arrived, I was strenuously engaged in that work concerning which I had given you some obscure hints, and the execution of which could not be delayed. One of the fellows of our college, who was to be the respondent in a philosophical disputation for his degree, engaged me to furnish him with some verses, which are annually required on this occasion; since he himself had long neglected such frivolous pursuits, and was then intent on more serious studies. Of these verses I sent you a printed copy, since I knew both your discriminating taste in poetry, and your candid allowances for poetry like mine. If you will in your turn deign to communicate to me any of your productions, you will, I can assure you, find no one to whom they will give more delight, or who will more impartially endeavour to estimate their worth. For as often as I recollect the topics of your conversation, (the loss of which I regret even in this seminary of erudition,) I cannot help painfully reflecting on what advantages I am deprived by your absence, since I never left your company without an increase of knowledge, and always had recourse to your mind as to an emporium of literature. Among us, as far as I know, there are only two or three, who without any acquaintance with criticism or philosophy, do not instantly engage with raw and untutored judgments in the study of theology; and of this they acquire only a slender smattering, not more than sufficient to enable them to patch together a sermon with scraps pilfered, with little discrimination, from this author and from that. Hence I fear, lest our clergy should relapse into the sacerdotal ignorance of a former age. Since I find so few associates in study here, I should instantly direct my steps to London, if I had not determined to spend the summer vacation in the depths of literary solitude, and, as it were, hide myself in the chamber of the muses. As you do this every day, it would be injustice in me any longer to divert your attention or engross your time. Adieu. Cambridge, July 2, 1628. IV. To THOMAS JURE. ON reading your letter, my excellent tutor, I find only one superflous passage, an apology for not writing to me sooner; for though nothing gives me more pleasure than to hear from you, how can I or ought I to expect that you should always have leisure enough from more serious and more sacred engagements to write to me; particularly when it is kindness, and not duty, which prompts you to write? Your many recent services must prevent me from entertaining any suspicion of your forgetfulness or neglect. Nor do I see how you could possibly forget one on whom you had conferred so many favours. Having an invitation into your part of the country in the spring, I shall readily accept it, that I may enjoy the deliciousness of the season as well as that of your conversation; and that I may withdraw myself for a short time from the tumult of the city to your rural mansion, as to the renowned portico of Zeno, or Tusculan of Tully, where you live on your little farm with a moderate fortune, but a princely mind; and where you practise the contempt, and triumph over the temptations of ambition, pomp, luxury, and all that follows the chariot of fortune, or attracts the gaze and admiration of the thoughtless multitude. I hope that you who deprecated the blame of delay, will pardon me for my precipitance; for, after deferring this letter to the last, I chose rather to write a few lines, however deficient in elegance, than to say nothing at all. Adieu, reverend sir. Cambridge, July 21, 1628. 2 U ས. To ALEXANDER GILL. IF you had made me a present of a piece of plate, or any other valuable which excites the admiration of mankind, I should not be ashamed in my turn to remunerate you, as far as my circumstances would permit. But since you, the day before yesterday, presented me with an elegant and beautiful poem in Hendecasyllabic verse, which far exceeds the worth of gold, you have increased my solicitude to discover in what manner I may requite the favour of so acceptable a gift. I had by me at the time no compositions in a like style which I thought at all fit to come in competition with the excellence of your performance. I send you therefore a composition which is not entirely my own, but the production of a truly inspired bard, from whom I last week rendered this ode into Greek Heroic verse, as I was lying in bed before the day dawned, without any previous deliberation, but with a certain impelling faculty, for which I know not how to account. By his help who does not less surpass you in his subject than you do me in the execution, I have sent something which may serve to restore the equilibrium between us. If you see reason to find fault with any particular passage, I must inform you that, from the time I left your school, this is the first and the last piece I have ever composed in Greek; since, as you know, I have attended more to Latin and to English composition. He who at this time employs his labour and his time in writing Greek, is in danger of writing what will never be read. Adieu, and expect to see me, God willing, at London on Monday among the booksellers. In the mean time, if you have interest enough with that Doctor who is the master of the college to promote my business, I beseech you to see him as soon as possible, and to act as your friendship for me may prompt. From my villa, Dec. 4, 1634. VI. TO CAROLO DEODATI. I CLEARLY See that you are determined not to be overcome in silence; if this be so, you shall have the palm of victory, for I will