D'Ewes, Sir Thomas Hanmer of Hanmer, Sir William Paston, and the late Mr. Hervey, I find hardly any. That great lover of antiquity, Thomas Earl of Arundel, had a very rich collection as well of medals, as other intaglios, belonging to the cabinet he purchased of Daniel Nice at the cost of ten thousand pounds, which, with innumerable other rarities, have been scattered and squandered away by his Countess when she got that treasure to Amsterdam, whilst my Lord was in Italy, where he died. Abundance of them she bestowed also on the late unhappy Viscount Stafford, her beloved son; and such as remained, Lely, Wright, and the rest of the painters, panders and misses, have cheated the late Duke of Norfolk of. The same fate befel a noble collection of medals belonging to the then curious Sir Simon Fanshaw, of Ware Park; they were after his decease, thrown about the house (as that worthy gentleman his son, Sir Richard, Lord Ambassador in Spain, from whom I had the relation, has told me) for children to play at counter with: as were those elegant types of Sir Henry Savill's, at Eton, which that learned knight procured with great cost for his edition of St. Chrysostom; and as it commonly fares with such curiosities where the next heir is not a virtuoso. So vain a thing it is to set one's heart upon anything of this nature with that passion and mania, that insatiable earl whom I mentioned did, to the detriment of his estate and family; mediocria firma. The medals in our university libraries are not yet at all considerable, though Obadiah Walker were an industrious promoter of it, and not unskilful in them. Mr. Ralph Sheldon, of Weston, in Warwickshire, left a very handsome collection both of gold, silver, and copper, ancient and modern, part of which were bequeathed to a sister of my Lady Tukes, who not long since offered to have sold them. I brought M. Justell to see them, but they were much overvalued, and whether she have since disposed of them I never enquired. At present, I know of none who can show a better chosen set of medals than the Earl of Clarendon, to whose late father (after all this tedious parenthesis) I return, and have a mind to entertain you a while longer with what I had begun, where I spake of his purpose to furnish all the rooms of state and other apartments with the pictures of the most illustrious

of our nation, especially of his Lordship's time and acquaintance, and of divers before it. There were at full length, and as I doubt not but you well remember to have seen, the great Duke of Buckingham, the brave Sir Horace and Francis Vere, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, the great Earl of Leicester, Treasurer Buckhurst, Burleigh, Walsingham, Cecil, Lord Chancellor Bacon, Ellesmere, and I think all the late Chancellors and grave Judges in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, and her successors James and Charles the First. For there was Treasurer Weston, Cottington Duke Hamilton, the magnificent Earl of Carlisle, Earls of Carnarvon, Bristol, Holland, Lindsey, Northumberland, Kingston, and Southampton; Lords Falkland and Digby (I name them promiscuously as they come into my memory); and of Charles the Second, besides the Royal Family, the Dukes of Albemarle and Newcastle, Earls of Derby, Shrewsbury, St. Alban's, the brave Montrose, Sandwich, Manchester, &c. ; and of the coif, Sir Edward Coke, Judge Berkely, Bramston, Sir Orlando Bridgman, Geoffrey Palmer, Selden, Vaughan, Sir Robert Cotton, Dugdale, Mr. Camden, Mr. Hales of Eton. The Archbishops Abbot and Laud, Bishops Juxon, Sheldon, Morley, and Duppa: Dr. Sanderson, Brownrigg, Dr. Donne, Chillingworth, and several of the clergy, and others of the former and present age. For there were the pictures of Fisher, Fox, Sir Thomas More, Thomas Lord Cromwell, Dr. Nowel, &c. And what was most agreeable to his Lordship's general humour, old Chaucer, Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, who were both in one piece, Spenser, Mr. Waller, Cowley, Hudibras, which last he placed in the room where he used to eat and dine in public, most of which, if not all, are at the present at Cornbury in Oxfordshire; together with the library, which the present Earl has considerably improved, besides what books he has at Swallowfield not contemptible; and the manuscript copies of what concerns the Parliamentary Records, Journals and Transactions which I have heard both himself and the late unfortunate Earl of Essex, (who had also the same curiosity) affirm cost them 500l. transcribing and binding, and indeed furnish a pretty large room. To complete and encourage this noble and singular collection, I sent his Lordship a list of the names following: Cardinals Pole and Wolsey; Gard

ner Bishop of Winchester, Cranmer, Ridley, old Latimer, Bishop Usher, Mr. Hooker, Occham, Ripley, John Duns, Roger Bacon, Suisset, Tunstal Bishop of Durham (correspondent with Erasmus), Tompson, Venerable Bede, if at least to be met with in some ancient office or mass-book, where I have seen some of those old famous persons accurately painted either from the life or from copies: Sir John Cheke, Sir Tho. Bodley, Smith, Jo. Berkeley, Mr. Ascham, Sir Fulke Greville, Buchanan, Dr. Harvey, Gilbert, Mr. Oughtred, Sir Henry Wotton (I still recite them promis. cuously and not like a herald), Sir Francis Drake, Sir Richard Hawkins, Mr. Cavendish, Martin Frobisher, &c.: some of which his Lordship procured, but was; you know, interrupted, and after all this apparatus and grandeur, died an exile, and in the displeasure of his Majesty and others who envied his rise and fortune-tam breves Populi Romani amores! But I shall say no more of his ministry, and what was the pretence of his fall, than that we have lived to see great revolutions. The buffoons, parasites, pimps, and concubines, who supplanted him at Court, came to nothing not long after, and were as little pitied. 'Tis something yet too early to publish the names of his delators, for fear of one's teeth. But time will speak truth, and sure I am the event has made it good. Things were infinitely worse managed since his disgrace, and both their late Majesties fell into as pernicious counsels as ever Princes did: whilst, whatever my Lord Chancellor's skill, whether in law or politics, the offices of State and Justice were filled with men of old English honour and probity: less open bribery and ostentation; there was at least something of more gravity and form kept up (things, however railed at, necessary in Courts); magnificence and ancient hospitality in his Majesty's houses, more agreeable to the genius of this nation than the open and avowed luxury and profaneness which succeeded, à la mode de France, to which this favourite was a declared enemy upon my certain knowledge. There were indeed heinous matters laid to his charge, which I could never see proved; and you and I can tell of many that have fallen and yet suffer under that calamity.

But what's all this, you'll say, to our subject? Yes, he was a great lover at least of books, and furnished a very