صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

the nobleness of the structures, the exact humanity and civility of the inhabitants, the more polite and refined sort of language there than elsewhere. During the time of his stay here, which was about two months, he visited all the private academies of the city, which are places established for the improvement of wit and learning, and maintained a correspondence and perpetual friendship among gentlemen fitly qualified for such an institution, and such sort of academies there are in all or most of the most noted cities in Italy. Visiting these places, he was soon taken notice of by the most learned and ingenious of the nobility and the grand wits of Florence, who caressed him with all the honors and civilities imaginable, particularly Jacobo Gaddi, Carolo Dati, Antonio Francini, Frescobaldo, Cultellino, Banmatthei, and Clementillo; whereof Gaddi hath a large elegant Italian canzonet in his praise; Dati, a Latin epistle-both printed before his Latin poems, together with a Latin distich of the Marquis of Villa, and another of Selvaggi, and a Latin tetrastich of Giovanni Salsilli, a Roman.

From Florence he took his journey to Siena, from thence to Rome, where he was detained much about the same time he had been at Florence, as well by his desire of seeing all the rarities and antiquities of that most glorious and renowned city, as by the conversation of Lucas Holstenius, and other learned and ingenious men, who highly valued his acquaintance, and treated him with all possible respect.

From Rome he travelled to Naples, where he was introduced by a certain hermit, who accompanied him in his journey from Rome thither, into the knowledge of Giovanni Baptista Manso, Marquis of Villa, a Neapolitan by birth, a person of high nobility, virtue, and honor, to whom the famous Italian poet, Torquato Tasso, wrote his treatise de Amicitia; and, moreover, mentions him with great honor in that illustrious poem of his, entitled, Gierusalemme Liberata. This noble marquis received him with extraordinary respect and civility, and went with him himself to give him a sight of all that was of note and remark in the city, particularly the viceroy's palace, and was often in person to visit him at his lodgings. Moreover, this noble marquis honored him so far, as to make a Latin distich in his praise, as hath been already mentioned; which, being no less pithy than short, though already in print, it will not be unworth the while here to repeat.

Ut mens, forma, decor, facies, si* pietas, sic,
Non Anglus verum Hercle Angelus, ipse foret.

In return of this honor, and in gratitude for the many favors and *This word relates to his being a Protestant, not a Roman Catholic.

civilities received of him, he presented him, at his departure, with a large Latin eclogue, entitled Mansus, afterwards published among his Latin poems. The marquis, at his taking leave of him, gave him this compliment, that he would have done him many more offices of kindness and civility, but was therefore rendered incapable, in regard he had been over-liberal in his speech against the religion of the country.

He had entertained some thoughts of passing over into Sicily and Greece, but was diverted by the news he received from England, that affairs there were tending towards a civil war-thinking it a thing unworthy in him to be taking his pleasure in foreign parts, while his countrymen at home were fighting for their liberty: but first resolved to see Rome once more; and, though the merchants gave him a caution that the Jesuits were hatching designs against him, in case he should return thither, by reason of the freedom he took in all his discourses of religion, nevertheless he ventured to prosecute his resolution, and to Rome the second time he went, determining with himself not industriously to begin to fall into any discourse about religion, but, being asked, not to deny or endeavor to conceal his own sentiments. Two months he staid at Rome, and in all that time never flinched, but was ready to defend the orthodox faith against all opposers; and, so well he succeeded therein, that good Providence guarded him, he went safe from Rome back to Florence, where his return to his friends of that city was welcomed with as much joy and affection, as had it been to his friends and relations in his own country, he could not have come a more joyful and welcome guest. Here, having stayed as long as at his first coming, except an excursion of a few days to Luca, crossing the Apennine, and passing through Bononia and Ferrara, he arrived at Venice, where, when he had spent a month's time in viewing of that stately city, and shipped up a parcel of curious and rare books which he had picked up in his travels, particularly a chest or two of choice music-books, of the best masters flourishing about that time in Italy-namely, Luca Marenzo, Monte Verde, Horatio Vecchi, Cafa, the prince of Venosa, and several others—he took his course through Verona, Milan, and the Pœnine Alps, and so by the Lake Leman to Geneva, where he staid for some time, and had daily converse with the most learned Giovanni Deodati, theology-professor in that city, and so returning through France, by the same way he had passed it going to Italy, he, after a peregrination of one complete year and about three months, arrived safe in England, about the time of the king's making his second expedition against the Scots. Soon after his return, and visits paid to his father and other friends, he took him a lodging in St. Bride's church-yard, at

