Letter 33.—Sir Thomas Peyton, we must remember, had married Dorothy's eldest sister; she died many years ago, and Sir Thomas married again, in 1648, one Dame Cicely Swan, a widow, whose character Dorothy gives us.
Lord Monmouth was the eldest son of the Earl of Monmouth, and was born in 1596. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. His literary work was, at least, copious, and included some historical writing, as well as the translations mentioned by Dorothy. He published, among other things, An Historical Relation of the United Provinces, a History of the Wars in Flanders, and a History of Venice.
Sir John Suckling, in the following doggerel, hails our noble author with a flunkey's enthusiasm,—
It is so rare and new a thing to see
Aught that belongs to young nobility
In print, but their own clothes, that we must praise
You, as we would do those first show the ways
To arts or to new worlds.
In such strain writes the author of Why so pale and wan, fond lover? and both the circumstance and the doggerel should be very instructive to the snobologist.
The literary work of Lord Broghill is not unknown to fame, and Mr. Waller's verse is still read by us; but I have never seen a history of the Civil Wars from Mr. Waller's pen, and cannot find that he ever published one.
Prazimene and Polexander are two romances translated from the French,—the former, a neat little duodecimo; the latter, a huge folio of more than three hundred and fifty closely-printed pages. The title-page of Prazimene, a very good example of its kind, runs as follows:—"Two delightful Novels, or the Unlucky Fair One; being the Amours of Milistrate and Prazimene, Illustrated with variety of Chance and Fortune. Translated from the French by a Person of Quality, London. Sold by Eben Tracy, at the Three Bibles on London Bridge." Polexander was "done into English by William Browne, Gent.," for the benefit and behoof of the Earl of Pembroke.
William Fiennes, Lord Say and Sele, was one of the chiefs of the Independent party, a Republican, and one of the first to bear arms against the King. He had, for that day, extravagant notions of civil liberty, and on the disappointment of his hopes, he appears to have retired to the Isle of Lundy, on the coast of Devon, and continued a voluntary prisoner there until Cromwell's death. After the Restoration he was made Lord Chamberlain of the Household, and Lord Privy Seal. He published some political tracts, none of which are now in existence; and Anthony Wood mentions having seen other things of his, among which, maybe, was the romance that Dorothy had heard of, but which is lost to us.
SIR,—Pray, let not the apprehension that others say fine things to me make your letters at all the shorter; for, if it were so, I should not think they did, and so long you are safe. My brother Peyton does, indeed, sometimes send me letters that may be excellent for aught I know, and the more likely because I do not understand them; but I may say to you (as to a friend) I do not like them, and have wondered that my sister (who, I may tell you too, and you will not think it vanity in me, had a great deal of wit, and was thought to write as well as most women in England) never persuaded him to alter his style, and make it a little more intelligible. He is an honest gentleman, in earnest, has understanding enough, and was an excellent husband to two very different wives, as two good ones could be. My sister was a melancholy, retired woman, and, besides the company of her husband and her books, never sought any, but could have spent a life much longer than hers was in looking to her house and her children. This lady is of a free, jolly humour, loves cards and company, and is never more pleased than when she sees a great many others that are so too. Now, with both these he so perfectly complied that 'tis hard to judge which humour he is more inclined to in himself; perhaps to neither, which makes it so much the more strange. His kindness to his first wife may give him an esteem for her sister; but he was too much smitten with this lady to think of marrying anybody else, and, seriously, I could not blame him, for she had, and has yet, great loveliness in her; she was very handsome, and is very good (one may read it in her face at first sight). A woman that is hugely civil to all people, and takes as generally as anybody that I know, but not more than my cousin Molle's letters do, but which, yet, you do not like, you say, nor I neither, I'll swear; and if it be ignorance in us both we'll forgive it one another. In my opinion these great scholars are not the best writers (of letters, I mean); of books, perhaps they are. I never had, I think, but one letter from Sir Justinian, but 'twas worth twenty of anybody's else to make me sport. It was the most sublime nonsense that in my life I ever read; and yet, I believe, he descended as low as he could to come near my weak understanding. 'Twill be no compliment after this to say I like your letters in themselves; not as they come from one that is not indifferent to me, but, seriously, I do. All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one's discourse; not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm. 'Tis an admirable thing to see how some people will labour to find out terms that may obscure a plain sense. Like a gentleman I know, who would never say "the weather grew cold," but that "winter began to salute us." I have no patience for such coxcombs, and cannot blame an old uncle of mine that threw the standish at his man's head because he writ a letter for him where, instead of saying (as his master bid him), "that he would have writ himself, but he had the gout in his hand," he said, "that the gout in his hand would not permit him to put pen to paper." The fellow thought he had mended it mightily, and that putting pen to paper was much better than plain writing.
I have no patience neither for these translations of romances. I met with Polexander and L'illustre Bassa both so disguised that I, who am their old acquaintance, hardly know them; besides that, they were still so much French in words and phrases that 'twas impossible for one that understands not French to make anything of them. If poor Prazimene be in the same dress, I would not see her for the world. She has suffered enough besides. I never saw but four tomes of her, and was told the gentleman that writ her story died when those were finished. I was very sorry for it, I remember, for I liked so far as I had seen of it extremely. Is it not my good Lord of Monmouth, or some such honourable personage, that presents her to the English ladies? I have heard many people wonder how he spends his estate. I believe he undoes himself with printing his translations. Nobody else will undergo the charge, because they never hope to sell enough of them to pay themselves withal. I was looking t'other day in a book of his where he translates Pipero as piper, and twenty words more that are as false as this.