foon as poffible after the publication; in the mean time do you direct your letters to me under cover to Turrettin a Genoefe, living at London, and through whom we may conveniently carry on our correfpondence. Be affured that you rank high in my esteem, and that I wish for nothing more than your regard. Westminster, March 24, 1654.

XVIII.

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

YOUR letters which young Ranley brought, found me fo much employed that I am compelled to be more brief than I could wish. You have moft faithfully fulfilled thofe promises to write which you made me when you went away. No honeft man could difcharge his debts with more rigid punctuality. I congratulate you on your retirement, because it gives pleafure to you though it is a lofs to me; and I admire that felicity of genius, which can fo readily leave the factions or the diverfions of the city for contemplations the most serious and fublime. I fee not what advantage you can have in that retirement except in an access to a multitude of books; the affociates in ftudy whom you have found there, were I believe rather made ftudents by their own natural inclinations, than by the difcipline of the place. But perhaps I am less partial to the place because it detains you, whofe abfence I regret. You rightly obferve that there are too many there who pollute all learning, divine and human, by their frivolous fubtleties and barren difputations; and who seem to do nothing to deferve the falary which they receive. But you are not fo unwife. Those ancient records of the Sinese from the period of the deluge, which you fay are promised by the Jefuit Martinius, are no doubt on

account

account of their novelty expected with avidity; but I do not fee what authority or fupport they can add to the books of Mofes. Our friend to whom you begged to be remembered fends his compliments. Adieu.

Westminster, June 25, 1656.

XIX.

To the noble Youth RICHARD JONES.

As often as I have taken up the pen to answer your last letter some sudden interruptions have occurred to prevent the completion of my purpose. I afterwards heard that you had made an excurfion to the adjoining country. As your excellent mother is on the eve of departing for Ireland, whofe lofs we have both no small occafion to regret, and who has to me fupplied the place of every relative, will herself be the bearer of thefe letters to you. You may reft affured of my regard, and be perfuaded that it will increase in proportion as I fee an increafing improvement in your heart and mind. This, by the bleffing of God, you have folemnly pledged yourself to accomplish. I am pleafed with this fair promise of yourself, which I truft you will never violate. Though you write that you are pleafed with Oxford, you will not induce me to believe that Oxford has made you wifer or better. Of that I require very different proof. I would not have you lavish your admiration on the triumphs of the chiefs whom you extol, and things of that nature in which force is of moft avail. For why need we wonder if the wethers of our country are born with horns which may batter down cities and towns? Do you learn to estimate great characters, not by the quantity of their animal ftrength but by the habitual justice and temperance of their conduct. Adieu, and make my beft refpects to the accomplished Henry Oldenburgh, your college chum.

Westminster, Sept. 21, 1656.

Το

XX.

To the accomplished Youth PETER HEIMBACH.

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

Westminster, Nov. 8, 1656.

XXI.

To the accomplished EMERIC BIGOT.

I WAS highly gratified by the diftinguished marks of attention which you paid me on coming into

England,

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

3

collection,

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

Westminster, March 24, 1658.

XXII.

To the noble Youth RICHARD JONES.

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

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