An Affectate Traveller

Is a speaking fashion; he hath taken pains to be ridiculous, and hath seen more than he hath perceived. His attire speaks French or Italian, and his gait cries, Behold me! He censures all things by countenances, and shrugs, and speaks his own language with shame and lisping: he will choke rather than confess beer good drink; and his pick-tooth is a main part of his behaviour. He chooseth rather to be counted a spy, than not a politician, and maintains his reputation by naming great men familiarly. He chooseth rather to tell lies than not wonders, and talks with men singly: his discourse sounds big, but means nothing: and his boy is bound to admire him howsoever. He comes still from great personages, but goes with mean. He takes occasion to show jewels given him in regard of his virtue, that were bought in St. Martin's: and not long after having with a mountebank's method pronounced them worth thousands, impawneth them for a few shillings. Upon festival days he goes to court, and salutes without resaluting: at night in an ordinary he canvasseth the business in hand, and seems as conversant with all intents and plots as if he begot them. His extraordinary account of men is, first to tell them the ends of all matters of consequence, and then to borrow money of them; he offers courtesies, to show them rather than himself humble. He disdains all things above his reach, and preferreth all countries before his own. He imputeth his want and poverty to the ignorance of the time, not his own unworthiness: and concludes his discourse with half a period, or a word, and leaves the rest to imagination. In a word, his religion is fashion, and both body and soul are governed by fame; he loves most voices above truth.

A Wise Man

Is the truth of the true definition of man, that is, a reasonable creature. His disposition alters, he alters not. He hides himself with the attire of the vulgar; and in indifferent ⚫ things is content to be governed by them. He looks according to nature, so goes his behaviour. His mind enjoys a continual smoothness: so cometh it, that his consideration is always at home. He endures the faults of all men silently, except his friends, and to them he is the mirror of their actions; by this means his peace cometh not from Fortune, but himself. He is cunning in men, not to surprise, but keep his own, and beats off their ill-affected humours, no otherwise than if they were flies. He chooseth not friends by the subsidy book, and is not luxurious after acquaintance. He maintains the strength of his body, not by delicates, but temperance: and his mind by giving it pre-eminence over his body. He understands things, not by their form, but qualities; and his comparisons intend not to excuse but to provoke him higher. He is not subject to casualties; for fortune hath nothing to do with the mind, except those drowned in the body: but he hath divided his soul from the case of his soul, whose weakness he assists no otherwise than commiserately, not that it is his, but that it is. He is thus, and will be thus: and lives subject neither to time nor his frailties, the servant of virtue, and by virtue, the friend of the highest.

A Fine Gentleman

Is the cinnamon tree, whose bark is more worth than his body. He hath read the book of good manners, and by this time each of his limbs may read it. He alloweth of no judge but the eye; painting, bolstering, and bombasting are his orators: by these also he proves his industry: for he hath purchased legs, hair, beauty, and straightness, more than

speaks Euphues, His discourse makes not

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Nature left him. He not so gracefully as heartily. his behaviour, but he buys it at court, as countrymen their clothes in Birchin Lane. He is somewhat like the salamander, and lives in the flame of love, which pains he expresseth comically: and nothing grieves him so much as the want of a poet to make an issue in his love; yet he sighs sweetly and speaks lamentably: for his breath is perfumed and his words are wind. He is best in season at Christmas; for the boar's head and reveller come together; his hopes are laden in his quality and lest fiddlers should take him unprovided, he wears pumps in his pocket: and lest he should take fiddlers unprovided, he whistles his own galliard. He is a calender of ten years, and marriage rusts him. Afterwards he maintains himself an implement of household, by carving and ushering. For all this, he is judicial only in tailors and barbers, but his opinion is ever ready, and ever idle. If you will know more of his acts, the broker's shop is the witness of his valour, where lies wounded, dead rent, and out of fashion, many a spruce suit, overthrown by his fantasticness.

A Pedant.

He treads in a rule, and one hand scans verses, and the other holds his sceptre. He dares not think a thought, that the nominative case governs not the verb; and he never had meaning in his life, for he travelled only for words. His ambition is criticism, and his example Tully. He values phrases, and elects them by the sound, and the eight parts of speech are his servants. To be brief, he is a Heteroclite, for he wants the plural number, having only the single quality of words.

