Selected quad for the lemma: book_n
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A48252
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Letters and poems in honour of the incomparable princess, Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle.
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1676
(1676)
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Wing L1774; ESTC R31697
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84,169
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186
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discourse too long to be inserted in a Letter and your Excellence hath so clearly decided that Question by your unimitable Works that it saves sufficiently that trouble The greatest Masters in Oratory having been necessitated to acknowledge that the best art consists in hiding of it it may be inferred that it is yet better to have none at all as a natural Amble is to be preferred to that which is got with Tramells or the graceful Walking of a Gentleman more esteemed than the affected Demarch of a Dancer and it is truly a very rare thing to be a great Scholar without being acquainted with the Universities and Learned without the help of Teachers As there is variety of Sciences so there are several sorts of Capacities to acquire them some proving excellent in one kind some in another but to be capable of all as well Philosophy as Playes and Poems as Orations belongs only to a very few whose Statues should be erected in all the eminent Places in the World for their Glory and our Admiration I can hardly stop my Pen from describing what I have marked in general for to set down my particular Observations they are of so many extraordinary Things that ordinary Terms and I am capable of no other cannot make them to be understood and I am extreme sensible that even what is commonly called Defect here becomes comly like some Moles in a beautiful Face and that what seemes strange at first because it crosses the usual Methods of our Studies gives at last occasion of amazement to see your Excellency go so far in the way of knowledge with standing still in a manner and that others should run continually like Squerils in a Cage without advancing forwards which happens I believe because they dare not or cannot go one step without Stilts and your Excellence trusts to the goodness of your Legs having been pleased to allow me the honour to read your Manuscript I make no doubt but your Excellency will afford the patience to read this tedious Letter which though it makes a very small sound and a weak clapping of Hands is a part of that great Applause the whole World gives to your Excellency and a certain testimony that I am out of Inclination as well as Duty London Sept 4. 1662. MADAM Your Excellencies most Humble most Obedient and most Faithful Servant BENOIST MADAM HAd I returned you this Letter of Thanks for the great Honour you did me in sending me your Plays before I had read them it would have lookt like a peece of Flattery and my Praise of you would have made me like a Blind man who fell in love with a Beauty which he never saw But having taken time to read them all over and some of them more than once I can now upon a clear Judgement assure your Ladyship that my entertainment was so great that I know not whether I read them or saw them Acted For though the Plots Acts and Scenes be drest in several shapes and have that which is the life of Pleasure a musical variety yet the Wit and rich Composure of them is so much every where the same that I fancied my self a Spectator in the perusal and was doubtful whether your Ladyship with your Book had not sent me the new Theater too I never in any Dramatick Writings met with more Honour and Virtue matcht with more Sharpness and delight Which had it come from such a Pen as Ben Jonson's who was always powring Oyle into his Lamp and owed most of his Excellencies to his laborious Industry and Art I should the less wonder But coming from a Quill held by a Ladys Hand who made it not her Toyl but Recreation to do rarely confirms me in an Opinion which I have long held That the best Art is nothing but the best Imitation of Nature and that your Books are the true face and others but the painted Madam as I look upon you as a great Princess for you are so so that which renders you to be the Glory and happiest of your Sex is that you can bring forth such Children of your Mind in a Wilderness and in your Countrey Walks can chuse all the Muses to be your Maids of Honour And truly when I consider one part of your happiness more which is That you have a Noble Lord to be your Fellow-Poet whose Harmonious Soul and Wit is exactly tuned to yours I have nothing left to wish but to be allowed to remain Oxford May 6 1662. Your Ladyships true Honourer Jasper Mayne MOST HONOURED I have waited long for a convenience to return my very humble gratitude to your Excellency that the poor Church of Litchfield hath some hope in due time to receive some furtherance in it's Reparation from your noble munificence I am one of those many that are perswaded that your Excellency spent more Treasure to maintain the Royal Cause in the late Warrs besides the hazard of your Person than any Subject in the three Realms and am at wonder that it is not most eminently rewarded and repayed My gratious Lord I having been one from my youth addicted to the ingenuity of Poetry whereof your Honour hath been a great Patron did betake my self thirteen years since to write three Books in Verse Latine and Heroick to bewail the most barbarous murther committed upon the person of King Charles the Martyr The work is long-since finisht and shall in due time be publisht In the third Book thereof mention being made of his Majesties most Heroick Champions these Verses following set forth your Excellency as I was able Quid Neo-Castrensis parat audentissimus Heros Musarum Martisque decus Mensaeque benignae Cogit ab egelidis Boreae regionibus agmen Intrepidum laethúmque volens pro Rege pacisci Receive this Testimony my very gratious Lord from him that is willing to embalm your memory with due praise Litchfield Feb. 10. 1663. Your Excellencies Most Devoted Servant Joh. Lich. Coven MADAM I Gave your Grace not long since the trouble of a very large Letter and know not whether I may wish it came safe being affraid there was some kind of rudeness in so tedious a Scrible I now send this to crave Pardon for the bold importunity of that and to desire another addition to your Graces Favours which is to honour the last Edition of my Witchcraft with your Illustrious Eye and Acceptance I suppose I have in it answered some of your Graces Objections and have added a Relation or two which I am well assured of and believe them good evidence of Fact I have ordered that Book I have so long spoken of to be sent with it if it can yet be procured and implore your Graces ingenious Candor in judging the faults of both For that of Preexistence I have many things to say more about it which I think not fit publickly to expose your Grace may command my inmost sentiments of those matters which I shall be proud to impart to
