It was a special favour, when you lately bestowed upon me here the first
taste of your acquaintance, though no longer than to make me know that I
wanted more time to value it, and to enjoy it rightly; and, in truth, if
I could then have imagined your farther stay in these parts, which I
understood afterwards by Mr. H., I would have been bold, in our vulgar
phrase, to mend my draught (for you left me with an extreme thirst), and
to have begged your conversation again, jointly with your said learned
friend, at a poor meal or two, that we might have banded together some
good authors of the antient time; among which I observed you to have
been familiar.
Since your going, you have charged me with new obligations, both for a
very kind letter from you dated the sixth of this month, and for a
dainty piece of entertainment which came therewith. Wherein I should
much commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did not ravish me with a
certain Doric delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto I must plainly
confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our language: _Ipsa
mollities_.{19:A} But I must not omit to tell you, that I now only owe
you thanks for intimating unto me (how modestly soever) the true
artificer. For the work itself I had viewed some good while before, with
singular delight, having received it from our common friend Mr. R. in
the very close of the late R.'s poems, printed at Oxford; whereunto it
is added (as I now suppose) that the accessory might help out the
principal, according to the art of stationers, and to leave the reader
_con la bocca dolce_.{20:A}
Now, Sir, concerning your travels, wherein I may challenge a little more
privilege of discourse with you; I suppose you will not blanch{20:B}
Paris in your way; therefore I have been bold to trouble you with a few
lines to Mr. M. B., whom you shall easily find attending the young Lord
S. as his governor, and you may surely receive from him good directions
for shaping of your farther journey into Italy, where he did reside by
my choice some time for the king, after mine own recess from Venice.
I should think that your best line will be through the whole length of
France to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa, whence the passage
into Tuscany is as diurnal as a Gravesend barge. I hasten, as you do, to
Florence, or Siena, the rather to tell you a short story, from the
interest you have given me in your safety.
At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipione, an old Roman
courtier in dangerous times, having been steward to the Duca di
Pagliano, who with all his family were strangled, save this only man,
that escaped by foresight of the tempest. With him I had often much chat
of those affairs; into which he took pleasure to look back from his
native harbour; and at my departure toward Rome (which had been the
centre of his experience) I had won confidence enough to beg his advice,
how I might carry myself securely there, without offence of others, or
of mine own conscience. _Signor Arrigo mio_ (says he), _I pensieri
stretti, ed il viso sciolto_,{21:A} will go safely over the whole world.
Of which Delphian oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment doth
need no commentary; and therefore, Sir, I will commit you with it to the
best of all securities, God's dear love, remaining
Your friend as much to command
as any of longer date,