write first. Though if the reasons which make each of us so long in writing to the other should ever be judicially examined, it will appear that I have many more excuses for not writing than you. For it is well known, and you well know, that I am naturally slow in writing, and averse to write; while you, either from disposition or from habit, seem to have little reluctance in engaging in these literary (poons) allocutions. It is also in my favour, that your method of study is such as to admit of frequent interruptions, in which you visit your friends, write letters, or go abroad; but it is my way to suffer no impediment, no love of ease, no avocation whatever, to chill the ardour, to break the continuity, or divert the completion of my literary pursuits. From this and no other reasons it often happens that I do not readily employ my pen in any gratuitous exertions; but I am not, nevertheless, my dear Deodati, a very sluggish correspondent; nor has it at any time happened that I ever left any letter of yours unanswered till another came. So I hear that you write to the bookseller, and often to your brother, either of whom, from their nearness, would readily have forwarded any communication from you to me. But what I blame you for is, for not keeping your promise of paying me a visit when you left the city; a promise which, if it had once oc curred to your thoughts, would certainly have forcibly suggested the neces- VII. To the Same. Most of my other friends think it enough to give me one farewell in their letters, but I see why you do it so often; for you give me to understand that your medical authority is now added to the potency, and subservient to the completion, of those general expressions of good-will which are nothing but words and air. You wish me my health six hundred times, in as great a quantity as I can wish, as I am able to bear, or even more than this. Truly, you should be appointed butler to the house of Health, whose stores you so lavishly bestow; or at least Health should become your parasite, since you so lord it over her, and command her at your pleasure. I send you therefore my congratulations and my thanks, both on account of your friendship and your skill. I was long kept waiting in expectation of a letter from you, which you had engaged to write; but when no letter came my old regard for you suffered not, I can assure you, the smallest diminution, for I had supposed that the same apology for remissness, which you had employed in the beginning of our correspondence, you would again employ. This was a supposition agreeable to truth and to the intimacy between us. For I do not think that true friendship consists in the frequency of letters or in professions of regard, which may be counterfeited; but it is so deeply rooted in the heart and affections, as to support itself against the rudest blast; and when it originates in sincerity and virtue, it may remain through life without suspicion and without blame, even when there is no longer any reciprocal interchange of kindnesses.) For the cherishing aliment of a friendship such as this, there is not so much need of letters as of a lively recollection of each other's virtues. And though you have not written, you have something that may supply the omission: your probity writes to me in your stead; it is a letter ready written on the innermost membrane of the heart; the simplicity of your manners, and the rectitude of your principles, serve as correspondents in your place; your genius, which is above the common level, writes, and serves in a still greater de gree to endear you to me. But now you have got possession of this despotic citadel of medicine, do not alarm me with the menace of being obliged to repay those six hundred healths which you have bestowed, if Ï should, which God forbid, ever forfeit your friendship. Remove that formidable battery which you seem to have placed upon my breast to keep off/ all sickness but what comes by your permission. But that you may not indulge any excess of menace I must inform you, that I cannot help loving you such as you are; for whatever the Deity may have bestowed upon me in other respects, he has certainly inspired me, if any ever were inspired, with a passion for the good and fair. Nor did Ceres, according to the fable, ever seek her daughter Proserpine with such unceasing solicitude as I have sought this rou xaoù idéar, this perfect model of the beautiful in all the forms and appearances of things (πολλαιγαρ γορφαι των Δαιμονίων, many are the forms of the divinities.) I am wont day and night to continue my search; and I follow in the way in which you go before. Hence, I feel an irresistible impulse to cultivate the friendship of him, who, despising the prejudiced and false conceptions of the vulgar, dares to think, to speak, and to be that which the highest wisdom has in every age taught to be the best. But if my disposition or my destiny were such that I could without any conflict or any toil emerge to the highest pitch of distinction and of praise; there would nevertheless be no prohibition, either human or divine, against my constantly cherishing and revering those, who have either obtained the same degree of glory, or are successfully labouring to obtain it. But now I am sure that you wish me to gratify your curiosity, and to let you know what I have been doing or am meditating to do. Hear me, my Deodati, and suffer me for a moment to speak without blushing in a more lofty strain. Do you ask what I am meditating? by the help of heaven, an immortality