The churches are many and fair; in one of them lies buried the learned and illustrious Joseph Scaliger, without any extraordinary inscription, who, having left the world a monument of his worth more lasting than marble, needed nothing more than his own name; which I think is all engraven on his sepulcher. He left his library to this University.
28th August, 1641. I went to see the college and schools, which are nothing extraordinary, and was complimented with a matricula by the magnificus Professor, who first in Latin demanded of me where my lodging in the town was, my name, age, birth, and to what Faculty I addicted myself; then, recording my answers in a book, he administered an oath to me that I should observe the statutes and orders of the University while I stayed, and then delivered me a ticket, by virtue whereof I was made excise-free; for all which worthy privileges, and the pains of writing, he accepted of a rix-dollar.
Here was now the famous Dan. Heinsius, whom I so longed to see, as well as the no less famous printer, Elzevir's printing-house and shop, renowned for the politeness of the character and editions of what he has published through Europe. Hence to the physic-garden, well stored with exotic plants, if the catalogue presented to me by the gardener be a faithful register.
But, among all the rarities of this place, I was much pleased with a sight of their anatomy-school, theater, and repository adjoining, which is well furnished with natural curiosities; skeletons, from the whale and elephant to the fly and spider; which last is a very delicate piece of art, to see how the bones (if I may so call them of so tender an insect) could be separated from the mucilaginous parts of that minute animal. Among a great variety of other things, I was shown the knife newly taken out of a drunken Dutchman's guts, by an incision in his side, after it had slipped from his fingers into his stomach. The pictures of the chirurgeon and his patient, both living, were there.
There is without the town a fair Mall, curiously planted.
Returning to my lodging, I was showed the statue, cut in stone, of the happy monk, whom they report to have been the first inventor of typography, set over the door; but this is much controverted by others, who strive for the glory of it, besides John Gutenberg.
I was brought acquainted with a Burgundian Jew, who had married an apostate Kentish woman. I asked him divers questions: he told me, among other things, that the World should never end; that our souls transmigrated, and that even those of the most holy persons did penance in the bodies of brutes after death,—and so he interpreted the banishment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar: that all the Jews should rise again, and be led to Jerusalem; that the Romans only were the occasion of our Savior's death, whom he affirmed (as the Turks do) to be a great prophet, but not the Messiah. He showed me several books of their devotion, which he had translated into English, for the instruction of his wife; he told me that when the Messiah came, all the ships, barks, and vessels of Holland should, by the power of certain strange whirlwinds, be loosed from their anchors, and transported in a moment to all the desolate ports and havens throughout the world, wherever the dispersion was, to convey their brethren and tribes to the Holy City; with other such like stuff. He was a merry drunken fellow, but would by no means handle any money (for something I purchased of him), it being Saturday; but desired me to leave it in the window, meaning to receive it on Sunday morning.
1st September, 1641. I went to Delft and Rotterdam, and two days after back to the Hague, to bespeak a suit of horseman's armor, which I caused to be made to fit me. I now rode out of town to see the monument of the woman, pretended to have been a countess of Holland, reported to have had as many children at one birth, as there are days in the year. The basins were hung up in which they were baptized, together with a large description of the matter-of-fact in a frame of carved work, in the church of Lysdun, a desolate place. As I returned, I diverted to see one of the Prince's Palaces, called the Hoff Van Hounsler's Dyck, a very fair cloistered and quadrangular building. The gallery is prettily painted with several huntings, and at one end a gordian knot, with rustical instruments so artificially represented, as to deceive an accurate eye to distinguish it from actual relievo. The ceiling of the staircase is painted with the "Rape of Ganymede," and other pendant figures, the work of F. Covenberg, of whose hand I bought an excellent drollery, which I afterward parted with to my brother George of Wotton, where it now hangs. To this palace join a fair garden and park, curiously planted with limes.
8th September, 1641. Returned to Rotterdam, through Delftshaven and Sedan, where were at that time Colonel Goring's winter quarters. This town has heretofore been very much talked of for witches.
10th September, 1641. I took a wagon for Dort, to be present at the reception of the Queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, Dowager of France, widow of Henry the Great, and mother to the French King, Louis XIII., and the Queen of England, whence she newly arrived, tossed to and fro by the various fortune of her life. From this city, she designed for Cologne, conducted by the Earl of Arundel and the Herr Van Bredrod. At this interview, I saw the Princess of Orange, and the lady her daughter, afterward married to the House of Brandenburgh. There was little remarkable in this reception befitting the greatness of her person; but an universal discontent, which accompanied that unlucky woman wherever she went.