shall do my endeavour, that you may find this patrimony improved somewhat to your comfort.

In this my peregrination, if I happen, by some accident, to be disappointed of that allowance I am to subsist by, I must make my address to you, for I have no other rendezvous to flee unto; but it shall not be, unless in case of great indigence.

The latter end of this week I am to go a shipboard, and first for the Low Countries. I humbly pray your blessing may accompany me in these my travels by land and sea, with a continuance of your prayers, which will be so many good gales to blow me safe to port; for I have been taught, that the parent's benedictions contribute very much, and have a kind of prophetic virtue to make the child prosperous. In this opinion I shall ever rest your dutiful son.

LETTER XLIV.

JAMES HOWEL, ESQ. TO DR. FRANCIS MANSELL, Since Principal of Jesus College in Oxford.

SIR, London, 26th March, 1618. BEING to take leave of England, and to launch into the world abroad, to breathe foreign air awhile, I thought it very handsome, and an act well becoming me, to take my leave also of you, and of my dearly honoured mother, Oxford: others wise both of you might have just grounds to exhibit a bill of complaint, or rather a protest against me, and cry me up; you for a forgetful friend;

she for an ungrateful son, if not some spurious issue. To prevent this, I salute you both together you with the best of my most candid affections; her with my most dutiful observance, and thankfulness for the milk she pleased to give me in that exuberance, had I taken it in that measure she offered it me while I slept in her lap: yet that little I have sucked I carry with me now abroad, and hope that this course of life will help to connect it to a greater advantage, having opportunity, by the nature of my employment, to study men as well as books. The small time I supervised the glass-house, I got among those Venetians some smatterings of the Italian tongue, which besides the little I have, you know, of school-language, is all the preparatives I have made for travel. I am to go this week down to Gravesend, and so embark for Holland. I have got a warrant from the lords of the council to travel for three years any where, Rome and St. Omer's excepted. I pray let me retain some room, though never so little, in your thoughts, during the time of this our separation; and let our souls meet sometimes by intercourse of letters; I promise you that yours shall receive the best entertainment I can make them, for I love you dearly, dearly well, and value your friendship at a very high rate. So with apprecation of as much happiness to you at home, as I shall desire to accompany me abroad, I rest ever your friend to serve you.

LETTER XLV.

JAMES HOWEL, ESQ. TO DAN. CALDWELL. ESQ. From Amsterdam.

MY DEAR DAN, Amsterdam, 10th April, 1619. I HAVE made your friendship so necessary unto me for the contentment of my life, that happiness itself would be but a kind of infelicity without it: it is as needful to me as fire and water, as the very air I take in and breathe out: it is to me not only necessitudo, but necessitas: therefore I pray let me enjoy it in that fair proportion, that I desire to return unto you, by way of correspondence and retaliation. Our first league of love, you know, was contracted among the muses in Oxford; for no sooner was I matriculated to her, but I was adopted to you; I became her son, and your friend, at one time: you know I followed you then to London, where our love received confirmation in the Temple, and elsewhere. We are now far asunder, for no less than a sea severs us, and that no narrow one, but the German ocean; distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it; it much enhances the value of it, and makes it more precious. Let this be verified in us; let that love which formerly used to be nourished by personal communication and the lips, be now fed by letters; let the pen supply the office of the tongue : letters have a strong operation, they have a kind of art like embraces to mingle souls, and make them meet, though mil

lions of paces asunder; by them we may converse, and know how it fares with each other as it were by intercourse of spirits. Therefore among your civil speculations, I pray let your thoughts sometimes reflect on me (your absent self), and wrap those thoughts in paper, and so send them me over; I promise you they shall be very welcome, I shall embrace and hug them with my best affections.

Commend me to Tom Browyer, and enjoin him the like: I pray be no niggard in distributing my love plentifully among our friends at the inns of court; let Jack Toldervy have my kind commends, with this caveat, that the pot which goes often to the water, comes home cracked at last: therefore I hope he will be careful how he makes the Fleece in Cornhill his thoroughfare too often. So may my dear Daniel live happy and love his,

&c.

LETTER XLVI.

JAMES HOWEL, ESQ. TO MR. RICHARD ALTHAM, At his Chamber in Gray's-Inn.

DEAR SIR, Hague, 30th May, 1619. THOUGH you be now a good way out of my reach, yet you are not out of my remembrance; you are still within the horizon of my love. Now the horizon of love is large and spacious, it is as boundless as that of the imagination; and where the imagination rangeth, the memory is still busy to usher in and present the desired object it fixes

upon it is love that sets them both on work, and may be said to be the highest sphere whence they receive their motion. Thus you appear to me often in these foreign travels; and that you may believe me the better, I send you these lines as my ambassadors (and ambassadors must not lie), to inform you accordingly, and to salute you.

I desire to know how you like Plowden; I heard it often said, that there is no study requires patience and constancy more than the common law; for it is a good while before one comes to any known perfection in it, and consequently to any gainful practice. This (I think) made Jack Chaundler throw away his Littleton, like him that, when he could not catch the hare, said, "A pox upon her, she is but dry tough meat, let her go:" it is not so with you, for I know you are of that disposition, that when you mind a thing, nothing can frighten you in making constant pursuit after it till you have obtained it: for if the mathematics, with their crabbedness and intricacy, could not deter you, but that you waded through the very midst of them, and arrived to so excellent a perfection; I believe it is not in the power of Plowden to dastardize or cow your spirits, until you have overcome him, at leastwise have so much of him as will serve your turn. I know you were always a quick and pressing disputant in logic and philosophy; which makes me think your genius is fit for law (as the baron, your excellent father, was), for a good logician makes always a good lawyer: and hereby one may give a strong conjecture of the aptness or inaptitude of one's capacity to that study and profession; and you