only for his profession and success, but for those other excellent talents which were ever encouraged by your free and generous communications. And in this I serve myself also, by taking the occasion to present the most humble service of a now old acquaintance, begun long since abroad, and cultivated ever since by the continuance of your friendship through many revolutions. I frequently call to mind the many bright and happy moments we have passed together at Rome and other places, in viewing and contemplating the entertainments of travellers who go not abroad to count steeples, but to improve themselves. I wish I could say of myself so as you did; but whenever I think of the agreeable toil we took among the ruins and antiquities, to admire the superb buildings, visit the cabinets and curiosities of the virtuosi, the sweet walks by the banks of the Tiber, the Via Flaminia, the gardens and villas of that glorious city, I call back the time, and, methinks growing young again, the opera we saw at Venice comes into my fancy, and I am ready to sing, Gioconda Gioretri-memoria sola tù-con ramento mil fu-spesso spesso vien a rapir mi, e qual che si sia ancor ringiovenir mi. You remember, Sir, the rest, and we are both near the conclusion, hai che non torni, non torni piu-mo-ri-bondo. Forgive me, Sir, this transport; and, when this gentleman takes his leave of you, permit me to beg your pardon also for the presumption I am guilty of, in obtruding a Discourse of Medals on one who is so great a master and so knowing, and from whose example I sometimes diverted to that study. 'Tis now near fifty years, &c.1 GOOD SIR, Archbishop Tenison to John Evelyn. November 17, 1698. Mr. Fleetwood, after some deliberation, has thought fit to decline the preaching at Mr. Boyle's lecture, thinking that the fatigue of it may not well consist with his health. One of the next to him in the city, the esteemed of all, is 1 The rest of this letter, which is nearly the same as the preceding letter to Dr. Godolphin, need not be given. Mr. Bradford, minister of Bow church. Him Sir Henry Ashurst knows, and will elect, if you and I will join with him. I have told him I will upon my certain knowledge of the person, who is an excellent scholar and a very upright discreet man: I therefore desire your concurrence. I am of opinion that we should oppose Sir J. Rothem's taking anything for the diploma, it being a thing of no good report: the preacher can be furnished with a copy without his help: if he gives his clerk for writing it a crown or so, perhaps that may be dispensed with. Upon further consideration I am confirmed in my opinion that we have strained Mr. Boyle's words by admitting any who are not city ministers, or such as are within the bills of mortality. I hope I may enjoy your good company sometime this month, either at Lambeth or at the Cockpit. GOOD SIR, I am your affectionate friend, THOMAS CANtuar. Archbishop Tenison to John Evelyn. November 28, 1698. The time for choosing a preacher at Mr. Boyle's lecture is so nigh, that if we pass over a few days without determining about the person, the preacher will have no time to prepare for the first sermon. I did lately recommend to you Mr. Bradford of Bow, a very excellent man and one well known to Sir H. Ashurst. I have heard nothing in answer and fear the messenger may have made some mistake. Pray, Sir, let me this day either hear from you by letter, or see me at dinner at Lambeth. I am at the Cockpit and shall be so till one o'clock, and can carry you over in my barge. I am, Sir, your assured friend, THOMAS CANTUAR. John Evelyn to Archdeacon Nicolson (afterwards 10th November 1699. After thanking him for the tenderness and civility with which he had mentioned his book on Medals, Evelyn proceeds: You recommend the study of our own municipal laws and home antiquities, most becoming an Englishman, and lover of his country, which you have skilfully derived from the fountain, and tracked through all those windings and meanders which rendered the study deserted as dull and impolite, unless by those who, attracted by more sordid considerations, submitted to a fatigue which filled indeed their purses for the noise they made at Westminster Hall, whilst their heads were empty, even of that to which they seemed to devote themselves. Did our Inns of Court students come a little better grounded in ethics, and with some entrance into the civil law, such an history as you are meditating would lead them on with delight, and enable them to discover and penetrate into the grounds of natural justice and human prudence, and furnish them with matter to adorn their pleadings, before they wholly gave themselves up to learn to wrangle, and the arts of illaqueation, and not make such haste to precedents, customs, and commonplaces. By reading good history, they would come to understand how governments have been settled by conquest, transplantations, colonies, or garrisons, through all vicissi tudes and revolutions, from east to west, from the first monarchy to the last; how laws have been established, and for what reason changed and altered; whence our holding by knight's service; and whether feudal laws have been derived from Saxon or Norman. 