he passion for literature which was
implanted in him in boyhood. His devotion to his old college, St.
John's, is characteristic. When a new library was in course of
construction there during the closing years of his life, Southampton
collected books to the value of 360 pounds wherewith to furnish it. This
'monument of love,' as the College authorities described the benefaction,
may still be seen on the shelves of the College library. The gift
largely consisted of illuminated manuscripts--books of hours, legends of
the saints, and mediaeval chronicles. Southampton caused his son to be
educated at St. John's, and his wife expressed to the tutors the hope
that the boy would 'imitate' his father 'in his love to learning and to
them.'

References in his letters to poems and plays.

Even the State papers and business correspondence in which Southampton's
career is traced are enlivened by references to his literary interests.
Especially refreshing are the active signs vouchsafed there of his
sympathy with the great birth of English drama. It was with plays that
he joined other noblemen in 1598 in entertaining his chief, Sir Robert
Cecil, on the eve of the departure for Paris of that embassy in which
Southampton served Cecil as a secretary. In July following Southampton
contrived to enclose in an official despatch from Paris 'certain songs'
which he was anxious that Sir Robert Sidney, a friend of literary tastes,
should share his delight in reading. Twelve months later, while
Southampton was in Ireland, a letter to him from the Countess attested
that current literature was an everyday topic of their private talk.
'All the news I can send you,' she wrote to her husband, 'that I think
will make you merry, is that I read in a letter from London that Sir John
Falstaff is, by his mistress Dame Pintpot, made father of a goodly
miller's thumb--a boy that's all head and very little body; but this is a
secret.' {383a} This cryptic sentence proves on the part of both earl
and countess familiarity with Falstaff's adventures in Shakespeare's
'Henry IV,' where the fat knight apostrophised Mrs. Quickly as 'good pint
pot' (Pt. I. II. iv. 443). Who the acquaintances were about whom the
countess jested thus lightly does not appear, but that Sir John, the
father of 'the boy that was all head and very little body,' was a playful
allusion to Sir John's creator is by no means beyond the bounds of
possibility. In the letters of Sir T