A Good Wife

Is a man's best movable, a scion1 incorporate with the stock, bringing sweet fruit; one that to her husband is more than a friend, less than trouble: an equal with him in the yoke. Calamities and troubles she shares alike, nothing pleaseth her that doth not him. She is relative in all; and he without her but half himself. She is his absent hands, eyes, ears, and mouth his present and absent all. She frames her nature unto his, howsoever: the hyacinth follows not the sun more willingly, stubbornness and obstinacy are herbs that grow not in her garden. She leaves tattling to the gossips of the town, and is more seen than heard. Her household is her charge; her care to that makes her seldom non-resident. Her pride is but to be cleanly, and her thrift not to be prodigal. By her discretion she hath children, not wantons; a husband without her is a misery to man's apparel: none but she hath an aged husband, to whom she is both a staff and a chair. To conclude, she is both wise and religious, which makes her all this.

A Melancholy Man

Is a strayer from the drove : one that Nature made a sociable, because she made him man, and a crazed disposition hath altered. Impleasing to all, as all to him; straggling thoughts are his content, they making him dream waking, there's his pleasure. His imagination is never idle, it keeps his mind in a continual motion as the poise the clock: he winds up his thoughts often, and as often unwinds them; Penelope's web thrives faster. He'll seldom be found without the shade of some grove, in whose bottom a river dwells. He carries a cloud in his face, never fair weather: his outside is framed to his inside, in that he keeps a decorum, both unseemly. Speak

1 Scion, an ingrafted cutting. Old French, "cion" and "scion," from Latin "secare," to cut. Also a young shoot from a plant.

to him; he hears with his eyes; ears follow his mind, and that's not at leisure. He thinks business, but never does any he is all contemplation, no action. He hews and fashions his thoughts, as if he meant them to some purpose; but they prove unprofitable, as a piece of wrought timber to no use. His spirits and the sun are enemies, the sun bright and warm, his humour black and cold. Variety of foolish apparitions people his head, they suffer him not to breathe, according to the necessities of nature; which makes him sup up a draught of as much air at once, as would serve at thrice. He denies Nature her due in sleep, and nothing pleaseth him long, but that which pleaseth his own fantasies: they are the consuming evils, and evil consumptions that consume him alive. Lastly, he is a man only in show, but comes short of the better part; a whole reasonable soul, which is man's chief preeminence, and sole mark from creatures sensible.

A Worthy Commander in the Wars

Is one that accounts learning the nourishment of military virtue, and lays that as his first foundation. He never bloodies his sword but in heat of battle; and had rather save one of his own soldiers, than kill ten of his enemies. He accounts it an idle, vain-glorious, and suspected bounty, to be full of good words; his rewarding therefore of the deserver arrives so timely, that his liberality can never be said to be gouty-handed. He holds it next his creed, that no coward can be an honest man, and dare die in't. He doth not think his body yields a more spreading shadow after a victory than before; and when he looks upon his enemy's dead body, 'tis a kind of noble heaviness, no insultation; he is so honourably merciful to women in surprisal, that only that makes him an excellent courtier. He knows the hazard of battles, not the pomp of ceremonies, are soldiers' best theatres, and strives to gain reputation, not by the multitude, but by the greatness of his actions. He is the first in giving the charge, and the last in retiring his foot. Equal toil he endures with the common soldier: from his examples they all take fire, as one torch lights many. He understands in war, there is no mean

to err twice; the first and last fault being sufficient to ruin an army faults therefore he pardons none, they that are presidents of disorder or mutiny, repair it by being examples of his justice. Besiege him never so strictly, so long as the air is not cut from him, his heart faints not. He hath learned as well to make use of a victory, as to get it, and pursuing his enemies like a whirlwind carries all afore him; being assured, if ever a man will benefit himself upon his foe, then is the time when they have lost force, wisdom, courage, and reputation. The goodness of his cause is the special motive to his valour; never is he known to slight the weakest enemy that comes armed against him in the band of justice. Hasty and overmuch heat he accounts the stepdame to all great actions, that will not suffer them to drive: if he cannot overcome his enemy by force, he does it by time. If ever he shake hands with war, he can die more calmly than most courtiers, for his continual dangers have been as it were so many meditations of death; he thinks not out of his own calling, when he accounts life a continual warfare, and his prayers then best become him when armed cap-a-pie. He utters them like the great Hebrew General, on horseback. He casts a smiling contempt upon calumny, it meets him as if glass should encounter adamant. He thinks war is never to be given o'er but on one of these three conditions: an assured peace, absolute victory, or an honest death. Lastly, when peace folds him up, his silver head should lean near the golden sceptre, and die in his prince's bosom.

