The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics — John Shaqi
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
There are likewise letters to the student at Dublin from his brother
Forth, who succeeded him at the school at St. Edmund's. It is curious to
note in these epistles of the school-boy the indifferent success of his
manifestly sincere effort to use the technical language of Puritanism
and to express its aims and ardors. The youth evidently feels freer when
writing of the fortunes of some of his school-mates. This same Forth
Winthrop became in course a student at Cambridge, and we have letters to
his father, carried by the veritable Hobson immortalized by Milton.
The younger John went, on graduating, to London, to fit himself for the
law. His name is found on the books as admitted to the Inner Temple in
1624. He appears early to have cherished some matrimonial purposes which
did not work felicitously. Not liking his profession, he turned his
thoughts toward the sea. He obtained a secretaryship in the naval
service, and joined the expedition under the Duke of Buckingham,
designed to relieve the French Protestants at Rochelle, in 1627. He
afterwards made an Oriental tour, of the stages of which we have some
account in his letters, in 1628-9, from Leghorn, Constantinople, etc. He
was thwarted in a purpose to visit Jerusalem, and returned to England,
by Holland. Notwithstanding the industrious fidelity of his father as a
letter-writer, the son received no tidings from home during his whole
absence of nearly fifteen months. What a contrast with our times!
Before undertaking this Oriental tour, the younger John had had
proposals made to him, which seem to have engaged his own inclinations,
to connect himself with Endecott's New-England enterprise. He wrote to
consult the wishes of his father on the subject; but that father, who in
less than two years was to find himself pledged to a more comprehensive
scheme, involving a life-long exile in that far-off wilderness,
dissuaded his son from the premature undertaking. It does not appear
that the father had as yet presented to his mind the possibility of any
such step. Yet, from the readiness which marked his own earnest and
complete sympathy in the enterprise when first we find him concerned in
it, we must infer that he had much previous acquaintance and sympathy
with the early New-England adventurers from the moment that a religious
spirit became prominent in their fellowship. He was a man who undertook
no great work without the most careful deliberation, and a slow maturing
of his decision.
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