h, and for a dainty
piece of entertainment which came therewith. Wherein I should much
commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did not ravish me with a
certain Doric delicacy in your Songs and Odes, whereunto I must plainly
confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our language: _Ipsa
mollities_. But I must not omit to tell you that I now only owe you
thanks for intimating unto me (how modestly soever) the true artificer.
For the work itself I had viewed some good while before with singular
delight; having received it from our common friend Mr. R., in the very
close of the late R.'s Poems, printed at Oxford: whereunto it was added
(as I now suppose) that the accessory might help out the principal,
according to the art of Stationers, and to leave the reader _con la bocca
dolce_.

"Now, Sir, concerning your travels; wherein I may challenge a little more
privilege of discourse with you. I suppose you will not blanch Paris in
your way: therefore I have been bold to trouble you with a few lines to
Mr. M. B., whom you shall easily find attending the young Lord S. as his
governor; and you may surely receive from him good directions for the
shaping of your farther journey into Italy where he did reside, by my
choice, some time for the King, after mine own recess from Venice.

"I should think that your best line will be through the whole length of
France to Marseilles, and thence by sea to Genoa; whence the passage into
Tuscany is as diurnal as a Gravesend barge. I hasten, as you do, to
Florence or Siena, the rather to tell you a short story, from the
interest you have given me in your safety.

"At Siena I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipioni, an old Roman
courtier in dangerous times; having been steward to the Duca di Pagliano,
who with all his family were strangled, save this only man that escaped
by foresight of the tempest. With him I had often much chat of those
affairs, into which he took pleasure to look back from his native
harbour; and at my departure toward Rome (which had been the centre of
his experience), I had won his confidence enough to beg his advice how I
might carry myself there without offence of others or of mine own
conscience. '_Signor Arrigo mio_,' says he, '_I pensieri stretti ed il
viso sciolto_ will go safely over the whole world.' Of which Delphian
oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment doth need no commentary;
and therefore, Sir, I will commit you, with it, to the best of all