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particularly Italy: and having communicated his design to Sir Henry Wotton, who had formerly been Ambassador at Venice, and was then Provost of Eton College, and having also sent him his Mask. of which he had not yet publicly acknowledged himscif the author, he received from him the followiag friendly letter, dated from the College the 10th of April 1638.

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 said learned friend, at a poor meal or two, that we might have banded together some good authors of the ancienttime, 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 odes, wherein I must plainly confess to have seen yet 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; whereunto 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 the young Lord S. as his governor; and you may surely receive from him good directions for shaping of your farther 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 thro* 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 Al

berto 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 toward Rome, which had been the center 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 meo," 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 Delphian oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment doth need no commentary: and therefore, Sir, I will commit you with it to the best of all securities, God's dear love, remaining your friend, as much at command as any of longer date.

H. WOTTON."

P. S. "Sir, I have expressly sent this by my foot-boy to prevent your departure, without some acknowledgment from me of the receipt of your obliging letter, having myself, through some business I know not how, neglected the ordinary conveyance. In any part where I shall understand you fixed, I shall be glad and diligent to entertain you with home novelties, even for some fomentation of our friendship, too soon interrupted in the cradle."

Soon after this he set out upon his travels, being of an age to make the proper improvements, and not barely to see sights and to learn the languages, like most of our modern travellers, who go out boys, and return such as we see, but such as I do not choose to name. He was attended by only one servant, who accompanied him through all his travels; and he went first to France, where he had recommendations to the Lord Scudamore, the English Ambassador there at that time. As soon as he came to Paris, he waited upon his Lordship, and was received with wonderful civility; and having an earnest desire to visit the learned Hugo Grotius, he was by his Lordship's means introduced to that great man, who was then Ambassador at the French court from the famous Christiana Queen of Sweden; and the visit was to their mutual satisfaction; they were each of them pleased to see a person, of whom they had heard such commendations. But at Paris he stayed not long; his thoughts and his wishes hastened into Italy; and so after a few days he took leave of the Lord Scudamore, who very kindly gave him letters to the English merchants in the séveral places through which he was to travel, requesting them to do him all the good offices which lay in their power.

From Paris he went directly to Nice, where he took shipping for Genoa, from whence he went to Leghorn, and thence to Pisa, and so to Florence, in which city he found sufficient inducements to make a stay of two months. For besides the curiosities

and other beauties of the place, he took great delight in the company and conversation there, and frequented their academies as they are called, the meetings of the most polite and ingenious persons, which they have in this as well as in the other principal cities of Italy, for the exercise and improvement of wit and learning among them. And in these conversations he bore so good a part, and produced so many excellent compositions, that he was soon taken notice of, and was very much courted and caressed by several of the nobility and prime wits of Florence. For the manner is, as he says himself in the Preface to his second book of the Reason of Church Government, that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading there, and his productions were received with written encomiums which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this. side the Alps. Jacomo Gaddi, Antonio Francini, Carlo Dati, Beneditto Bonmatthei, Cultellino, Frescobaldi, Clementelli, are reckoned among his particular friends. At Gaddi's house the academies were held, which he constantly frequented. Antonio Francini composed an Italian ode in his commendation.

Carlo Dati wrote a Latin eulogium of him, and corresponded with him after his return to England. Bonmatthei was at that time about publishing an Italian Grammar; and the eighth of our author's familiar epistles, dated at Florence, Sept. 10, 1638, is addressed to him upon that occasion, commending his design, and advising him to add some

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