a thing which I think no one
can do without the sharpest judgment and a certain temperance at
the same time. There are many in whom you will not miss either
elegance of style or abundance of information; but for conjunction
of brevity with abundance, i.e. for the despatch of much in few
words, the chief of the Latins, in my judgment, is Sallust. Such
are the qualities that I think should be in the Historian that
would hope to make his expressions proportional to the facts he
records.

"But why all this to you, who are sufficient, with the talent you
have, to make it all out, and who, if you persevere in the road you
have entered, will soon be able to consult no one more learned than
yourself. That you do persevere, though you require no one's advice
for that, yet, that I may not seem to have altogether failed in
replying correspondingly with the value you are pleased to put upon
my authority with you, is my earnest exhortation and suggestion.
Farewell; and all success to your real worth, and your zeal for
acquiring wisdom.

"Westminster: July 15, 1657."

Henry Oldenburg, and his pupil Richard Jones, _alias_ young
Ranelagh, had left Oxford in April or May 1657, after about a year's
stay there, and had gone abroad on a tour which was to extend over
more than four years. It was an arrangement for the farther education
of young Ranelagh in the way most satisfactory to his mother, Lady
Ranelagh, and perhaps also to his uncle, Robert Boyle, neither of
whom seems to have cared much for the ordinary University routine;
and particulars had been settled by correspondence between Oldenburg
at Oxford and Lady Ranelagh in Ireland.[1] Young Ranelagh, I find,
took with him as his servant a David Whitelaw, who had been servant
to Durie in his foreign travels: "my man, David Whitelaw," as Durie
calls him.[2] The ever-convenient Hartlib was to manage the
conveyance of letters to the travellers, wherever they might be.[3]

[Footnote 1: Letter of Oldenburg to Boyle, dated April! 5, 1657,
given in Boyle's Works (V. 299).]

[Footnote 2: Letters of Durie in _Vaughan's Protectorate_ (II.
174 and 195).]

[Footnote 3: Letter of Oldenburg in Boyle's Works (V. 301).]

They went, pretty directly, to Saumur in the west of France, a
pleasant little town, with a college, a library, &c., which they had
selected for their first place of residence, rather than Paris. An
Italian master was procured to teach y