since I have been immured and martyred betwixt these walls than ever I did before, for I have travelled the Isle of Man, I mean this little world, which I have carried about me and within me so many years, for, as the wis- est of pagan philosophers said, that the greatest learning was the knowledge of one's self, to be his own geometrician. If one do so he need not gad abroad to see fashions ; he shall find enough at home ; he shall hourly meet with new fancies, new humours, new passions within doors. This travelling over of one's self is one of the paths that lead a man to Paradise. It is true that it is a dirty and dangerous one, for it is thick set with extravagant desires, irregular affections and concupiscences, which are but odd comrades, and oftentimes do lie in ambush to cut our throats ; there are also some melancholy companions in the way, which are our thoughts, but they turn many times to be good fellows and the best com- pany ; which makes me, that among these dis- consolate walls, I am never less alone than when 192 FAMILIAR LETTERS I am alone, I am ofttimes sole, but seldom soli- tary; some there are who are over-pestered with these companions, and have too much mind for their bodies, but I am none of those. There have been (since you shook hands with England) many strange things happened here, which posterity must have a strong faith to be- lieve ; but for my part I wonder not at anything, I have seen such monstrous things. You know there is nothing that can be casual, there is no success, good or bad, but is contingent to man sometimes or other, nor are there any contin- gencies, present or future, but they have their parallels from times past; for the great wheel of fortune, upon whose rim (as the twelve signs upon the zodiac) all worldly chances are em- bossed, turns round perpetually, and the spokes of that wheel, which points at all human actions, return exactly to the same place after such a time of revolution, which makes me little marvel at any of the strange traverses of these distracted times, in regard there hath been the like, or such like formerly. If the liturgy is now suppressed, the missal and the Roman breviary was used so a hundred years since ; if crosses, church-windows, organs and fonts are now battered down I little wonder at it, for chapels, monasteries, hermitages, nunneries and other religious houses, were used so in the time of old King Henry; if bishops and deans are now in danger to be demolished, I little wonder at it, for abbots, priors, and the Pope OF JAMES HOWELL 193 himself had that fortune here an age since. That our King is reduced to this pass, I do not wonder much at it, for the first time I travelled France, Louis the Thirteenth (afterwards a most triumphant king as ever that country had) in a dangerous civil war was brought to such straits, for he was brought to dispense with part of his coronation oath, to remove from his court of jus- tice, from the council table, from his very bed- chamber, his greatest favourites. He was driven to be content to pay the expense of the war, to reward those that took arms against him, and publish a declaration that the ground of their quarrel was good, which was the same in effect with ours, viz., a discontinuance of the assembly of the three estates, and that Spanish counsels did predominate in France. You know better than I that all events, good or bad, come from the all-disposing high Deity of heaven : if good. He produceth them ; if bad, He permits them. He is the Pilot that sits at the stern, and steers the great vessel of the world, and we must not presume to direct Him in His course, for He understands the use of the compass better than we. He commands also the winds and the weather, and after a storm He never fails to send us a calm, and to recompense ill times with better, if we can live to see them, which I pray you may do, whatever becomes of your still most faithful humble servitor, J. H. From the Fleet, London, 3 March 164.6. 194 FAMILIAR LETTERS LXXVIII To Sir K, D., at his House in Saint Martin's Lane THAT poem which you pleased to approve of so highly in a manuscript is now manu- mitted, and made free denizen of the world. It hath gone from my study to the stall, from the pen to the press, and I send one of the maiden copies herewith to attend you. It was your judg- ment, which all the world holds to be sound and sterling, induced me hereunto; therefore, if there be any, you are to bear your part in the blame. Your most entirely devoted servitor, J.H. Holborn, 3 January 1641. EPILOGUE^ To the INTELLIGENT READER AMONGST other reasons which make the English language of so small extent, and put strangers out of conceit to learn it, one is that we do not pronounce as we write, which proceeds from divers superfluous letters that occur in many of our words, which adds to the difficulty of the language. Therefore the author hath taken pains to retrench such redundant, unnecessary letters in this work (though the printer hath not been so careful as he should have been), as amongst multitudes of other words may appear in these few, " done," " some," " come." Which, though we, to whom the speech is connatural, pronounce as monosyllables, yet when strangers come to read them, they are apt to make them dissyllables, as " do-ne," " so-me," " co-me," therefore such an e is superfluous. Moreover, those words that have the Latin for their original, the author prefers that orthography, rather than the French, whereby divers letters are ^ This Epilogue was attached to the first edition of the Letters. Because of the conservative force of printer's *' style" Howeirs suggestions were not uniformly adopted in his own text. 196 EPILOGUE spared, as " physic," " logic/' " Afric," not " phy- sique/' " logique/' " Afrique ;" "favor/' "honor/' " labor/' not " favour/' " honour/' " labour/' and very many more ; as also he omits the Dutch k in most words. Here you shall read " peeple " not " pe-ople/' " tresure " not " treasure/' " toung " not "tongue/' etc. "Parlement" not "Parlia- ment/' "busines/' " witnes/' "sicknes/' not "busi- nesse/' "witnesse/' " sicknesse ; " "star/' "war/' " far/' not " starre/' " warre/' " farre ; " and mul- titudes of such words, wherein the two last letters may well be spared. Here you shall also read " pity," " piety," " witty," not " piti-e," " pieti-e/' "witti-e," as strangers at first sight pronounce them, and abundance of suchlike words. The new academy of wits, called I'Academie des Beaux Esprits, which the late Cardinal de Richelieu founded in Paris, is now in hand to re- form the French language in this particular, and to weed it of all superfluous letters, which makes the tongue differ so much from the pen, that they have exposed themselves to this contumelious proverb : " The Frenchman doth neither pro- nounce as he writes, nor speak as he thinks, nor sing as he pricks." Aristotle hath a topic axiom, that " Frustra fit per plura, quod fieri potest per pauciora " (When fewer may serve the turn, more is in vain). And as this rule holds in all things else, so it may be very well observed in orthography. END OF VOLUME III CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A