good men be discouraged. Sir, you are of a greater mind than not to despise this. Fa pùr bene e lascia dire. But I run into extravagancies, and I beseech you to pardon my zeal, and all other the impertinencies of, Sir, your, &c. Thomas Barlow to John Evelyn. Queen's College, 21 June, 1664. SIR, I received by the hands of my worthy friend Dr. Wilkins the last part of the Mystery of Jesuitism; now not more a Mystery; being so well discovered to the world by the pious pains of the Jansenists and yourself. I return (all I am at present able) my hearty thanks and by you well deserved gratitude. I confess I wonder at your goodness and to me continued kindness, seeing upon a strict search, I can find no motive or merit in myself to deserve it, nor any reason to incline you to so much and so little deserved kindness, unless you make your own former favours obligations for future, and resolve to continue kind because you have been so. I am exceedingly pleased with those discoveries of the prodigious villainies and atheism of the Jesuits, who really are the wild fanatics of the Romish faction; who have been (so much as in them lay) the bane of truth and true piety for this last age, and probably may be the ruin of the Roman Idol (the Pope) and bring him low, as he deserves, while they impiously indeavour to set him up too high. Sure I am that Idol hath and will have fewer worshippers. I perceive by many letters from Paris and other parts of France that the sober French Catholics are strangely alarmed by the extravagant principles and practices of the Jesuits; that they seek after, and read diligently, reformed authors to find means against the new heresy, by which they may happily come to discover more truth than they looked for, and at last find (which is most true), that since the Apostles left the world, no book but the Bible nor any definitions are infallible. Pray pardon this impertinent rude scribble of, Sir, Your exceedingly obliged and thankful servant, John Evelyn to Mr. Sprat," Chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham, afterwards Bishop of Rochester." Sayes-Court, 31 Octob. 1664. UPON receipt of the Doctor's letter, and the hint of your design, which I received at Oxford in my return. from Cornbury, I summoned such scattered notices as I had, and which I thought might possibly serve you in some particulars relating to the person and condition of Sorbiere. His birth was in Orange, where he was the son of a Protestant, a very indigent and poor man-but however making a shift to give him some education as to letters. He designed him for a minister, and procured him to be pedagogue to a cadet of Mons' le Compte de la Suze, in whose family he lived easily enough, till being at length discovered to be a rampant Socinian, he was discharged of employment, but in revenge whereof ('tis reported) he turned apostate, and renounced his religion, which had been hitherto Huguenot. I forgot to tell you that before this he obtained to be made a schoolmaster to one of the classes in that city; but that promotion was likewise quickly taken from him upon the former suspicion. He has passed through a thousand shapes to ingratiate himself in the world; and after having been an Aristarchus, physician (or rather mountebank), philosopher, critic, and politician (to which last he thought himself worthily arrived by a version of some heterodox pieces of Mr. Hobbes), the late Cardinal Mazarin bestowed on him a pitiful canonicat at Avignon worth about 200 crowns per ann., which being of our money almost 50 pounds, is hardly the salary of an ordinary curate. But for this yet he underwent the basest drudgery of a sycophant in flattering the Cardinal upon all occasions the most sordidly to be imagined, as where I can show you him speaking of this fourb for one of the most learned persons of the age. He styles himself Historiograph du Roy, the mighty meed of the commonest Gazetteer, as that of Conseiller du Roy is of every trifling pettifoger, This letter alludes to Mons. Sorbiere's "Voyage to England," then just published; and also to "Observations" on the same Voyage by Dr. Sprat. which is in France a very despicable qualification. It is certain that by some servile intelligences he made shift to screw himself into the acquaintance of many persons of quality, at whose tables he fed, and where he entertained them with his impertinencies. A great favourite of our late republic he was, or rather of the villainy of Cromwell, whose expedition at sea against Holland he infinitely extols, with a prediction of his future glorious achievements, to be seen in an epistle of his to Mons. de Courcelles, 1652, and upon other occasions: not to omit his inciting of our Roman Catholics to improve their condition under his Majesty by some effort, which smells of a rebel spirit, even in this relation which he presumes to dedicate to the French King. Thus as to the person of that man and his communications for the rest in which this audacious delator sufficiently exposes himself to your mercy, I forbear to add; unless it be to put you in mind of what occurs to me in relation to your vindicating my Lord Chancellor, whom all the world knows he has most injuriously vilified; and you have an ample field to proceed on, by comparing his birth and education with that of his Cardinal Patron, whom he so excessively magnifies, and even makes a