a hundred and thirty florins, which I think is enough to purchase the mountain of that name. But such is the present rage for typographical luxury, that the furniture of a library hardly costs less than that of a villa. Paintings and engravings are of little use to me. While I roll my blind eyes about the world, I fear lest I should seem to lament the privation of sight in proportion to the exorbitance of the price for which I should have purchased the book. Do you endeavour to learn in how many volumes the entire work is contained; and of the two editions, whether that of Blaeu or Janson be the more accurate and complete. This I hope rather to hear verbally from yourself on your return, which will soon take place, than to trouble you to give me the information by another letter. In the meantime adieu, and return as soon as possible.

Westminster, Nov. 8, 1656.

XXI.

To the accomplished EMERIC BIGOT.

I was highly gratified by the distinguished marks of attention which you paid me on coming into England, and this gratification is considerably increased by your kind epistolary inquiries after so long an interval. The favourable opinions of others might have prompted your first visit, but you would hardly have taken the trouble to write if you had not been prompted by your own judgment or benevolence. Hence I think I may justly congratu

late myself; many have been celebrated for their compositions whose common conversation and intercourse have betrayed no marks of sublimity or genius. But, as far as possible, I will endeavour to seem equal in thought and speech to what I have well written, if I have written any thing well; and while I add to the dignity of what I have written, I will, at the same time, derive from my writings a greater splendour of reputation. Thus I shall not seem to have borrowed the excellence of my literary compositions from others so much as to have drawn it pure and unmingled from the resources of my own mind and the force of my own conceptions. It gives me pleasure that you are convinced of the tranquillity which I possess under this afflicting privation of sight, as well as of the civility and kindness with which I receive those who visit me from other countries. And indeed why should I not submit with complacency to this loss of sight, which seems only withdrawn from the body without, to increase the sight of the mind within. Hence books have not incurred my resentment, nor do I intermit the study of books, though they have inflicted so heayy a penalty on me for my attachment; the example of Telephus king of Mysia, who did not refuse to receive a cure from the same weapon by which he had been wounded, admonished me not to be so morose. With respect to the book which you have concerning the mode of holding parliaments, I have taken care to have the passages which were marked, either amended, or if they were doubtful, confirmed by a MS. of the illustrious Lord

Bradshaw; and from one of the Cotton MSS. as you will perceive from the paper which I have returned. I sent some one to inquire of the keeper of the records in the Tower, who is my intimate friend, whether the original of this work be extant in that collection, and he replied that there was no copy in the repository. I am reciprocally obliged to you for your assistance in procuring me books. My Byzantine History wants Theophanis Chronographia Græc. Lat. fol. Constant. Manassis Breviarium Historicum, and Codini Excerpta de Antiquit. C. P. Græc. Lat. fol. Anastasii Bibliothecarii Hist. and Vitæ Rom. Pontific. fol. to which I beg you to add Michael Glycas and John Sinnam, and the continuator of Anna Comnena, if they have already issued from the same press. I need not request you to purchase them as cheap as possible. There is no occasion to do this to a man of your discretion, and the price of those books is fixed and known to all. Dr. Stuppe has undertook to pay you the money, and to get them conveyed in the most commodious way. Accept my best wishes. Adieu.

Westminster, March 24, 1658.

XXII.

To the noble Youth, RICHARD Jones.

I DID not receive your letter till some time after it was written; it lay fifteen days at your mother's. With pleasure I perceive the emotions of your attachment and your gratitude. I have never ceased

to promote the culture of your genius, and to justify the favourable opinion which your excellent mother entertains of me, and the confidence she places in me, by benevolence the most pure and counsels the most sincere. In that agreeable and healthy spot, to which you have retired, there are books enough for the purposes of academical education. If beauty of situation contributed as much to improve the wit of the inhabitants as it does to please the eye, the felicity of that place would be complete. The library there is rich in books, but unless the minds of the students be improved by a more rational mode of education, it may better deserve the name of a book-repository than of a library. You justly acknowledge that all these helps to learning should be associated with a taste for literature, and with diligence in the cultivation. Take care I may never have occasion to blame you for deviating from that opinion. And this you will readily avoid if you will diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the accomplished Henry Oldenburgh, your associate and friend. Adieu, my dearest Richard, and let me incite you, like another Timothy, to the practice of virtue and of piety, by the example of your mother, who is the best of women.

Westminster.

XXIII.

To the illustrious LORD HEnry de Bras.

I SEE, my lord, that you, unlike most of our modern youth who pass through foreign countries, wisely travel, like the ancient philosophers, for the sake of completing your juvenile studies, and of picking up knowledge wherever it may be found. Though as often as I consider the excellence of what you write you appear to me to have gone among foreigners not so much for the sake of procuring erudition yourself, as of imparting it to others, and rather to exchange than to purchase a stock of literature. I wish it were as easy for me in every way to promote the increase of your knowledge and the improvement of your intellect, as it is pleasing and flattering to me to have that assistance requested by talents and genius like yours. I have never attempted, and I should never dare to attempt, to solve those difficulties as you request, which seem to have cast a cloud over the writers of history for so many ages. Of Sallust I will speak as you desire without any hesitation or reserve. I prefer him to any of the Latin historians; which was also the general opinion of the ancients. Your favourite Tacitus deserves his meed of praise; but his highest praise, in my opinion, consists in his having imitated Sallust with all his might By my conversation with you on this subject I seem, as far as I can guess from your letter, to have inspired you with sentiments very similar to my own, concerning that