the just title which you have to its remuneration. I will now mention the favourable opportunity which you have, if you wish to embrace it, of obliging foreigners, among whom there is no one at all conspicuous for genius or for elegance who does not make the Tuscan language his delight, and indeed consider it as an essential part of education, particularly if he be only slightly tinctured with the literature of Greece or of Rome. I, who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of my lips in the stream of those languages, but, in proportion to my years, have swallowed the most copious draughts, can yet sometimes retire with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others; nor has Athens itself been able to confine me to the transparent wave of its Ilissus, nor ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as to prevent my visiting with delight the stream of the Arno, and the hills of Fæsolæ. A stranger from the shores of the farthest ocean, I have now spent some days among you, and am become quite enamoured of your nation. Consider whether there were sufficient reason for my preference, that you may more readily remember what I so earnestly importune; that you would, for the sake of foreigners, add something to the grammar which you have begun, and indeed almost finished, concerning the right pronunciation of the language, and made as easy as the nature of the subject will admit. The other critics in your language seem to this day to have had no other design than to satisfy their own countrymen, without taking any concern about any body else. Though I think that they

would have provided better for their own reputation and for the glory of the Italian language, if they had delivered their precepts in such a manner as if it was for the interest of all men to learn their language. But, for all them, we might think that you Italians wished to confine your wisdom within the pomærium of the Alps. This praise, therefore, which no one has anticipated, will be entirely yours, immaculate and pure; nor will it be less so if you will be at the pains to point out who may justly claim the second rank of fame after the renowned chiefs of the Florentine literature; who excels in the dignity of tragedy, or the festivity and elegance of comedy; who has shown acuteness of remark or depth of reflection in his epistles or dialogues; to whom belongs the grandeur of the historic style. Thus it will be easy for the student to choose the best writers in every department; and if he wishes to extend his researches farther, he will know which way to take. Among the ancients you will in this respect find Cicero and Fabius deserving of your imitation; but I know not one of your own countrymen who does. But though I think as often as I have mentioned this subject that your courtesy and benignity have induced you to comply with my request, I am unwilling that those qualities should deprive you of the homage of a more polished and elaborate entreaty. For since your singular modesty is so apt to depreciate your own performances; the dignity of the subject, and my respect for you, will not suffer me to rate them below their worth. And it is certainly just that he who shows

the greatest facility in complying with a request, should not receive the less honour on account of his compliance. On this occasion I have employed the Latin rather than your own language, that I might in Latin confess my imperfect acquaintance with that language which I wish you by your precepts to embellish and adorn. And I hoped that if I invoked the venerable Latian mother, hoary with years, and crowned with the respect of ages, to plead the cause of her daughter, I should give to my request a force and authority which nothing could resist. Adieu.

Florence, Sept. 10, 1638.

IX.

TO LUKE HOLSTEIN, in the Vatican at Rome.

THOUGH in my passage through Italy, many persons have honoured me with singular and memorable proofs of their civility and friendship, yet on so short an acquaintance I know not whether I can truly say that any one ever gave me stronger marks of his regard than yourself. For, when I went to visit you in the Vatican, though I was not at all known to you, except perhaps from the incidental mention of Alexander Cherion, you received me with the utmost affability and kindness. You afterwards obligingly admitted me into the Museum, you permitted me to see the precious repository of literature, and many Greek MSS. adorned with your own observations; some of which have never yet seen the light, but seem, like the spirits in Virgil,

In a green valley the pent spirits lay,
Impatient to behold the realms of day,

to demand the parturient labours of the press. Some of them you have already published, which are greedily received by the learned. You presented me with copies of these on my departure. And I cannot but impute it to your kind mention of me to the noble Cardinal Francisco Barberino, that at a grand musical entertainment which he gave, he waited for me at the door, sought me out among the crowd, took me by the hand, and introduced me into the palace with every mark of the most flattering distinction. When I went the next day to render him my acknowledgments for this his gracious condescension, it was you who obtained me an interview, in which I experienced a degree of civility and kindness greater than I had any reason to expect from a person of his high dignity and character. I know not, most learned Holstein, whether I am the only Englishman to whom you have shown so much friendship and regard, or whether you are led to show the same to all my countrymen, from a recollection of the three years which you passed at the university of Oxford. If this be the case, you generously pay to our dear England the fees of her education; and you both deserve the grateful acknowledgments of each individual in particular, and of our country in general. But if this distinction was shown exclusively to me, if you selected me as worthy of your friendship, I congratulate myself on your preference, while I think your candour greater than my desert. I strenu

ously urged my friends, according to your instructions, to inspect the Codex Mediceus; though they have at present but little hope of being able to do it. For in that library nothing can be transcribed, nor even a pen put to paper, without permission being previously obtained; but they say that there is at Rome one John Baptista Donio, who is daily expected at Florence, where he has been invited to read lectures on the Greek language, and by whom you may easily obtain the object of your wishes. It would indeed have been far more grateful to me if I could have been at all instrumental in promoting those honourable and illustrious pursuits in which you are engaged; and which it behoves all men, on all occasions, and in all circumstances, to promote. I add that you will lay me under new obligations if you will express my warmest acknowledgments, and my most respectful compliments, to the most noble Cardinal, whose great virtues, and whose honest zeal, so favourable to the encouragement of all the liberal arts, are the constant objects of my admiration. Nor can I look without reverence on that mild, and if I may so speak, that lowly, loftiness of mind, which is exalted by its own humiliation, and to which we may apply a verse in the Ceres of Callimachus,

Ι'θματα μαν χέρσω κεφαλαδε ̓ οἱ άπτετ ̓ ὀλύμπω.
On th' earth he treads, but to the heavens he soars.

His conduct may serve to show other princes that a forbidding superciliousness and a dazzling parade power are quite incompatible with real magna

of