Thomas Barlow* to John Evelyn. 25 March, 1658. SIR, Your kindness to the public and me, hath occasioned you the trouble of this letter. I understand by my friend Mr. Pett, that you have been pleased charitably to contribute some prints and a little book of drawings, (towards a design which he hath begun) for our library; this paper comes to kiss your hand and give you hearty thanks for your continued kindness to us; and withal to assure you that if there be any thing wherein I may serve you or any friend of yours here, be pleased to command, and as you may justly expect, so you shall be sure to find your commands willingly and cheerfully obeyed by, Sir, Your affectionate friend and servant, THOMAS BARLOW. P.S. We have no news here save a new Saxon Dictionary in the press, by Mr. Somner of Canterbury; and a new collection of many centuries of Arabic Proverbs, by Mr. Pocock. Jeremy Taylor to John Evelyn. HONOURED SIR, May 12, 1658. I return you many thanks for your care of my temporal affairs; I wish I may be able to give you as good account of my watchfulness for your service, as you have for your diligence to do me benefit. But concerning the thing itself, I am to give you this account. I like not the condition of being a lecturer under the dispose of another, nor to serve in my semicircle, where a Presbyterian and myself shall be like Castor and Pollux, the one up and the other down, which methinks is like worshipping the sun, and making him the deity, that we may be religious half the year, and every night serve another interest. Sir, the stipend is so inconsiderable, it will not pay the charge and trouble of removing myself and family. It is wholly arbitrary; for the triers may overthrow it; or the vicar * Dr. Barlow was now Warden of Queen's College, Oxford. may forbid it; or the subscribers may die, or grow weary, or poor, or be absent. I beseech you, Sir, pay my thanks to your friend, who had so much kindness for me as to intend my benefit. I think myself no less obliged to him and you, than if I had accepted it.* Sir, I am well pleased with the pious meditations and the extracts of a religious spirit which I read in your excellent letter. I can say nothing at present but this, that I hope in a short progression you will be wholly immerged in the delices and joys of religion; and as I perceive your relish and gust of the things of the world goes off continually, so you will be invested with new capacities, and entertained with new appetites, for in religion every new degree of love is a new appetite, as in the schools we say, every single angel does make a species, and differs more than numerically from an angel of the same order. Your question concerning interest hath in it no difficulty as you have prudently stated it. For in the case, you have only made yourself a merchant with them; only you take less, that you be secured, as you pay a fine to the Assurance Office. I am only to add this; you are neither directly nor collaterally to engage the debtor to pay more than is allowed by law. It is necessary that you employ your money some way for the advantage of your family. You may lawfully buy land, or traffic, or exchange it to your profit. You may do this by yourself or by another, and you may as well get something as he get more, and that as well by money as by land or goods, for one is as valuable in estimation of merchants, and of all the world as anything can be; and methinks no man should deny money to be valuable, that remembers, every man parts with what he hath for money: and as lands are of a price, then (when) they are sold for ever, and when they are parted with for a year, so is money: since the employment of it is apt to minister to gain as lands are to rent. Money and lands are equally the matter of increase; to both of them industry must (be) applied, or else the profit will cease; now as a tenant of lands may plough for me, * This letter refers to an offer made from Lord Conway to Taylor, through Evelyn, of an alternate lectureship in Lisburn (a small town in the county of Antrim), which, though here declined, he soon after, as will be seen, accepted. His next letter is dated from Ireland. so a tenant of money may go to sea and traffic for I understand that my Lord of Northumberland has some thoughts of sending his son, my Lord Percy, abroad to travel, and withal to allow him an appointment so noble and considerable, as does become his greatness, and the accomplishment of his education to the best improvement. My many years conversation abroad and relations there to persons of merit and quality, having afforded me several opportunities to consider of effects of this nature by the successes, when gentlemen of quality have been sent beyond the seas, resigned and concredited to the conduct of such as they call Governors, being for the greatest ingredient a pedantic sort of scholars, infinitely uninstructed for such an employment: my ambition to serve you by contributing to the designs of a person so illustrious, and worthy of the honour which I find you always bear towards his Lordship, hath created in me the confidence to request your advice and return upon these particulars. Whether my Lord persist still in his resolution? What equipage and honorarium my Lord does allow? and whether he has not yet pitched upon any man to accompany my young Lord? &c. Because I would, through your mediation, recommend to his Lordship a person of honour, address in Court, rare erudition, languages and