of fame. But what am I doing? TEρow, I am letting my wings grow and preparing to fly; but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air. I will now tell you seriously what I design; to take chambers in one of the inns of court, where I may have the benefit of a pleasant and shady walk; and where with a few associates, I may enjoy more comfort when I choose to stay at home, and have a more elegant society when I choose to go abroad. In my present situation, you know in what obscurity I am buried, and to what inconveniences I am exposed. You shall likewise have some information respecting my studies. I went through the perusal of the Greek authors, to the time when they ceased to be Greeks; I was long employed in unravelling the obscure history of the Italians, under the Lombards, the Franks, and Germans, to the time when they received their liberty from Rodolphus king of Germany. From that time it will be better to read separately the particular transactions of each state. But how are you employed? How long will you attend to your domestic ties, and forget your city connections? But unless this novercal hostility be more inveterate than that of the Dacian or Sarmacian, you will feel it a duty to visit me in my winter quarters. In the mean time, if you can do it without inconvenience, I will thank you to send me Justinian the historian of Venice. I will either keep it carefully till your arrival, or, if you had rather, will soon send it back again. Adieu. London, Sept. 23, 1637. VIII. TO BENEDITTO BONOMATTAI, a Florentine. I AM glad to hear, my dear Bonomattai, that you are preparing new institutes of your native language, and have just brought the work to a conclusion. The way to fame which you have chosen, is the same as that which some persons of the first genius have embraced; and your fellowcitizens seem ardently to expect that you will either illustrate or amplify, or at least polish and methodize, the labours of your predecessors. By such a work you will lay your countrymen under no common obligation, which they will be ungrateful if they do not acknowledge. For I hold him to deserve the highest praise who fixes the principles and forms the manners of a state, and makes the wisdom of his administration conspicuous both at home and abroad. But I assign the second place to him, who endeavours by precepts and by rules to perpetuate that style and idiom of speech and composition, which have flourished in the purest periods of the language, and who, as it were, throws up such a trench around it, that people may be prevented from going beyond the boundary almost by the terrors of a Romulean prohibition. If we compare the benefits which each of these confer, we shall find that the former alone can render the intercourse of the citizens just and conscientious, but that the last gives that gentility, that elegance, that refinement, which are next to be desired. The one inspires lofty courage and intrepid ardour against the invasion of an enemy; the other exerts himself to annihilate that barbarism which commits more extensive ravages on the minds of men, which is the intestine enemy of genius and literature, by the taste which he inspires, and the good authors which he causes to be read. Nor do I think it a matter of little moment whether the language of a people be vitiated or refined, whether the popular idiom be erroneous or correct. This consideration was more than once found salutary at Athens. It is the opinion of Plato, that changes in the dress and habits of the citizens portend great commotions and changes in the state; and I am inclined to believe, that when the language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin or their degradation. For what do terms used without' skill or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote, but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servitude? On the contrary, we have never heard of any people or state which has not flourished in some degree of prosperity, as long as their language has retained its elegance and its purity. Hence, my Beneditto, you may be induced to proceed in executing a work so useful to your country, and may clearly see what an honourable and permanent claim you will have to the approbation and the gratitude of your fellowcitizens. Thus much I have said, not to make you acquainted with that of which you were ignorant, but because I was persuaded that you are more intent on serving your country than in considering the just title which you have to its remuneration. I will now mention the favourable opportunity which you have, if you wish to embrace it, of obliging foreigners, among whom there is no one at all conspicuous for genius or for elegance, who does not make the Tuscan language his delight, and indeed consider it as an essential part of education, particularly if he be only slightly tinctured with the literature of Greece or of Rome. I, who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of my lips in the stream of those languages, but, in proportion to my years, have swallowed the most copious draughts, can yet sometimes retire with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others; nor has Athens itself been able to confine me to the transparent wave of its Ilissus, nor ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as to prevent my visiting with delight the stream of the Arno, and the hills of Fæsolæ. A stranger from the shores of the farthest ocean, I have now spent some days among you, and am become quite enamoured of your nation. |