The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• A Defence of the People of England, In Answer to Salmasius’s Defence of the King. *
• A Treatise of Civil Power In Ecclesiastical Causes; Showing That It Is Not Lawful For Any Power On Earth to Compel In Matters of Religion.
• Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings Out of the Church. Wherein Is Also Discoursed of Tithes, Church-fees, and Church-revenues; and Whether Any Maintenance of Ministers Can Be Settled By Law.
• A Letter to a Friend Concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth.
• The Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth, Easy to Be Put In Practice, and Without Delay.
• The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence Thereof, Compared With the Inconveniencies and Dangers of Readmitting Kingship In This Nation.
• Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon, Titled, the Fear of God and the King.
• The History of Britain, That Part Especially Now Called England, From the First Traditional Beginning, Continued to the Norman Conquest:—collected Out of the Ancientest and Best Authors Thereof.
• The First Book.
• The Second Book.
• The Third Book.
• The Fourth Book.
• The Fifth Book.
• The Sixth Book.
• Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration; and What Best Means May Be Used Against the Growth of Popery.
• A Brief History of Moscovia, and of Other Less Known Countries Lying Eastward of Russia As Far As Cathay.
• The Preface.
• Moscovia: Or, Relations of Moscovia, As Far As Hath Been Discovered By English Voyages; Gathered From the Writings of Several Eye-witnesses: and the Other Less Known Countries Lying Eastward of Russia As Far As Cathay, Lately Discovered At Several Time
• Chapter I.: A Brief Description.
• Chapter II.: Of Samoëdia, Siberia, and Other Countries North-east, Subject to the Muscovites.
• Chapter III.: Of Tingoësia, and the Countries Adjoining Eastward, As Far As Cathay.
• Chapter IV.: The Succession of Moscovia Dukes and Emperors, Taken Out of Their Chroniles By a Polac, With Some Later Additions. †
• Chapter V.: The First Discovery of Russia By the North-east, 1553, With the English Embassies, and Entertainments At That Court, Until the Year 1604.
• A Declaration of Letters Patents, For the Election of This Present King of Poland, John the Third, Elected On the 22d of May Last Past, A. D. 1674.
• Letters of State to Most of the Sovereign Princes and Republics of Europe, During the Administration of the Commonwealth and the Protectors Oliver and Richard Cromwell.
• Letters Written In the Name of the Parliament.
• Letters Written In the Name of Oliver the Protector.
• Letters Written In the Name of Richard, Protector.
• A Manifesto of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c.
• The Second Defence of the People of England, Against an Anonymous Libel Entitled “the Royal Blood Crying to Heaven For Vengeance On the English Parricides.”
• Familiar Epistles, Translated From the Latin, By Robert Fellowes, A. M. Oxon.
• I.: To His Tutor Thomas Jure.
• II.: To Alexander Gill.
• III.: To the Same.
• IV.: To Thomas Jure.
• V.: To Alexander Gill.
• VI.: To Carolo Deodati.
• VII.: To the Same.
• VIII.: To Beneditto Bonomattai, a Florentine.
• IX.: To Luke Holstein, In the Vatican At Rome.
• X.: To Carolo Deodati, a Florentine Noble.
• XI.: To Hermann Milles, Secretary to the Count of Oldenburgh.
• XII.: To the Renowned Leonard Philara, the Athenian.
• XIII.: To Richard Heth.
• XIV.: To Henry Oldenburgh, Aulic Counsellor to the Senate of Bremen.
• XV.: To Leonard Philara, the Athenian.
• XVI.: To Leo of Aizema.
• XVII.: To Ezechiel Spanheim, of Geneva.
• XVIII.: To Henry Oldenburgh, Aulic Counsellor to the Senate of Bremen.
• XIX.: To the Noble Youth, Richard Jones.
• XX.: To the Accomplished Youth Peter Heinbach.
• XXI.: To the Accomplished Emeric Bigot.
• XXII.: To the Noble Youth Richard Jones.
• XXIII.: To the Illustrious Lord Henry De Bras.
• XXIV.: To Henry Oldenburgh.
• XXV.: To the Noble Youth Richard Jones.
• XXVI.: To the Illustrious Lord Henry De Bras.
• XXVII.: To the Accomplished Peter Heinbach.
• XXVIII.: To John Badiaus, Minister of the Church of Orange.
• XXIX.: To Henry Oldenburgh.
• XXX.: To the Noble Youth Richard Jones.
• XXXI.: To the Accomplished Peter Heinbach, Counsellor to the Elector of Brandenburg.