A Fair and Happy Milk-maid

Is a country wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by Art, that one look of hers is able to put all facephysic out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her excellencies stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than outsides of tissue: for though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silk-worm, she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long abed, spoil both her complexion and conditions; Nature hath taught her, too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul; she rises therefore with Chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew. In milking a cow, and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milkpress makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glove or aromatic ointment on her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that felled them. Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a newmade haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour and her heart soft with pity: and when winter evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel) she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune. She doth all things with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, being her mind is to do well. She bestows her year's wages at next

fair, and in choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. The garden and bee-hive are all her physic and chirurgery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares go alone and unfold the sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet to say truth, she is never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones; yet they have their efficacy, in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are so chaste, that she dare tell them: only a Friday's dream is all her superstition: that she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she, and all her care is she may die in the springtime, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet.

There were some lines written by Sir Henry Wotton on the imprisonment of Carr, Earl of Somerset, once dazzled with the height of place, which end with the stanzas

But if greatness be so blind As to trust in towers of air, Let it be with goodness lined,

That at least the fall be fair.

Then, though darkened, you shall say, When Friends fail, and Princes frown, Virtue is the roughest way,

But at night a bed of down.

Henry Wotton was born in 1568, at the home of his forefathers, Boughton Hall, in Kent. His father, Thomas Wotton, was a cultivated and hospitable country gentleman, who declined a knighthood and court favours, offered him by Queen Elizabeth when visiting his house. But all his four sons were knighted; Edward, the eldest, became, under James I., Lord Wotton, Baron of Merley, in Kent, and Lord Lieutenant of the county. Henry, the youngest, was

the only son by a second wife. He was educated at Westminster School, and New College, Oxford, passing from New College to Queen's at the age of eighteen. As a student of Queen's College he wrote a tragedy ("Tancredo") for private acting. At twenty he proceeded Master of Arts, and gave three Latin lectures on the Eye. Soon afterwards his father died, and after staying two more years at Oxford, Henry Wotton went abroad, knew Beza (then an old man) at Geneva, and lodged in the same house with Isaac Casaubon. After a year in France and Geneva, Henry Wotton spent three years in Germany, and five years in Italy, before his return to England. He was then thirty years old, tall, graceful, witty, earnest, and highly educated. He became attached to the Earl of Essex, and upon the arrest of Essex for treason Wotton escaped to France, whence he passed on to Italy. At Florence, the Duke Ferdinand had intercepted letters discovering a design against the life of James VI. of Scotland. Sir Henry Wotton was sent to the king with warning and Italian antidotes against poison. Being in danger as a friend of Essex, he went to Scotland by way of Norway, in the character of an Italian messenger, calling himself Octavio Baldi. He delivered his letters as an Italian in presence of the king's friends, but took an opportunity of whispering to the king that he was an Englishman, beseeching private conference and concealment during his stay. The friends of Essex were the friends of James, and the King of Scotland having learnt the true name of his Italian messenger, treated him hospitably for three months as Octavio Baldi. When Elizabeth died, about a year afterwards, and James came to England, he asked Sir Edward Wotton whether he knew one Henry Wotton who had spent some time in foreign travel.

