Nicholas Hill (1570?-1610).
[1196]Mr. Nicholas Hill:—This Nicholas Hill was one of the most learned men of his time: a great mathematician and philosopher and traveller, and a poet[1197]. His writings had the usuall fate of those not printed in the author's life-time. He was so eminent for knowledge, that he was the favourite of ...[LXXXVIII.] the great earle of Oxford, who had him to accompanie him in his travells (he was his steward), which were so splendid and sumptuous, that he kept at Florence a greater court then the Great Duke. This earle spent in that ... of travelling, the inheritance of ten or twelve thousand pounds per annum.
[LXXXVIII.] 'Twas that earle of Oxford that lett the f— before queen Elizabeth: wherupon he travelled. Vide Stowe de hoc, in Elizabeth about the end.
Old Serjeant Hoskins (the poet, grandfather to this Sir John Hoskins, baronet, my hond friend) knew him (was[1198] well acquainted with him), by which meanes I have this tradicion which otherwise had been lost; as also his very name, but only for these verses[FE] in Ben Johnson's 2d volumine, viz.:—
I fancy that his picture, i.e. head, is at the end of the Long Gallery of Pictures at Wilton[LXXXIX.], which is the most philosophicall aspect that I have seen, very much of Mr. T. Hobbes of Malmesbury, but rather more antique. 'Tis pitty that in noblemen's galleries, the names are not writt on, or behind, the pictures.
[LXXXIX.] Philip, earl of Montgomery, Lord Chamberleyn, maried <Susan> the daughter of <Edward Vere, 17th> earle of Oxford, by whom he had his issue.
He writt 'Philosophia Epicureo-Democritiana, simpliciter proposita, non edocta': printed at Colen, in 8vo or 12mo: Sir John Hoskins hath it.