credit: who, I think, would upon my representing of the proposition, be ready to serve my Lord in an affair of this importance. I shall add no more of the person, quum habeat in se, quæ quum tibi nota fuerint σVOTATIKŃTEρa Táσns èπσтоλs esse judicaberis: and because, in truth, all that I can say will be infinitely inferior to his merit; being a person of integrity, great experience and discretion; in a word, without reproach, and such as becomes my Lord to seek out, that he may render his son those honourable and decent advantages of the most refined conversations, things not to be encountered in a pension with a pedant -the education of most of our nobility abroad; which makes them return (I pronounce it with a blush) insolent and ignorant, debauched, and without the least tincture of those advantages to be hoped for through the prudent conduct of some brave man of parts, sober, active, and of universal address-in fine, such as the person I would. recommend, and the greatest Prince in Europe might emulate upon the like occasion: and therefore such a one, as I cannot presume would descend to my proposition for any person of our nation excepting my Lord of Northumberland alone, whose education of his son, I hear, has been of another strain and alloy, than that we have mentioned and such as will give countenance and honour to a person of his merit, character, and abilities. It is not enough that persons of my Lord Percy's quality be taught to dance, and to ride, to speak languages and wear his clothes with a good grace (which are the very shells of travel), but, besides all these, that he know men, customs, courts, and disciplines, and whatsoever superior excellencies the places afford, befitting a person of birth and noble impressions. This is, Sir, the fruit of travel: thus our incomparable Sidney was bred: and this, tanquam Minerva Phidia, sets the crown upon his perfections when a gallant man shall return with religion and courage, knowledge and modesty, without pedantry, without affectation, material and serious, to the contentment of his relations, the glory of his family, the star and ornament of his age. This is truly to give a citizen to his country. Youth is the seed-time in which the foundation of all noble things is to be laid; but it is made the field of repentance. For what can become more glorious than to be ignorant of nothing but of vice, which indeed has no solid existency, and therefore is nothing? And unless thus we cultivate our youth, and noblemen make wiser provisions for their educations abroad, above the vanity of talk, feather, and ribbon, the ordinary commerce and import of their wild per-errations, I despair of ever living to see a man truly noble indeed they may be called "My Lord;" titles and sounds are inferior trifles: but when virtue and blood are coincidents, they both add lustre and mutual excellencies. This is what my Lord takes care to secure to his son, what I foresee and augur of my noble Lord Percy, and of whom (though to me no otherwise known than by fame) may this be the least portion of his panegyric, whilst it concerns me only to testify, without design, my zeal for one whom I know you so highly value; quanto enim mihi carior est amicitia tua, tanto antiquior mihi esse debet cura, illam omnibus officiis testandi; which, Sir, is the product of this impertinency, and sole ambition of, Sir, your, &c. John Evelyn to his Cousin, Geo. Tuke, of Cressing Temple, in Essex. [Of this letter only a portion has been preserved, in which he speaks of his cousin's brother, Samuel Tuke,* having been made a proselyte to the Church of Rome.] Jan. 1658-9. For the rest, we must commit to Providence the success of times and mitigation of proselytical fervours; having for my own particular a very great charity for all who sincerely adore the blessed Jesus, our common and dear Saviour, as being full of hope that God (however the present zeal of some and the scandals taken by others at the instant afflictions of the Church of England may transport them) will at last compassionate our infirmities, clarify our judg ments, and make abatement for our ignorances, superstructures, passions and errors of corrupt times and interests, of which the Romish persuasion can no way acquit herself, whatever the present prosperity and secular polity may pretend. But God will make all things manifest in his own time; only let us possess ourselves in patience and charity; and this will cover a multitude of imperfections. * See Mrs. Evelyn's character of him in a letter to Lady Tuke on his death, dated Jan. 28, 1672. Sir Samuel Tuke, of Cressing Temple, in Essex, Bart., was a colonel in the royal service during the civil war, and afterwards, being one of those that attempted to form a body in Essex for King Charles, narrowly escaped with his life. In 1664 he married Mary Sheldon, one of the Queen's dressers, kinswoman to Lord Arundel, and died at Somerset House, Jan. 26, 1673. His son followed the fortunes of King James, and was killed at the battle of the Boyne. George Tuke, afterwards Sir George, is frequently referred to in the Diary. Soon after the Restoration he wrote a comedy (the Adventures of Five Hours, of which the plot was borrowed from Calderon) for the Duke's Theatre," which took so universally that it was acted for some weeks every day, and 'twas believed it would be worth to the comedians 400l. or 500l." "The plot was incomparable," says Evelyn, drily, "but the language stiff and formal." |