Sir Edward replied that he was his brother. Then the king asked where he was, and learning that he would be soon in Paris, said, "Send for him, and when he shall come to England, bid him repair privately to me." Sir Edward, wondering, asked the king whether he knew him. To which the king answered, "You must rest unsatisfied of that till you bring the gentleman to me." When, after a while, Henry Wotton was in England and came to court, the king embraced him, welcoming him as Octavio Baldi, said he was the most honest dissembler he had ever known, knighted him, and thenceforth used his knowledge of foreign lands and languages by employing him on embassies. He was first sent, with a large allowance, to Venice. On the way, going through Germany, he stayed some days at Treves, where, being one day with good company in playful mood, he was asked to write a line in the album of Christopher Flecamore. He wrote a definition of an ambassador in Latin that did not bear the pleasant double meaning of the English version he would have given of it-"Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus ad mentiendum Reipublicæ causa "An Ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." Eight years afterwards this sentence was brought out of its friendly privacy by an Italian adversary of King James, who took it as evidence of the King of England's morals in diplomacy. The king was

angry until Henry Wotton had written two notable apologies to clear himself. Henry Wotton was sent also as ambassador to the Emperor Ferdinand II., to urge the claims of the Queen of Bohemia to the Palatinate. He was sent also to the German princes. Towards the close of James I.'s reign, Sir Henry Wotton had returned to England, and, embarrassed by much expenditure, was in money difficulties, looking for some office at home from the king. The Provost of Eton died in 1623; his place was sought by many, and was given to Sir Henry Wotton. Thenceforth his life was easy and happy until his death in 1639. Among his pieces published as "Reliquiæ Wottoniana" are some letters, of which examples are given. The first, written in October 1620, describes an incident of war-the death of Count Tampier.

FOUR LETTERS OF SIR HENRY WOTTON.

Right Honourable,

Of my purpose to depart from Vienna, and to leave the Emperor to the counsels of his own fortune, I gave his Majesty knowledge by my servant, James Vary.

I will now make you a summary account of what hath happened here, which is to be done both out of duty to your place, and out of obligation to your friendship.

The Count Tampier had some twelve days since taken from the Hungarians, by surprisal in the field, thirteen cornets of horse, and one ensign of foot, which here with much ostentation were carried up and down, and laid on Sunday was seven night under the Emperor's feet, as he came from the chapel.

Some note, that the vanity of this triumph was greater than the merit; for the Hungarians by their ordinary discipline, abound in cornets, bearing one almost for every twenty horse, so as flags are good cheap amongst them, and but slightly guarded. Howsoever the matter be made more or less, according to the wits on both sides, this was breve gaudium, and itself, indeed, some cause of the following disaster; for the Count Tampier, being by nature an enterprising man, was now also inflamed by accident, which made him immediately conceive the surprisal of Presburg, while the Prince of Transylvania was retired to the siege of Güns, some six or seven leagues distant. A project in truth, if it had prospered, of notorious utility.

First, by the very reputation of the place, being the capital town of Hungaria.

Next, the access to Comorn and Raab (which places only the Emperor retaineth, in that kingdom of any considerable value) had been freed by water, which now in a manner are blocked up.

Thirdly, the incursions into these provinces, and ignominious depredations had been cut off.

And lastly, the Crown of Hungaria had been recovered, which the Emperor Matthias did transport to the castle of Presburg, after the deposition of Rodolph, his brother, who always kept it in the castle of Prague; which men account one of the subtle things of that retired Emperor, as I hear by discourse. So as upon these considerations, the enterprise was more commendable in the design, than it will appear in the execution; being thus carried.

From hence to Presburg is in this month of October an easy night's journey by water. Thither on Thursday night of the last week, Tampier himself, accompanied with some four or five Colonels, and other remarkable men of this court, resolves to bring down in twenty-five boats, about 3,000 foot, or such a matter; having given order, and space enough

before, for certain horse, partly Dutch, and partly Polonians, to be there, and to attend his coming about two hours before Friday morning. And to shadow this purpose, himself on Thursday in the afternoon, with affected noise goes up the river the contrary way, though no reasonable imaginations could conceive whither; for the lower Austria was then all reduced. By which artificial delay, and by some natural stops in the shallows of the water, when they fell silently down again, it was three or four hours of clear day before he arrived at Presburg the next morning: where his meaning was, first to destroy the bridge built upon boats, and thereby to keep Bethlem Gabor (as then on the Austrian side) not only from succouring the town, but from all possibility of repassing the Danube nearer than Buda. Next, to apply the petard to one of the gates of the citadel. Some wise say, he had like inward intelligence, that at his approach, the wicket of the castle should be opened unto him by one Palfy, an Hungarian gentleman; which conceit, though perchance raised at first to animate the soldier, yet hath gotten much credit, by seeing the enterprise against all discourse continued by daylight. Be that point how it will, his fatal hour was come: for approaching a sconce that lies by the castle gate, and turning about to cry for his men to come on, he was shot in the lowest part of his skull nearest his neck, after which he spake no syllable, as Don Carolo d'Austria (second base son to Rodolph the Emperor, and himself at that time saved by the goodness of his armour) doth testify. After which, some two or three soldiers attempting to bring away his body, and those being shot, the rest gave it over, and the whole troops transported themselves to the other side, leaving the boats behind them, as if they had meant to contribute new provision for the mending of the bridge, whereof they had only broken one little piece.

