if of his many surviving friends, some one of higher parts and employments had been pleased to have commended his to posterity; but since some years are now passed, and they have all (I know not why) forborn to do it, my gratitude to my dead friend, and the renewed request of some that still live solicitous to see this duty performed, these have had a power to persuade me to undertake it; which, truly, I have not done, but with some distrust of mine own abilities; and yet so far from despair, that I am modestly confident my humble language shall be accepted, because I shall present all readers with a commixture of truth and Sir Henry Wotton's merits.

This being premised, I proceed to tell the reader, that the father of Sir Henry Wotton was twice married; first to Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir John Rudstone, knight; after whose death, though his inclination was averse to all contentions, yet necessitated he was to several suits in law; in the prosecution whereof (which took up much of his time, and were the occasion of many discontents) he was by divers of his friends earnestly persuaded to a re-marriage; to whom he as often answered, "that if ever he did put on a resolution to marry, he was seriously resolved to avoid three sorts of persons, namely,

"Those that had children;
Those that had law-suits;

And those that were of his kindred."

And yet, following his own law-suits, he met in Westminster-hall with Mrs. Eleonora Morton, widow to Robert Morton, of Kent, Esquire, who was also engaged in several suits in law; and he, observing her comportment at the time of hearing one of her causes before the judges, could not but at the same time both compassionate her condition and affect her person; for the tears of lovers, or beauty dressed in sadness, are observed to have in them a charming eloquence, and to become very often too strong to be resisted. Which I mention, because it proved so with this Thomas Wotton; for although there were in her a concurrence of all those accidents, against which he had so seriously resolved, yet his affection to her grew then so strong, that he resolved to solicit her for a wife; and did, and obtained her.

By her, (who was the daughter of Sir William Finch, of Eastwell in Kent) he had only Henry, his youngest son. His mother undertook to be tutoress unto him during much of his childhood; for whose care and pains he paid her each day with such visible signs of future perfection in learning, as turned her employment into a pleasing trouble; which she was content to continue, till his father took him into his own particular care, and disposed of him to a tutor in his own house at Bocton.

And when time and diligent instruction had made him fit for a removal to a higher form (which was very early), he was sent to Winchester school, a place of strict discipline and order; that so he might in his youth be moulded into a method of living by rule, which his wise father knew to be the most necessary way to make the future part of his life both happy to himself, and useful for the discharge of all business, whether public or private.

And that he might be confirmed in this regularity, he was at a fit age removed from that school to be a commoner of New College in Oxford; both being founded by William Wickham, Bishop of Winchester.

There he continued till about the eighteenth year of his age; and was then transplanted into Queen's College, where, within that year, he was by the chief of that college persuasively enjoined to write a play for their private use (it was the tragedy of Tancredo), which was so interwoven with sentences, and for the method and exact personating those humors, passions, and dispositions, which he proposed to represent, so performed, that the gravest of that society declared he had in a slight employment given an early and a solid testimony of his future abilities. And though there may be some sour dispositions, which may think this not worth a memorial, yet

that wise knight, Baptista Guarini (whom learned Italy accounts one of her ornaments), thought it neither an uncomely nor an unprofitable employment for his age.

But I pass to what will be thought more serious.

About the twentieth year of his age he proceeded Master of Arts, and at that time read in Latin three lectures "de Oculo"; wherein he having described the form, the motion, the curious composure of the eye, and demonstrated how, of those very many, every humor and nerve performs its distinct office, so as the God of order hath appointed, without mixture or confusion; and all this to the advantage of man, to whom the eye is given, not only as the body's guide, but whereas all other of his senses require time to inform the soul, this, in an instant, apprehends and warns him of danger; teaching him in the very eyes of others, to discover wit, folly, love, and hatred : after he had made these observations, he fell to dispute this optic question,

"Whether we see by the emission of the beams from within, or reception of the species from without ? "

And after that and many other like learned disquisitions, he, in the conclusion of his lectures, took a fair occasion to beautify his discourse with a commendation of the blessing and benefit of

"Seeing; by which we not only discover Nature's secrets, but with a continued content (for the eye is never weary of seeing) behold the great light of the world, and by it discover the fabric of the heavens, and both the order and motion of the celestial orbs; nay, that if the eye look but downward, it may rejoice to behold the bosom of the earth, our common mother, embroidered and adorned with numberless and various flowers, which man sees daily grow up to perfection, and then silently moralize his own condition, who, in a short time (like those very flowers), decays, withers, and quickly returns again to that earth from which both had their first being."

These were so exactly debated, and so rhetorically heightened, as, among other admirers, caused that learned Italian, Albericus Gentilis, then Professor of the Civil Law in Oxford, to call him " Henrice, mi Ocelle"; which dear expression of his was also used by divers of Sir Henry's dearest friends, and by many other persons of note during his stay in the university.

But his stay there was not long, at least not so long as his friends once intended; for the year after Sir Henry proceeded Master of Arts, his father (whom Sir Henry did never mention without this or some such like reverential expression; "that good man, my father," or, "my father,

as,