Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century
History
Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century
Great Britain -- Biography; Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714
'I would desire you (at your leisure) to send me that discourse
of your own which you read to me at Dartmouth in the end of your
contemplations upon the Proverbs, in memory of my Lord Falkland; of
whom in its place I intend to speak largely, conceiving it to be so
far from an indecorum, that the preservation of the fame and merit of
persons, and deriving the same to posterity, is no less the business
of history, than the truth of things. And if you are not of another
opinion, you cannot in justice deny me this assistance' (March 16,
1646-7: _State Papers_, 1773, vol. ii, p. 350).
'I told you long since, that when I came to speak of that unhappy
battle of Newbury, I would enlarge upon the memory of our dear friend
that perished there; to which I conceive myself obliged, not more by
the rights of friendship, than of history, which ought to transmit the
virtue of excellent persons to posterity; and therefore I am careful
to do justice to every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which
side soever, as you will find by what I have said of Mr. Hambden
himself. I am now past that point; and being quickened your most
elegant and political commemoration of him, and from hints there,
thinking it necessary to say somewhat for his vindication in such
particulars as may possibly have made impression in good men, it may
be I have insisted longer upon the argument than may be agreeable to
the rules to be observed in such a work; though it be not much longer
than Livy is in recollecting the virtues of one of the Scipios after
his death. I wish it were with you, that you might read it; for if
you thought it unproportionable for the place where it is, I could
be willingly diverted to make it a piece by itself, and inlarge it
into the whole size of his life; and that way it would be sooner
communicated to the world. And you know Tacitus published the life
of Julius Agricola, before either of his annals or his history. I
am contented you should laugh at me for a fop in talking of Livy or
Tacitus; when all I can hope for is to side Hollingshead, and Stow, or
(because he is a poor Knight too, and worse than either of them) Sir
Richard Baker' (December 14, 1647, _id._ p. 386).
Page 71, l. 22. _Turpe mori_. Lucan, ix. 108.
l. 26. His mother's father, Sir Lawrence Tanfield, Chief Baron of the
Exchequer. He died in May 1625. See p. 87, ll. 21 ff.
Page 72, l. 3. _His education_. See p. 87, ll. 6-13. His father, Henry
Carey, first Viscount, was Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1622 to 1629,
when he was recalled. He died in 1633.
l. 30. _his owne house_, at Great Tew, 16 miles NW. of Oxford;
inherited from Sir Lawrence Tanfield. The house was demolished in
1790, but the gardens remain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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