demigod. My Lord Chancellor' is a branch of that ancient and honourable family of Norbery in Cheshire, as it is celebrated by Mr. Camden in his Britannia, and so famous for the long robe, that an uncle's son of his present Lordship came to be no less a man than Lord Chief Justice of England not long since, which dignity runs parallel with their Premier President de Paris, one of the most considerable charges of that kingdom. Nor has this person ascended to this deserved eminency without great and signal merits, having passed through so many superior offices; as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Privy Councillor, Ambassador Extraordinary, &c., not to mention his early engagement with his Majesty Charles I. in a period of so great defection; the divers weighty affaires he has successfully managed, fidelity to the present King, his eloquent tongue, dexterous and happy pen, facetious conversation 1 Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon. VOL. III. L and obliging nature, all of them the products of a free and ingenious education, which was both at the University and Inns of Court, now crowned with an experience and address so consummate, that it were impossible this satirist should have hit on a more unreasonable mistake, than when he refined upon the qualifications of this illustrious Minister. You will meet in a certain letter of the old King's to his consort the Queen Mother, that his Majesty long since had him in his thoughts for Secretary of State. But these topics were infinite; and 'tis no wonder that he should thus defame a Chancellor, who has been so bold as to dare to censure a crowned head, and to call in question the procedure of the King of Denmark about the affair of Cornlitz Ulefield, for which Monsieur l'Abbé de Palmyre has perstringed him to that purpose, and published it in French, together with some observations of an English Gentleman upon the relation of Sorbiere, in which those unworthy and malicious imputations of lacheté and baseness in your nation is perfectly vindicated, even by citations only of their own French authors, as namely André du Chesney, Antoine du Verdier, Philip de Commines, and others of no mean name and estimation amongst their most impartial historianssufficient to assert the courage and gallantry of the English, without mentioning the brave impressions the nation has made even into the very bowels of their country, which after the winning of several signal battles, they kept in subjection some hundreds of years. You cannot escape the like choice which he made by which to judge and pronounce of the worth of English books, by the learned collection he carried over with him of the works of that thrice noble Marchioness, no more than of his experience of the English diet by the pottage he ate at my Lord of Devonshire's: but it is much after the rate of his other observations; or else he had not passed so desultorily our Universities and the Navy, with a thousand other particulars worthy the notice and not to be excused 1 Count Cornelius Ulefield Oxenstiern, Danish Prime Minister. * Margaret Cavendish, Marchioness, afterwards Duchess of Newcastle, a very voluminous writer, both in verse and prose. There are fourteen volumes of her works in thin folios-greater favourites with Charles Lamb two hundred years after her Grace's death, than they appear to have been with Evelyn in her lifetime. in one pretending to make relations; to omit his subtle reflections on matters of state, and meddling with things he had nothing to do with: such as were those false and presumptuous suggestions of his that the Presbyterians were forsooth the sole restorers of the King to his throne; and the palpable ignorance of our Historiograph Royal where he pretends to render an account of divers ancient passages relating to the English Chronicle, and the jurisdiction and legislative power of Parliaments, which he mingles and compares with that of Kings, to celebrate and qualify his politics: upon all which you have infinite advantages. It is true he was civilly received by the Royal Society, as a person who had recommended himself to them by pretending he was secretary to an assembly of learned men formerly meeting at Mons'. Monmors at Paris; 80 as he had been plainly barbarous not to have acknowledged it by the mention he makes; whiles those who better know whose principles the Mushroom' is addicted to, must needs suspect his integrity; since there lives not on the earth a person who has more disobliged it. Sir, I am, &c. P.S.-I know not how you may have design'd to publish your reflections upon this disingenuous Traveller; but it would certainly be most communicative and effectual in Latin, the other particular of his relation coming only to those who understand the French, in which language it is already going to be printed.. SIB, John Evelyn to the Honourable Robert Boyle. Sayes-Court, Nov. 23, 1664. The honour you design me by making use of that trifle which you were lately pleased to command an account of, is so much greater than it pretends to merit, as indeed it is far short of being worthy your acceptance: but if by any service of mine in that other business, I may hope to contribute to an effect the most agreeable to your excellent and pious nature, it shall not be my reproach that I did not my best endeavour to oblige it. I do every day both at 1 Mr. Hobbes. |