This was the end of the Count Tampier; by his father's side a Norman, by his mother's a Champaigne, a servant twenty-two years to the House of Austria. Himself captain of a thousand horse: but commander divers times in chief, especially before the coming of the Count Bucquoy, from whom he was severed to these nearer services, being of incompatible natures: a valiant and plotting soldier; in encounters more fortunate than sieges; gracious to his own, and terrible to the Hungarians; to the present Emperor most dear, though, perchance, as much for civil as military merit : for this was the very man that first seized upon the Cardinal Clesel, when he was put into a coach, and transported hence to Tirol; so as now we may expect some pamphlet the next mart from Ingolstadt, or Köln; that no man can end well who hath laid violent hands upon any of those Roman Purpurati.

To this point I must add two remarkable circumstances: the first, that Tampier, among other papers found in his pockets, is said to have had a memorial of certain conditions, whereon it should be fit to insist in his parley with the town, as having already swallowed the castle. The other, that his head having been cut off by a soldier, and sold for five dollars to another, who meant to have the merit of presenting it to the prince, the presenter was rewarded with a stroke of a sabre, for insulting over the dead carcass of a gentleman of honour.

The next letter was to an old friend Nicholas, Pey, who, from service in the house of Henry Wotton's brother Sir Edmund, had been advanced by Sir Edmund to profitable service in the household of the king, and was at court the trustiest friend of the Wotton family. The death referred to in the

letter is that of Wotton's cousin, Sir Albert Morton, who had gone with him to Venice as his secretary.

My dear NIC. PEY,

This is the account of me since you saw me last.

My going to Oxford was not merely for shift of air, otherwise I should approve your counsel to prefer Boughton before any other part whatsoever; that air best agreeing with me, and being a kind of resolving me into my own beginnings; for there I was born.

But I have a little ambitious vanity stirring in me, to print a thing of my composition there: which would else in London run through too much noise beforehand, by reason of the licences that must be gotten, and an eternal trick in those city-stationers, to rumour what they have under press. From Oxford I was rapt by my nephew, Sir Edmund Bacon, to Redgrave, and by himself, and by my sweet niece detained ever since: (so I say), for believe me, there is in their conversations, and in the freedom of their entertainment, a kind of delightful violence.

In our way hither we blanched Paul's Perry, though within three miles of it, which we are not tender to confess (being indeed our manifest excuse); for thereby it appears the pains of the way did not keep us thence.

In truth, we thought it (coming immediately from an infected place) an hazardous incivility to put ourselves upon them; for if any sinister accident had fallen out about the same time (for coincidents are not always causes) we should have rued it for ever.

Here, when I had been almost a fortnight in the midst of much contentment, I received knowledge of Sir Albertus Morton's departure out of this world, who was dearer unto me than mine own being in it. What a wound it is to my heart, you will easily believe: but His undisputable will must be done, and unrepiningly received by His own creatures, who is the Lord of all nature, and of all fortune, when He taketh now one, and then another, till the expected day wherein it shall please Him to dissolve the whole, and to wrap up even the heaven itself as a scroll of parchment.

This is the last philosophy that we must study upon the earth; let us now, that yet remain, while our glasses shall run by the dropping away of friends, reinforce our love to one another; which of all virtues, both spiritual and moral, hath the highest privilege, because death itself shall not end it. And, good Nic., exercise that love towards me in letting me know, &c. Your ever poor friend,

H. WOTTON.

The next letter is to Sir Edmund Bacon, in sympathy for his loss of a wife, whom Wotton in a previous letter had greeted with his "hot love to the best niece in the world."

