Familiar Letters (Volume 2)

LXVIII

To Master G. Stone.

SIR,

Heartily rejoyce with the rest of your frends, that you are safely return’d from your Travells, specially that you have made so good returns of the time of your Travell ;  being as I understand, come home fraighted with observations and languages; your Father tells me tha the finds you are so wedded to the Italian & French, that you utterly neglect the Latine tongue, That’s not well, though you have learnt to play at Baggammon, you must not forget Irish, which is a more serious and solid game; but I know you are so discreet in the course and method of your studies, that you will make the daughters to wait upon their mother, & love stil your old frend : To truck the Latine for any other vulgar Language, is but an ill barter, it is as bad as that which Glaucus made with Diomedes when he parted with his golden Armes for brazen ones ; the procede of this exchange wil come far short of any Gentlemans expections, though haply it may prove advantagious to a Merchant, to whom common Languages are more usefull. I am big with desire to meet you, and to mingle a days discours with you, if not two, how you escap’d the claws of the inquisition, wherunto I understand you wer like to fall, and of other Traverses of your Peregrination : Farewell my precious Stone, and beleeve it, the least grain of those high respects you please to professe unto me, is not lost, but answer’d with so many Caratts : So I rest,

Westm.30 Novem.                              Your most affectionate

1635.                                                   Servitor,

J. H.