In my opinion, which vails to yours, this is choice and rich stuff for you to put upon your loom, and make a curious web of.

I thank you for the last regalo you gave me at your museum, and for the good company. I heard you censured lately at court, that you have lighted two fold upon Sir Inigo, and that you write with a porcupine's quill, dipped in too much gall. Excuse me that I am so free with you; it is because I am in no common way of friendship. Yours,

Westminster, May 3, 1635.

J. H.

JAMES HOWELL, ESQ. TO BEN JONSON.

FATHER BEN,

THE fangs of a bear, and the tusks of a wild boar, do not bite worse, and make a deeper gash, 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 his bones crack. Your quill hath proved so to Mr. Inigo 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, populus et regna gubernant, the goose, the bee, and the calf (meaning wax, parchment, and 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 tyrannize in the manner you have done

lately. Some give out there was a hair in it, or that your ink was too thick with gall, else it would not have so bespattered and shaken the reputation of a royal architect: for reputation, you know, is like a fair structure, long a rearing, but quickly ruined. If your spirit will not let you retract, yet you should do well to repress any more copies of the satire: for to deal plainly with you, you have lost some ground at court 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 pleased with it. pense with this freedom, of

Your respectful son and servitor,

Dis

Westminster, July 3, 1635.

J. H.

SIR HENRY WOTTON TO KING CHARLES II.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY,

HAVING been informed that certain persons have, by the good wishes of the archbishop of Armagh, been directed hither with a most humble petition unto your majesty, that you will be pleased to make Mr. William Bedell*, now resident upon a small benefice in Suffolk, governor of your College at Dublin, for the good of that society; and myself being required to render unto your majesty some testimony of the said William Bedell, who was long my chaplain at Venice, in the time of my employment there; I am bound

This was the pious and benevolent Bedell, who was subsequently Bishop of Kilmore.

in all conscience and truth (so far as your majesty will accept of my poor judgment) to affirm of him, that, I think, hardly a fitter man could have been propounded to your majesty in your whole kingdom, for singular erudition and piety, conformity to the rites of the church, and zeal to advance the glory of God; wherein his travels abroad were not obscure, in the time of the excommunication of the Venetians. For may it please your majesty to know, that this is the man whom Padre Paulo took, I may say, into his very soul, with whom he did communicate the inwardest thoughts of his heart; from whom he professed to have received more knowledge in all divinity, both scholastical and positive, than from any that he had practised in his days: of all which the passages were well known unto the king your father, of blessed memory. And so with your majesty's good favour, I will end this needless office for the general fame of his learning, his life, and Christian temper, and those religious labours which himself hath dedicated to your majesty, do better describe him than I am able. Your majesty's most humble and faithful servant,

HENRY WOTTON.

SIR HENRY WOTTON TO JOHN MILTON. SIR, It was a special favour when you lately bestowed upon me here the first taste of your acquaintance, though no longer than to make me know that I wanted more time to value it, and to enjoy it

rightly. And in truth, if I could then have imagined your farther stay in these parts, which I understood afterwards by Mr. H., I would have been bold, in our vulgar phrase, to mend my draught, for you left me with an extreme thirst, and to have begged your conversation again, jointly with your learned friend, at a poor meal or two, that we might have banded together some good authors of the ancient time, among which I observed you to have been familiar.

Since your going you have charged me with new obligations, both for a very kind letter from you, dated the sixth of this month, and for a dainty piece of entertainment that came therewith; wherein I should much commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did not ravish with a certain Doric delicacy in your songs and other odes, wherein I must plainly confess to have seen nothing parallel in our language. Ipsa mollities. But I must not omit to tell you, that I now only owe you thanks for intimating unto me, how modestly soever, the true artificer. For the work itself I had viewed some good while before with singular delight, having received it from our common friend Mr. R. in the very close of the late R.'s poems, printed at Oxford; where. unto it is added, as I now suppose, that the accessory might help out the principal, according to the art of stationers, and leave the reader con la bocca dolce.

Now, sir, concerning your travels, wherein I may challenge a little more privilege of discourse with you; I suppose you will not blanch Paris

in your way. Therefore I have been bold to trouble you with a few lines to Mr. M. B. whom you shall easily find attending young Lord S. as his governor; and you may surely receive from him good directions for shaping of your further journey into Italy, where he did reside by my choice some time for the king, after mine own recess from Venice.

I should think, that your best line will be through the whole length of France to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa, whence the passage into Tuscany is as diurnal as a Gravesend barge. I hasten, as you do, to Florence or Sienna, the rather to tell you a short story, from the interest you have given me in your safety.

At Sienna I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipione, an old Roman courtier in dangerous times, having been steward to the Duca di Pagliano, who with all his family were strangled, save this only man, that escaped by foresight of the tempest. With him I had often much chat of those affairs; into which he took pleasure to look back from his native harbour; and at my departure towards Rome, which had been the centre of his experience, I had won confidence enough to beg his advice, how I might carry myself securely there, without offence of others, or of my own conscience: "Signor Arrigo mio," says he, "I pensieri stretti, & il viso sciolto;" that is, Your thoughts close, and your countenance loose, will go safely over the whole world. Of which Delphine oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment doth need no commentary; and therefore, sir, I will commend you