Sir,

Among those that have deep interest in whatsoever can befall you, I am the freshest witness of your unexpressible affections to my most dear niece; whom God hath taken from us into His eternal light and rest; where we must leave her till we come unto her. I should think myself unworthy for ever of that love she bare me, if in this case I were fit to comfort you. But it is that only God who can reconsolate us both who, when He hath called now one, and then another of His own creatures unto Himself, will unclasp the final book of His decrees, and dissolve the whole for which I hope He will rather teach us to thirst and languish, than to repine at

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A letter to Francis Bacon, thanking him for the gift of his "Novum Organum," describes a visit to Kepler.

Sir Henry Wotton to Lord Bacon.

Right Honourable, and my very good Lord,

I have your lordship's letters dated the 20th of October, and I have withal by the care of my cousin, Mr. Thomas Meawtis, and by your own special favour, three copies of that work, wherewith your lordship hath done a great and ever-living benefit to all the children of Nature; and to Nature herself, in her uttermost extent and latitude: who never before had so noble nor so true an interpreter, or (as I am readier to style your lordship) never so inward a secretary of her cabinet. But of your said work (which came but this week to my hands) I shall find occasion to speak more hereafter; having yet read only the first book thereof, and a few aphorisms of the second. For it is not a banquet, that men may superficially taste, and put up the rest in their pockets; but, in truth, a solid feast, which requireth due mastication. Therefore when I have once myself perused the whole, I determine to have it read piece by piece at certain hours in my domestic college, as an ancient author: for I have learned thus much by it already, that we are extremely mistaken in the computation of antiquity, by searching it backwards, because indeed the first times were the youngest; especially in points of natural discovery and experience. For though I grant, that Adam knew the natures of all beasts, and Solomon of all plants, not only more than any, but more than all since their time; yet that was by divine infusion, and therefore they did not need any such Organum as your lordship hath now delivered to the world; nor we neither, if they had left us the memories of their wisdom.

But I am gone further than I meant in speaking of this excellent labour, while the delight yet I feel, and even the pride that I take in a certain congeniality (as I may term it) with your lordship's studies, will scant let me cease. And, indeed, I owe your lordship even by promise (which you are pleased to remember, thereby doubly binding me) some trouble this way; I mean, by the commerce of philosophical experiments, which surely, of all other, is the most ingenuous traffic. Therefore, for a beginning, let me tell your lordship a pretty thing which I saw coming down the Danube, though more remarkable for the application than for the theory. I lay a night at Lintz, the metropolis of the higher Austria, but then in very low estate, having been newly taken by the Duke of Bavaria; who, blandiente fortund, was gone on to the

late effects. There I found Kepler, a man famous in the sciences, as your lordship knows, to whom I purpose to convey from hence one of your books, that he may see we have some of our own that can honour our king, as well as he hath done with his Harmonice. In this man's study I was much taken with the draught of a landskip on a piece of paper, methoughts masterly done: whereof inquiring the author, he bewrayed with a smile, it was himself; adding, he had done it, Non tanquam Pictor, sed tanquam Mathematicus.2 This set me on fire; at last he told me how. He hath a little black tent (of what stuff is not much importing) which he can suddenly set up where he will in a field, and it is convertible (like a windmill) to all quarters at pleasure, capable of not much more than one man, as I conceive, and perhaps at no great ease; exactly close and dark, save at one hole, about an inch and a half in the diameter, to which he applies a long perspective trunk, with a convex glass fitted to the said hole, and the concave taken out at the other end, which extendeth to about the middle of this erected tent, through which the visible radiations of all the objects without are intromitted, falling upon a paper, which is accommodated to receive them, and so he traceth them with his pen in their natural appearance, turning his little tent round by degrees till he hath designed the whole aspect of the field. This I have described to your lordship, because I think there might be good use made of it for chorography: for otherwise, to make landskips by it were illiberal; though surely no painter can do them so precisely. Now from these artificial and natural curiosities, let me a little direct your lordship to the contemplation of fortune.

The rest of the letter tells of the changed face of politics about the German Emperor.

It was in October, 1620, that Francis Bacon presented to King James his "Novum Organum,"