received as indeed they ought with very much respect and gratitude and I am commanded by the several Colledges to returne their humblest Thanks to your Honour I inscribed every Book before I gave it to the respective Colledges with such an Inscription as Posterity might know who was their Benefactor For instance that to Magdalene Colledge thus .... Liber Collegii Divae Magdalenae ex Dono Illustrissimae Heroinae Margaretae Novo-Castrensis Marchionissae Authoris What this signifies your Honour may easily know I humbly beg your Honours Pardon for this confident and I fear impertinent Scrible of Q. Coll. OXON Mar. 24. 1655. MADAM Your Honours most Obliged Humble Servant Thomas Barlow MADAM YOur Honour pleased to Command two Books lately composed by your Excellency to be sent to Cambridge one to be placed in the Publick Library there and the other to be bestowed upon my self your Honours meanest Servant It is and shall be my Care that this together with that other formerly sent may remain a Monument to Posterity of your Excellencies great worth and singular affection to our University which I doubt not but will for ever be most gratefully acknowledged by such as shall frequent the Common Library and especially by him whom this great Favour hath rendered Cambr. Octob. 22. 1656. Your Excellencies most Humble and Thankful Servant William Moore MADAM I have received from your Excellence the Book you sent me by Mr. Benoist which obliges me to trouble you with a short expression of my thanks and of the sense I have of your extraordinary Favour For tokens of this kind are not ordinarily sent but to such as pretend to the title as well as to the mind of Friends I have already read so much of it in that Book which my Lord of Devonshire has as to give your Excellence an accout of it thus far That it is filled throughout with more and truer Idea's of Virtue and Honour than any Book of morality I have read And if some Comique Writer by conversation with ill People have been able to present Vices upon the Stage moreridiculously and immodestly by which they take their rabble I reckon that amongst your Praises For that which most pleases lewd Spectators is nothing but subtile Cheating or Filch which a high and noble mind endued with Virtue from it's Infancy can never come to the knowledge of I Rest Febr. 9. 1661. Your Excellencies most humble Servant Thomas Hobbes ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCESS I Received by the hand of your ingenious Servant that most noble Present those excellent Books you were pleased to send our Colledge and the meanest of your most obliged and thankful Servants my self I confess I am and for ever should be amazed at your Excellencies condescention your great charity and magnificence to things so far below you did I not well know that the greatest goodness is most diffusive that those Glorious Heavenly Bodies even the Sun it self dispence their Rayes and benign Influences to Vallies and little Villages to Shrubs and Mole-hills as well as Mountains or the tallest Cedars I shall not call your Excellencies Books an addition to our private Library but this a little accession to them they being like their Illustrious Author a far greater Library of Arts and Ingenuity Sure I am even Bodlies Library cannot boast of any such Donation since King James sent his Royal Works and those of his late Martyr'd Majesty were placed there nor is like to do till Kings and your Excellency write and send again whose parts are not in a tedious way acquired but infused not got by Study or a laborious industry but given by the immediate and propitious Hand of Heaven and therefore more Divine like that first principle from whence they flow We have a Manuscript Author in Bodlies Library who endeavors to shew That Women excell Men your Excellency has proved what he proposed has done what he indeavored and given a demonstrative argument to convince the otherwise unbelieving World Your Works will be a just foundation of a lasting and immortal Honour to your self but I fear a reproach to our Sex and us when Posterity shall consider how little we have done with all our Reading and Industry and how much your Excellency without them I shall not indeavor what this and after ages will to commend your Writings they are their own best Panegyrique he that would do this well should have the genious and elocution of their great Author My onely aim is humbly to acknowledge a Debt I can never pay and return the unfeigned thanks and gratitude of Q. Coll. OXON May 21. 1663. Most Illustrious Princess Your Excellencies most devoted and most humble Servant Thomas Barlow MADAM I received a fortnight ago your Honours Letter and the Books you sent one to the University Library one to the Vice Chancellor and another to my self Mr. Vice-Chancellor received your Book as indeed he ought with very much thankfulness and sense of the great Civility you had done him and commanded me to return his respects and hearty Thanks which he would have done himself but that both he and his Family hath been fore visited with Sickness for almost a whole year so that he has not been nor now is in a condition to write The like thanks and if possible infinitely more I must return in behalf of the University and my self being amazed at your goodness and undeserved Kindness that a person so Illustrious and for place and parts so Eminent should look upon so unconsiderable and impertinent a thing in black as I am but that I know the Sun doth shine on Shrubs as well as Cedars and Princes many times cast their Favours upon persons infinitely below them whence they can expect no return but gratitude and when I fail to pay that Tribute so justly due to your Honour may I have your hate which will be the greatest curse I am capable of I have as yet only read one Story in your Book and the Language and Ingenuity of it to me seems such that I am perswaded the famous Monsieur Scudeny would wish himself the Author of it If I mistake not I think I told you in my last that I had a Manuscript Book in my keeping for it was never yet Printed which the Author intitles thus Womens Worth or a Treatise proving by sundry reasons that Women excell Men. Many of my Sex will hardly believe it yet I believe your Honour may prove the best Argument in the World to convince them of their infidelity I humbly beg pardon for this rude and impertinent Scrible That God Almighty would be pleased to bless you and all yours is and shall be the constant Prayer of Q. Coll. Oxon. Sept. 3. 1656. MADAM Your Honours most Obliged Humble Beadsman Thomas Barlow MADAM THat I have not long e're this made at least some slender return of the meanest Gratitude a verbal acknowledgement I take the greater boldness now at length to Apologize for that it is in no