LETTER LXV.

JAMES HOWEL, ESQ. TO HIS NEPHEW, J.P.
At St. John's, in Oxford.

NEPHEW, Westminster, 1st August, 1633. 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 Scotch pedlar's pack in Poland, and the magazine of an English merchant in Naples; the one being usually full of taffaty, silks, and satins; the other of calicoes, thread, ribbons, and such poldavy ware. I perceive you have good commodities to vend, if you take the pains: your trifles and bagatelles 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 shall 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; any thing 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 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 they been my own books, which I knew were always ready at my dispose. 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.

LETTER LXVI.

FROM THE SAME TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LADY ELIZABETH DIGBY.

MADAM,

Westminster, 5th August.

Ir 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; 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 that triangle of flesh dilates and shuts itself within my breast; nor doth this perfume stay there, but, as all smells naturally tend upwards, it hath ascended to my brain, and sweetened 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 acknowledgment: but, madam, if I were made happy with an oppor tunity, you shall 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 ladyship's most humble and enchained servitor.

LETTER LXVII.

JAMES HOWEL, ESQ. TO MASTER J. H.
At St. John's College, in Cambridge.

Fleet, 3d Dec.

MASTER HALL, YOURS, of the 13th of this instant, came safely, though slowly, to hand; for I had it not till the 20th 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 præcosity of spirit in you.

I perceive you have entered the suburbs of Sparta already, and that you are in a fair way to get to 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 briars 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 rich matter of application for your inventive spirit to work upon. By all means understand Aristotle in his own language, for it is the language of learning. Touching poetry, history, and other human studies, they may serve you for your recreation, but let them not by any means allure your affections from the first. I shall delight sometimes to hear of your proceedings; for I profess a great deal of good will to you, which makes me rest your respectful friend to serve you.

SIR,

LETTER LXVIII.

FROM THE SAME TO MR. E. 0.

Counsellor at Grays-Inn.

Fleet, 3d Angust.

THE sad tidings of my dear friend Dr. Prichard's death sunk deep into me; and the more I ruminate upon it, the more I resent it: but when I contemplate the order, and those adamantine laws which nature puts into such strict execution throughout this elementary world; when I consider, that, up and down this frail globe of earth, we are but strangers and 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 disposition of all sublunary things, "Nature is God's handmaid, fate his commissioner, time his instrument, and death bis executioner." By the first we have generation; by the second successes, good or bad; and the two last bring us to our end: time, with his vast scythe, mows down alk things, and death sweeps away those mowings. Well, he was a rare and a complete judicious scholar, as any that I have known born under your 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 philosopher, 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.

LETTER LXIX.

JAMES HOWEL, ESQ. TO MASTER G. STONE. SIR, Westminster, 30th Nov. 1635. I HEARTILY rejoice, with the rest of your friends, that you are safely returned from your travels, especially that you have made so good returns of