IX.

ToLuke Holstein,in the Vatican at Rome.

Though in my passage through Italy, many persons have honoured me with singular and memorable proofs of their civility and friendship, yet on so short an acquaintance, I know not whether I can truly say that any one ever gave me stronger marks of his regard than yourself. For, when I went to visit you in the Vatican, though I was not at all known to you, except perhaps from the incidental mention of Alexander Cherion, you received me with the utmost affability and kindness. You afterwards obligingly admitted me into the Museum, you permitted me to see the precious repository of literature, and many Greek MSS., adorned with your own observations; some of which have never yet seen the light, but seem, like the spirits in Virgil,

• In a green valley the pent spirits lay,
• Impatient to behold the realms of day,

to demand the parturient labours of the press. Some of them you have already published, which are greedily received by the learned. You presented me with copies of these on my departure. And I cannot but impute it to your kind mention of me to the noble Cardinal Francisco Barberino, that at a grand musical entertainment which he gave, he waited for me at the door, sought me out among the crowd, took me by the hand, and introduced me into the palace with every mark of the most flattering distinction. When I went the next day to render him my acknowledgments for this his gracious condescension, it was you who obtained me an interview, in which I experienced a degree of civility and kindness greater than I had any reason to expect from a person of his high dignity and character. I know not, most learned Holstein, whether I am the only Englishman to whom you have shown so much friendship and regard, or whether you are led to show the same to all my countrymen, from a recollection of the three years which you passed at the university of Oxford. If this be the case, you generously pay to our dear England the fees of her education; and you both deserve the grateful acknowledgments of each individual in particular, and of our country in general. But if this distinction was shown exclusively to me, if you selected me as worthy of your friendship, I congratulate myself on your preference, while I think your candour greater than my desert.

I strenuously urged my friends, according to your instructions, to inspect the Codex Mediceus; though they have at present but little hope of being able to do it. For in that library nothing can be transcribed, nor even a pen put to paper, without permission being previously obtained; but they say that there is at Rome one John Baptista Donio, who is daily expected at Florence, where he has been invited to read lectures on the Greek language, and by whom you may easily obtain the object of your wishes. It would indeed have been far more grateful to me if I could have been at all instrumental in promoting those honourable and illustrious pursuits in which you are engaged; and which it behoves all men, on all occasions and in all circumstances, to promote. I add that you will lay me under new obligations if you will express my warmest acknowledgments, and my most respectful compliments, to the most noble Cardinal, whose great virtues and whose honest zeal, so favourable to the encouragement of all the liberal arts, are the constant objects of my admiration. Nor can I look without reverence on that mild, and if I may so speak, that lowly, loftiness of mind, which is exalted by its own humiliation, and to which we may apply a verse in the Ceres of Callimachus,

• Ι’θματα μαν χέρσω ϰεϕαλαδε’ οἱ άπτετ’ ὀλύμπω.
• On th’ earth he treads, but to the heavens he soars.

His conduct may serve to show other princes that a forbidding superciliousness and a dazzling parade of power are quite incompatible with real magnanimity. Nor do I think that while he lives any one will regret the loss of the Esti, the Farnese or the Medici, who formerly espoused with so much zeal the patronage of literature. Adieu, most learned Holstein, and if you think me worthy of the honour, rank me, I beseech you, for the future, wherever I may be, among those who are most attached to you and to the studies in which you are engaged.

Florence, March 30, 1639.