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not only related what I saw of their present condition, but so far as convenience might permit, presented a brief view of the former estates and first antiquities of those people and countries: thence to draw a right image of the frailty of man, the mutability of whatsoever is worldly, and assurance that, as there is nothing unchangeable saving God, so nothing stable but by his grace and protection.

WILLIAM LITHGOW, a Scotchman, and contemorary with Sandys, traversed on foot, many European, Asiatic, and African countries. He was one of those tourists, now so numerous, who travel from a love of adventure, without having any scientific or literary object in view. According to his own statements, he walked more than thirty-six thousand miles; and so decidedly did he prefer this mode of travelling, that, even when the use of a carriage was offered to him, he declined to avail himself of the accommodation. His narrative was published in London, in 1640, and one of the principal adventures which it contains, occurred at Malaga, in Spain, where he was arrested as an English spy, and committed to prison. The details which he gives of his sufferings while in confinement, and the tortures applied to him in view of exacting a confession, are such as to cause humanity to sicken. Having been at length released by some English residents at Malaga, to whom his situation accidentally became known, he was sent to London by sea, and afterward sent, at the expense of king James, to Bath, where he remained, for more than six months, endeavoring to recruit his shattered frame. Lithgow died in 1640, having previously made several fruitless attempts, through the House of Lords, to obtain redress for his sufferings. As an extract from this writer's travels would not present, in a literary view, any variety, we shall not offer one.

Lecture the Eighteenth.

JAMES HOWELL-THOMAS HERBERT-WILLIAM CAMDEN-JOHN SPEED-SIR HENRY SPELMAN-ROBERT COLTON-THOMAS MAY-JOHN HEYWARD-RICHARD KNOLLES -ARTHUR WILSON-RICHARD BAKER-THOMAS HOBBES-EDWARD HERBERT.

TRA

RAVELLERS' narratives, and descriptions of voyages and other adventures, form so important a part of the literature of the period at present under consideration, that to them we devoted most of the last lecture. To this class of writers Howell and Herbert also, the next authors to be noticed, belong.

JAMES HOWELL, one of the most intelligent travellers and pleasing miscellaneous writers of the early part of the seventeenth century, was the son of the Reverend Thomas Howell, and was born at Abernaut, Carmarthenshire, in 1596. He commenced his education at the free school in Hereford, and after thorough preparation, passed thence to Jesus College, Oxford, where he remained until 1613, when he took his bachelor's degree. Howell's circumstances being now such as to require him to depend upon his own future exertions for success in life, he repaired to London in search of employment. He had not been in London long before Sir Robert Mansel obtained for him the appointment of steward to a patent-glass manufactory, in which capacity he went abroad in 1619, to procure materials, and engage new and skillful workmen. In the course of his travels, which lasted till 1621, he visited many commercial towns in Holland, Flanders, France, Spain, and Italy; and, being of an acute and inquiring mind, laid up a great store of useful observations on men and manners, besides acquiring so extensive a knowledge of modern languages that it was henceforth his boast, 'that he could offer each successive daily prayer during the week in a different language, and on Sunday, pray in seven.' His connection with the glass company ceased soon after his return to England, and he visited France again, in the following year, as travelling companion of a young nobleman. In the latter part of the year 1622, Howell was sent to Spain, as agent for the recovery of an English vessel which had been seized at Sardinia, on a

charge of smuggling; but all hope of obtaining redress being destroyed by the breaking off of the proposed marriage of Prince Charles with the Infanta, he, after two years' absence, returned to England. In 1623, while Howell was abroad on this mission, he was chosen fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, upon the new foundation of Sir Eubule Theloal; and in his letter of thanks to that gentleman, he remarks that he will reserve his fellowship, and lay it by as a good warm garment against rough weather, if any fall on him.' Howell's next appointment was that of secretary to lord Scrope, afterward earl of Sunderland, who had been made president of the north. This posi tion brought him to York; and while he resided there, the corporation of Richmond, without any solicitation on his part, and against several competitors, chose him one of their representatives in the parliament of 1627. He next attached himself to the Earl of Leicester, and when that nobleman was sent, in 1632, as English ambassador to the court of Denmark, he accompanied him to Copenhagen as his secretary. After this, Howell's situation was, for some years, uncertain and embarrassed. At length, however, having meantime complimented Charles the First in two small poems, he obtained, in 1640, the clerkship of the council-an important appointment, but of brief continuance, as, three years afterward, he was imprisoned in the Fleet, by order of a committee of parliament. Here he remained till after the king's death, supporting himself by translating some works, and composing others. At the Restoration he became historiographerroyal, being the first who ever enjoyed that title; and continued his literary avocations till his death, which occurred in the month of November, 1666.

