Selected quad for the lemma: friend_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
friend_n	worth_a	worth_n	worthy_a	10	3	5.2068	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58391	Reflections upon two pamphlets lately published one called, A letter from Monsieur de Cros, concerning the memoirs of Christendom. And the other, An answer to that letter. Pretended to have been written by the author of the said memoirs. By a Lover of truth. Imprimatur, Edward Cooke. April 21st. 1693.	Lover of truth.	1693 (1693)	Wing R734AA; ESTC R220579	25,503	41

good Language in all the rest of his Letter would make us believe he keeps Can a man of great worth and that deserves well be Vain Proud Revengeful Ungrateful to his Friend False to his Master and impertinently Ambitious in his very Retreat from all Publick Affairs This is indeed a very worthy and a very lively Character of a Man of worth But is not such stuff as this just a sputtering out Quicquid in Buccam venerit Like hot Porridge that burns his Tongue tho 't is pretty plain that all his heat proceeds from the overflowing of his Gall within and from nothing without One would think he has very well practised the old Rule of Calumniare fortiter yet he has lamentably fail'd of the consequence Aliquid inherebit for all the Dirt he endeavours to fling about loves its own Element and sticks close to his own Fingers I never knew so unlucky a Gamester to throw so often and to be always out What not one hit I think the devil 's in the Dice however le ts throw again but first we 'll change Dice and if the good Morals of this Man of great worth will not pass let 's try our luck at his Naturals Sir W. T. says my Gamester has been often and long employ'd but he himself did not know about what 't was too upon very important occasions but he did not know why unless because as de Cros tells us The King had an Aversion for him and never trusted him how often soever he imployed him This great Ambassador to say the truth is a very Bubble and has as little Wit in some parts of the Letter as Honesty in the other Good Lord how this silly World is apt to be gull'd What a Cheat and what a Jilt this common Fame is Who would have believed that the Author of the Observations on the Netherlands and of the charming Miscellanea should be such a Cully if de Cros had not made the discovery but sure he could never be Author of those Books doubtless he either hired some body to write them for him or else some honest-Bookseller like his own had got the Copies and set Sir W. T 's name to them I would to God he had been so honest to set mine in the stead But not we have heard the Charge pray make room for the Evidence Sir W. T. is the proudest Man in the World and what are the proofs or the Instances Why de Cros says it and that 's Demonstration He is ungrateful to his Friend and why Because de Cros knows it He is false to his Master and the Reason's plain de Cros pretends to believe it He is the most revengeful of-Men for he calls de Cros by his own Name He is of all men the most Ambitious and never did man desire more to have a hand in Affairs This is beyond dispute for de Cros knows his thoughts and tells us not only what he says of others but what he thinks of himself and with equal truth This is the Conjurer again and with a witness he tells us further p. 9. of men whose ruin Sir W. T. desires at the bottom of his heart where it is not to be questioned but de Cros has been and to put it beyond all doubt that he was so he says p. 13. That Sir W. T. came once to render him a visit at his Lodging and that Mons Olivencrants the Swedish Ambassador was then at his House which gives me a scruple that the visit might be meant to him rather than to Mons de Cros. However this is all the instances I find of his Acquaintance with a Person whose heart he pretends to know so well and with whom by all the rest of his Letter I should be apt to judge he was the least acquainted with of any man in the World But to close all these Generals before we come to particulars he tells us p. 29. he knows something of Sir W. T. upon the Subject of what passed between him and my Lord Arlington that makes his hair stand an end Alas the poor Gentleman 's in an Agony Bless us all from sprights what a puny Conjurer is this to raise a Spirit that scares no body else and run into a hole for fear of it himself He has formed so terrible an Image of Sir W. T. in his own little working Noddle that he knows not were he is nor what he does but is all in a maze However this I am certain that no man alive who has read the rest of de Cros's Letter but will allow him to be one that if he knew any thing ill of Sir W. T. would at least be sure not to tell it we have his own word for it p. 7. My design is not at all my Lord to write you a Letter full of Invectives against Sir W. T. And in another place That says he would not be like a Gentleman But yet to give him his due and as he says p. 7. To let everybody see he has means in his hands to be revenged there is one point and that alone where he brings his Proof lays downs his Instance and that out of the Memoirs themselves 't is designed undeniably to convince the World of Sir W. T 's Vanity of which he could give my Lord many instances but at present contents himself with one and 't is a thumping one 'T is the following Period which I shall quote out of the Memoirs a little more faithfully than he does in his Letter which I was so curious to observe by thinking the word Clutches to be no part of Sir W. T 's stile and found he had taken a great deal of pains to wrest it as much as he could to his turn It runs thus Mem. p. 30. This I suppose gave some occasion for my being again designed for this Ambassy who was thought to have some credit with Spain as well as Holland from the Negotiations I had formerly run through at the Hague Brussels and Aix la Chapelle by which the remaining part of Flanders had been saved out of the hands of France in the year 1668. Now for my own part I must confess my self so giddy a Reader and of so much inadvertency that when I read that Passage I took it for a singular piece of Modesty since the Author gives for a Reason why the King chose him for his second Ambassy in Holland because he had been formerly employed in those Countries and not for any Personal Merit in himself but de Cros is so great a Stranger to Modesty that we cannot blame him for not knowing it when he meets it and since he has no other Accusations of this kind I must profess I can discover nothing of Vanity in the whole Series of all those Relations nor can reckon for such the Author 's not avoiding to speak of himself any more than of other Persons when it came in his way who had so great and so continual