the house of Russel a tailor, where he first undertook the education and instruction of his sister's two sons, the younger whereof had been wholly committed to his charge and care. And here, by the way, I judge it not impertinent to mention the many authors, both of the Latin and Greek, which, through his excellent judgment and way of teaching, far above the pedantry of common public schools, (where such authors are scarce ever heard of,) were run over within no greater compass of time, even than from ten to fifteen or sixteen years of age. Of the Latin, the four grand authors De Re Rustica, Cato, Varro, Columella, and Palladius; Cornelius Celsus, an ancient physician of the Romans; a great part of Pliny's Natural History, Vitruvius's Architecture, Frontinus's Stratagems, with the two egregious poets, Lucretius and Manilius. Of the Greek, Hesiod, a poet equal with Homer; Aratus's Phænomena and Diosemeia, Dionysius, Afer de situ Orbis, Oppian's Cynegeticks and Halieuticks. Quintus Calaber's poem of the Trojan War, continued from Homer; Apollonius Rhodius's Argonauticks, and in prose, Plutarch's Placita Philosophorum Περι Παιδων "Αγόγιας, Geminus's Astronomy; Xenophon's Cyri Institutio et Anabasis, Ælian's Tactics, and Polyænus's Warlike Stratagems; thus by teaching, he in some measure increased his own knowledge, having the reading of all these authors, as it were, by proxy; and all this might possibly have conduced to the preserving of his eyesight, had he not, moreover, been perpetually busied in his own laborious undertakings of the book or pen. Nor did the time thus studiously employed in conquering the Greek and Latin tongues hinder the attaining to the chief Oriental languages-viz., the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, so far as to go through the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses in Hebrew, to make a good entrance into the Targum or Chaldee Paraphrase, and to understand several chapters of St. Matthew in the Syriac Testament, besides an introduction into several arts and sciences, by reading Urstisius's Arithmetic, Riff's Geometry, Petiscus's Trigonometry, Joannes de Sacro Bosco de Sphæra; and into the Italian and French tongues, by reading, in Italian, Giovan Villani's History of the Transactions between several petty States of Italy; and, in French, a great part of Pierre Davity, the famous geographer of France in his time. The Sunday's work was, for the most part, the reading, each day, a chapter of the Greek Testament, and hearing his learned exposition upon the same (and how this savored of atheism in him, I leave to the courteous back biter to judge). The next work after this was the writing, from his own dictation, some part, from time to time, of a Tractate, which he thought fit to collect from the ablest of divines

who had written of that subject, Amesius, Wellebius, &c.-viz., A perfect System of Divinity, of which more hereafter. Now persons so far manducted into the highest paths of literature, both divine and human, had they received his documents with the same acuteness of wit and apprehension, the same industry, alacrity, and thirst after knowledge, as the instructor was endued with, what prodigies of wit and learning might they have proved!-the scholars might, in some degree, have come near to the equalling of the master, or at least have, in some sort, made good what he seems to predict, in the close of an elegy he made in the seventeenth year of his age, upon the death of one of his sister's children (a daughter), who died in her infancy.

Then thou the mother of so sweet a child,
Her false imagined loss cease to lament,
And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild;

This if thou do, he will an offspring give,

That, to the world's last end, shall make thy name to live.

But to return to the thread of our discourse. He made no long stay in his lodgings in St. Bride's church-yard; necessity of having a place to dispose his books in, and other goods fit for the furnishing of a good handsome house, hastening him to take one; and accordingly a pretty garden-house he took in Aldersgate-street, at the end of an entry; and therefore the fitter for his turn, by the reason of the privacy, besides that there are few streets in London more free from noise than that..

Here first it was that his academic erudition was put in practice and vigorously proceeded, he himself giving an example to those under him (for it was not long after his taking this house ere his elder nephew was put to board with him also) of hard study and spare diet; only this advantage he had, that once in three weeks or a month he would drop into the society of some young sparks of his acquaintance, the chief whereof were Mr. Alphry and Mr. Miller, two gentlemen of Gray's-Inn, the beaus of those times, but nothing near so bad as those now-a-days; with these gentlemen he would so far make bold with his body as now and then to keep a gaudy day. In this house he continued several years, in the one or two first whereof he set out several treatises, viz., that of Reformation; that against Prelatical Episcopacy; the Reason of Church Government; the Defence of Smectimnuus; at least the greatest part of them, but as I take it, all; and some time after, one sheet of Education, which he dedicated to Mr. Samuel Hartlib, he that wrote so much of husbandry (this sheet is printed at the end of the second edition of his poems); and, lastly, Areopagitica. During the time also of his continuance in this house, there fell out several occasions of the in

creasing of his family. His father, who, till the taking of Reading by the Earl of Essex's forces, had lived with his other son at his house there, was, upon that son's dissettlement, necessitated to betake himself to this his eldest son, with whom he lived for some years, even to his dying day. In the next place he had an addition of some scholars, to which may be added his entering into matrimony; but he had his wife's company so small a time that he may well be said to have become a single man again soon after. About Whitsuntide it was, or a little after, that he took a journey into the country, nobody about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was any more than a journey of recreation. After a month's stay, home he returns a married man, that went out a bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a justice of the peace of Forrest-hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire, some few of her nearest relations accompanying the bride to her new habitation, which by reason the father nor anybody else were yet come, was able to receive them, where the feasting held for some days, in celebration of the nuptials and for entertainment of the bride's friends. At length they took their leave, and, returning to Forrest-hill, left the sister behind, probably not much to her satisfaction, as appeared by the sequel; by that time she had, for a month or thereabout, led a philosophical life (after having been used to a great house and much company and joviality). Her friends, possibly incited by her own desire, made earnest suit, by letter, to have her company the remaining part of summer, which was granted on condition of her return at the time appointed, Michaelmas, or thereabouts: in the mean time came his father and some of the forementioned disciples. And now the studies went on with so much the more vigor, as there were more hands and heads employed-the old gentleman living wholly retired to his rest and devotion, without the least trouble imaginable. Our author, now as it were a single man again, made it his chief diversion, now and then in an evening, to visit the Lady Margaret Lee, daughter to the Lee, Earl of Marlborough, lord high treasurer of England, and president of the privy council to King James the First. This lady being a woman of great wit and ingenuity, had a particular honor for him, and took much delight in his company, as likewise her husband, Captain Hobson, a very accomplished gentleman; and what esteem he at the same time had for her, appears by a sonnet he made in praise of her, to be seen among his other sonnets in his extant poems. Michaelmas being come, and no news of his wife's return, he sent for her by letter, and, receiving no answer, sent several other letters, which were also unanswered; so that at last he dispatched down a foot-messenger with a letter, de

« السابقةمتابعة »