'Tis pity young gentlemen should meet with so little of this in the course of their academic studies, at least if it continue as in my time, when they were brought up to dispute on dry questions which nauseate generous spirits, and to discourse of things before they are furnished with mediums, and so return home rather with the learning of a Benedictine Monk (full of school cant) than of such useful knowledge as would enable them to a dexterity in solving cases, how intricate soever, by analytics, and so much of algebra as teaches to draw consequences and detect parallogisms and fallacies, which were the true use of logic, and which you give hopes our universities are now designing. To this I would add the improvement of the more ornate and graceful manner of speaking upon occasion. The fruit of such an education would not only grace and furnish the bar with excellent lawyers, but the nation with able persons fit for any honourable employment, to serve and speak in Parliaments and in councils; give us good magistrates and justices for reference at home in the country'; able ambassadors and orators abroad; in a word, qualified patriots and pillars of state, in which this age does not, I fear, abound. In the meantime what preference may be given to our constitutions I dare not determine; but as I believe ethics and the civil law were the natural mother of all good laws, so I have been told that the best lawyers of England were heretofore wont to mix their studies together with them, but which are at present so rarely cultivated, that those who pass forsooth for great sages and oracles therein are not only shamefully defective, but even in the feudal and our own. You are speaking, Sir, of records, but who are they among this multitude even of the coif, who either study or vouchsafe to defile their fingers with any dust, save what is yellow? or know anything of records save what, upon occasion, they lap out of Sir Edward Coke's basin, and some few others? The thirst of gain takes up their whole man like our English painters, who, greedy of getting present money for their work, seldom arrive at any farther excellency in the art than face-painting, and have no skill in perspective, symmetry, the principles of design, or dare undertake to paint history. Upon all these considerations, then, I cannot but presage the great advantage your excellent book, and such an history, may produce, when our young gentlemen shall ripen their studies by those excellent methods. At least there will not likely appear such swarms and regions of obstreperous lawyers as yearly emerge out of our London seminaries, omnium doctorum indoctissimum genus (for the most part) as Erasmus truly styles them. Concerning the Paper Office, I wish those instruments and state arcana had been as faithfully and constantly transmitted to that useful magazine as they ought; but though Sir Joseph Williamson took pains to reduce things into some order, so miserably had they been neglected and rifled during the Rebellion, that, at the Restoration of Charles II., such were the defects, that they were as far to seek for precedents, authentic and original treaties, negotiations, and other transactions formerly made with foreign states and princes, despatches and instructions to ambassadors, as if there had never before been any correspondence abroad. How that office stands at present I know not; but this I do know, that the abundance of those despatches and papers you mention, and which ought to centre there, have been carried away both by the secretaries of state themselves (when either dismissed or dying, and by ambassadors and other ministers when recalled) into the country, and left to their heirs as honourable marks of their ancestors' employments. Of this sort I had formerly divers considerable bundles concerning transactions of state during the ministry of the great Earl of Leicester, all the reign of Queen Elizabeth, containing divers original letters from the Queen herself, from Mary Queen of Scots, Charles IX. and Henry IV. of France, Maximilian the second Emperor, Duke of Norfolk, James Stewart, Regent of Scotland, Marquis of Montrose, Sir William Throckmorton, Randolfe, Sir Francis Walsingham (whom you mention), Secretary Cecil, Mr. Barnaby, Sir J. Hawkins, Drake, Fenton, Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, Edwin, Bishop of London, the Bishop of Winchester, Bishop Hooper, &c. From abroad-Tremelius and other Protestant Divines; Parquiou, Spinola, Ubaldino, and other commanders, with divers Italian princes. And of ladiesthe Lady Mary Grey, Cecilia, Princess of Sweden, Ann, Countess of Oldenburgh, the Duchess of Somerset, and a world more. But what most of all, and still afflicts me, those letters and papers of the Queen of Scots, originals and written with her own hand to Queen Elizabeth, and Earl of Leicester, before and during her imprisonment, which I furnished to Dr. Burnet (now Bishop of Salisbury), some of which being printed in his "History of the Reformation," those, and others with them, are pretended to |