thence He plaisters it up with saying p. 25. If the late King of England did not approve of my Conduct in the Affairs of Nimeguen which in effect he declared in publick not to be pleased with in which he plaid his part to admiration c. But since we have seen the Character he gives of him as a King let us observe how he Treats His Majesty as a Mediator and how he Represents him ballancing the Affairs of Christendom then in his hands First de Cros tells us This Dispatch of his was concerted with Monsieur Barillon For tho he says That that Ambassadour had no had in the beginning of it yet he owns him in the same place to have part of it when it was concluding and that Monsieur de Ruvigny was dispatcht by the King with an Account of it to the French Court the very same day that de Cros was sent away for Nimeguen And p. 25. He tells us further That Prince Rupert askt him upon his Return with a stern Countenance If the Peace was concluded and he answering in the Affirmative the Prince cried out O Dissimulation And p. 28. he tells us That the Prince of Orange the Kings Nephew writ thundring Letters against him and all the Ministers of the Confederates called for Vengeance c. Yet after all these Marks of something so very injurious to the Allies and confidence to France The King says he in the page last mentioned laughs in his Sleeve at the Surprize at the Sorrow and Complaints of the Confederates Which is to give us just such a Character of a Mediator as he did before of a King I leave it to all mens Judgment whether more villanous Slanders could have been broached abroad by the worst of this Prince's Enemies and whether it be not a Scandal to our Country that they should be translated and published in English But since Monsieur de Cros is so bold with the Sacred Memory of a Great King for which he is yet so Impudent as to profess a most profound Respect What can a Subject expect for whom he owns such a virulent Malice and to whom he threatens such open Revenge The same vein of truth and sincerity shines through the whole Letter and the Author's Ingenuity is at the old pitch in what he pretends to rake out of the Memoirs concerning several Persons in great Employments as the D. of Lauder dale the present E. of Rochester Sir Joseph Williamson Sir Lionel Jenkins and Mons Beverning This Conjurer in all he says of them seems resolved to raise up the Spirits of the Dead to joyn with those of the Living in the Quarrel with these Memoirs and by such distorted Consequences draws Characters of them whereof there is no Apparition but what he himself raises So that the Characters he gives of these Persons by such false Deductions for Sir W. T 's may justly be said to be his own But from all I have observed in this Letter I have wonder'd at nothing so much as that impudent Vanity in the Writer who endeavours to make himself and the World believe that these Memoirs were intended chiefly against him whose very name is hardly twice mentioned after these two Pages in the whole Book which does not pretend to give Characters of Persons but only to relate things that were done or words that were said And the way to have made an answer with any Justice had been to have laid Exceptions either against the one or the other whereof there is not one word in all this Answer without any Answer However so ridiculous is this mans Insolence that he begins his Letter thus I have been informed of the Calumnies that Sir W. T. hath caused to be printed against me And p. 7. He set upon me first he writes out of a Spirit of Revenge c. The sensless Arrogance of which I cannot think of but it remembers me of the Fly on the Chariot-wheel For he would fain make it to have been a piece of Revenge against him for having brought that Dispatch to the Hague and yet he lays it much to heart that in that Affair he should only take him for a Messenger And this indeed is to make him a very reasonable person and like a man that when he receives a blow grows angry with the Stone by which it is given But by all I can observe in these Memoirs I do not find any thing which bears the least resemblance of Anger or Spleen much less of Revenge against Mons de Cros but so far from it that in the very Passage he lays most to heart of the Kings calling him Rogue the Memoirs mention particularly that His Majesty said it pleasantly which he himself cannot forbear observing in his Letter Having thus long been considering how far he is provok'd and how well he defends himself 't is time now to see how he attacks the Person whom he fancies his capital Enemy and how the Play begins 'T is then in these words p. 1. I know very well that Sir W. T. is of great worth and deserves well and that he hath been a long time imployed and that too upon important Occasions This is a piece indeed very much of a piece with all the rest Now in the name of wonder what can be the meaning I wot well enough what he would be at in all the rest of his Letter but the Sense the Wit or the Design of these sweet Lines is not easy to devise I confess I see a good many Plays and I believe I have read more but never met before so fair a Prologue to so foul a Farce I have read somewhere of a Monster among the Ancients with a Virgins face and all beside a Serpent which holds exact Resemblance here unless de Cros should object against it because Serpents have stings and his Letter has none However if we will not grant him a Conjurer as he would fain be thought yet we cannot in Conscience deny him to be a Jugler since the first thing he presents us with is meer slight of hand For he lays down a piece of Gold upon the Table and immediately Presto 't is gone and all we can see is only half a dozen Pellets of Dirt. In short I am not able to reach what he means by so whimsical a beginning and of so different a piece from every word that follows unless that being resolved to say nothing afterwards which any body would believe he thought fit to entertain us at first with three Lines he is sure no body doubts But to be serious If Sir W. T. be of great worth If de Cros either believes it himself or would have any body else to do so why is every word that follows so contradictory to these If he deserves well why is he used so very ill Does de Cros understand what a man of great worth means I doubt he does not either by himself or by such Company as so much