This lively and sensible writer was the author of more than forty publica tions; none of which, however, are now generally read, excepting his Familiar Letters, first published in 1643, and considered to be the earliest specimen of epistolary literature in the language. The letters are dated from various places at home and abroad; and though some of them are supposed to have been compiled from memory while the author was in the Fleet prison, yet the greater number seem to bear sufficient internal evidence of having been written at the times and places indicated. His remarks upon the leading events and characters of that period, as well as the animating accounts given of what he saw in foreign countries, contribute to render the work one of permanent interest and value. Of these letters we present the following specimen :

TO CAPTAIN THOMAS B.

Noble Captain,-Yours of the 1st of March was delivered me by Sir Richard Scot, and I hold it no profanation of this Sunday evening, considering the quality of my subject, and having (I thank God for it) performed all church duties, to employ some hours to meditate on you, and send you this friendly salute, though I confess in an unusual monitory way. My dear Captain, I love you perfectly well; I love both your person and parts, which are not vulgar; I am in love with your disposition, which is generous, and I verily think that you were never guilty of any pusillanimous act in your life. Nor is this love of mine conferred upon you gratis, but you may

challenge it as your due, and by way of correspondence, in regard of those thousand convincing evidences you have given me of yours to me, which ascertain me that you take me for a true friend. Now, I am of the number of those that had rather commend the virtue of an enemy than soothe the vices of a friend; for your own particular, if your parts of virtue and your infirmities were cast into a balance, I know the first would much outpoise the other; yet give me leave to tell you that there is one frailty, or rather ill-favoured custom, that reigns in you, which weighs much; it is a humour of swearing in all your discourses, and they are not slight but deep far-fetched oaths that you are wont to rap out, which you use as flowers of rhetoric to enforce a faith upon the hearers, who believe you never the more; and you use this in cold blood when you are not provoked, which makes the humour far more dangerous. I know many (and I cannot say I myself am free from it, God forgive me), that, being transported with choler, and as it were, made drunk with passion by some sudden provoking accident, or extreme ill-fortune at play, will let fall oaths and deep protestations; but to belch out, and send forth, as it were, whole volleys of oaths and curses in a calm humour, to verify every trivial discourse, is a thing of horror. I knew a king that, being crossed in his game, would amongst his oaths fall on the ground, and bite the very earth in the rough of his passion; I heard of another king, (Henry IV. of France,) that in his highest distemper would swear but 'Ventre de Saint Gris,' [ By the belly of St. Gris;'] I heard of an Italian, that, having been much accustomed to blaspheme, was weaned from it by a pretty wile, for, having been one night at play, and lost all his money, after many execrable oaths, and having offered money to another to go out to face heaven and defy God, he threw himself upon a bed hard by, and there fell asleep. The other gamesters played on still, and finding that he was fast asleep, they put out the candles, and made semblance to play on still; they fell a wrangling, and spoke so loud that he awaked; he hearing them play on still, fell a rubbing his eyes, and his conscience presently prompted him that he was struck blind, and that God's judgment had deservedly fallen down upon him for his blasphemies, and so he fell to sigh and weep pitifully; a ghostly father was sent for, who undertook to do some acts of penance for him, if he would make a vow never to play again or blaspheme, which he did; and so the candles were lighted again, which he thought were burning all the while; so he became a perfect convert. I could wish this letter might produce the same effect in you. There is a strong text, that the curse of heaven hangs always over the dwelling of the swearer, and you have more fearful examples of miraculous judgments in this particular, than of any other sin.

There is a little town in Languedoc, in France, that hath a multitude of the pictures of the Virgin Mary up and down; but she is made to carry Christ in her right arm, contrary to the ordinary custom, and the reason they told me was this, that two gamesters being at play, and one having lost all his money, and bolted out many blasphemies, he gave a deep oath, that that jade upon the wall, meaning the picture of the Blessed Virgin, was the cause of his ill luck; hereupon the child removed imperceptibly from the left arm to the right, and the man fell stark dumb ever after; thus went the tradition there. This makes me think upon the Lady Southwell's news from Utopia, that he who sweareth when he playeth at dice, may challenge his damnation by way of purchase. This infandous custom of swearing, I observe, reigns in England lately, more than anywhere else; though a German in his highest puff of passion swear a hundred thousand sacraments, the Italian, by * the French by God's death, the Spaniard by his flesh, the Welshman by his sweat, the Irishman by his five wounds, though the Scot commonly bids the devil ha'e his soul, yet, for variety of oaths, the English roarers put down all. Consider well what a dangerous thing it is to tear in pieces that dreadful name, which makes the vast fabric of the world to tremble, that holy name wherein the whole hierarchy of heaven doth triumph, that blissful name, wherein consists the fullness of all felicity. I know

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