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
But I must heare take leave a little longer to discontinue this
narration, and if the celebratinge the memory of eminent and
extraordinary persons, and transmittinge ther greate virtues for the
imitation of posterity, be one of the principle endes and dutyes of
History, it will not be thought impertinent in this place to remember
a losse, which noe tyme will suffer to be forgotten, and no successe
or good fortune could repayre; In this unhappy battell was slayne
the L'd Viscounte Falkelande, a person of such prodigious partes of
learninge and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetenesse and delight in
conversation, of so flowinge and obliginge a humanity and goodnesse
to mankinde, and of that primitive simplicity, and integrity of life,
that if ther were no other brande upon this odious and accursed Civill
war, then that single losse, it must be most infamous and execrable to
all posterity:
Turpe mori post te, solo non posse dolore.
Before this parliament his condition of life was so happy, that it
was hardly capable of improovement; before he came to twenty yeeres of
Age, he was master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by the
gifte of a grandfather, without passinge through his father or mother,
who were then both alive, and not well enough contented to finde
themselves passed by in the descent: His education for some yeeres
had bene in Ireland, wher his father was Lord Deputy, so that when
he returned into Englande, to the possessyon of his fortune, he was
unintangled with any acquaintance or frends, which usually grow up by
the custome of conversation, and therfore was to make a pure election
of his company; which he chose by other rules then were prescribed
to the younge nobility of that tyme; And it cannot be denyed, though
he admitted some few to his frendshipp for the agreablenesse of ther
natures, and ther undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity
and frendshipp for the most parte was with men of the most eminent and
sublime partes, and of untouched reputations in pointe of integrity:
and such men had a title to his bosome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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