Seignior Nichola to Mr. Buckly, at the Swan Coffee-House near Bloomsbury.
IT is impossible to suffer it any longer! what, my diviner airs made the sordid entertainment of sordid footmen, scoundrel fellows, and I know not what for ragamuffins! must those seraphic lays, that have so often been the delight of muses, the joy of princes, the rapture of the fair sex, the treasures of the judicious, must these be thrumm’d over to blaspheming rascals, smoaking sots, noisy boobies, and such nefarious mechanicks! oh, prophane!—-- they shall have my sonatas, that they shall with a horse-pox to them. Can’t their Darby go down but with a tune, nor their tobacco smoak, without the harmony of a Cremona fiddle? if they can’t be merry without musick, provide them a good key, and a pair of wrought tongs. One of their own jigs is diverting enough for their heavy capacities; whence comes it that the sons of art, and the brothers of rosin and cat-gut, can demean themselves so poorly to play before them? since when have the daughters of Helicon frequented ale-houses? must the sacred streams of our Aganiope, pay homage to the Darwent, and wash tankards and glasses? sure you think Pegasus a jade, and are looking out for a chap for him: who can come up to his price there? his beauties are too sublime for the groom, and his master had rather have a strong horse for his coach: none of them alas can tilt the fiery courser. What a strange medley do you make! wit, musick, noise, nonsense, smoak, spawl, Darby-ale, and brandy: nay your rage and indiscretion goes farther yet; folly and madness seem to be contagious, and you jar among yourselves? the brothers of symphony quarrel, and turn the banquetting-house of the Thessalian ladies into a bear-garden, those active joints that so nicely touch’d my notes, are now barbarously levell’d at each other’s eyes; the powerful off-spring of my harmonious conceptions, is miserably torn to pieces betwixt them; and what would have charm’d all mankind, is dishonourably employ’d to the lighting of pipes and cleaning of tables. If you will set up for celebrating the orgies of the juicy god, let your instruments be all chosen accordingly, your airs correspondent to the audience; but make me no more the contempt and derision of your debauch’d meetings: for the commendation of fools is more wounding than the reprimands of the ingenious. At best, it is prostituting me to bring them into my company. If you put not some sudden order to these ignominious proceedings, I will dispatch an imp to sowre your ale, consume your cordials, spill your tobacco, break your glasses, and cut all your equipage of harmony into ten thousand millions of bits; nay I will prosecute my revenge so far, that even in the play-house your hand shall shake, your ear shall judge wrong, your strings crack, and every disappointment that may render you ridiculous, shall attend you in all publick meetings where-ever you pretend to play. So be wise and be warn’d: play to lovers and judges of musick, draw drink to sots and neighbours.
Ignatius Loyola to the Archbishop of Toledo.
YOUR eminency’s remissness in the late affairs of the Spanish territories, has made my scorpion’s stink deeper than heretofore, and superadded a new blackness to the horrors of my rage and despair. Those painful machinations, who took their birth from hell itself, and by my industry and application had so glorious a prospect of bridling all mankind, wherever the Romish doctrine triumph’d at least, are now by that long continued series of an unhappy supineness in your predecessors, or the powerful influences of French gold, reduc’d to almost nothing. The thunderbolts of the inquisition rattled more dreadfully than those of the Vatican; and after emperors had subjected themselves to the successors of St. Peter, we found out means to subject him to our censures, and by this made our selves superior to supreme. The mildness of your executions, and the rarity of ’em have substracted wonderfully from their reputation, and from my designs. Your excellency can’t say but I lay down very sufficient groundworks for the rendering my orders as lasting as religion, if not as lasting as time. More than Europe has felt the efficacy of my instructions; and where-ever my disciples have been sent they have brought us home souls and bodies, credit and estates.
What society can vie with us for extent of temporal concerns? what provinces are not in a great measure ours? we have the guardianship of the consciences of most of the considerable crown’d heads, and few affairs of importance are transacted any where but with our privity. I have not met with any one person in these kingdoms that has been of note and quality, that came here with a pass-port from the holy inquisition; now and then a rascally Jew or so, comes here blaspheming your power and prudence; and is so angry that he will not show it at hell-gates; as if he apprehended a double damnation from our character.
Your excellency can’t but be sensible how great sufferers we have been by the substracting of the Gallican church from the lash of our authority; and it was no small amputation we suffered in the Spanish Netherlands, by the improvident proceeding of that rash commander the duke of Alva: If now you submit thus quietly to the administration of France, I cannot but apprehend an universal extention of that powerful and profitable institution. Next to my own society, I look upon it to be the basis of the Romish monarchy, and undoubtedly of your own, and of the Austrian greatness. How are your liberties trampled upon by a child, and all your dons led captives to Versailles? Where is the antient valour and obstinacy of the Moorish blood? Where are the poisons and the poniards so frequent in Madrid? Is Spain brought so low that she has not resolution enough for one feeble effort, to save herself from infamy and ruin? Your arms were always unsuccessful against the English nation; the greatness of your misery points out still the memorable, the very deplorable overthrow in eighty eight: There is a queen again upon that crown, willing and able to protect you as well as others, and it may be in rubricks of fate, that as one queen brought down the pride of the haughty Spaniards, so the other shall humble France as much, even when it is in its most tow’ring glory. But whatever be the destiny of France, you ought to look after yourselves, and not by an untimely accession of your powers to that of so formidable a monarch, intangle yourselves in an inextricable ruin, by so much the more unpardonable as you might easily have prevented it. Shew the world then that a French lion can’t thrive in a Spanish soil, and dart forth the lightning of the inquisition against all that adhere to the Gallic interest and connive at the ruin of the Spanish grandeur. Exert yourself and swim hither in a sea of blood, and may your cruelties succeed.
Alderman Floyer to Sir Humphery Edwin.
I Ever had an infinite value for your friendship, and as every letter is a fresh mark of it, I have in every one new matter of satisfaction; yet I could not read your last without equal surprize and concern; and if I did not positively believe your integrity, as I am acquainted with your capacity, I should be at a loss what construction to put upon it: for all Europe has been deaf for I know not how many years, with more and more accounts how your kings grew upon their people, and we ever look’d upon the English as very jealous of their privileges. I need not tell you how odious your two last kings were to us of these parts; nay, and all Germany too, papist and protestant; for instead of holding the balance between France, Spain and the Empire, as the situation of your country, and its mighty power by sea made ’em capable of doing, and the character of guarantees for the peace of Nimeguen, and the truce for twenty years oblig’d ’em to it; their siding with France, notwithstanding all the endeavours of foreign ministers to the contrary, and their own real interest too, may be justly said to have laid the foundation of all those calamities that the arms and intrigues of France, have since that time brought upon Europe. But tho’ we had so many reasons to be dissatisfied with the proceedings of king Charles II. and king James too, yet we never diminish’d any thing of our good will we bore the English nation; because we cou’d not but believe they were as far from approving those transactions as we were, and repin’d as much as we did at the growing grandeur of the French monarch. The clandestine measures both those kings took to enslave their subjects to the power of France, and the Romish religion, was as good a demonstration of a natural enmity between those two sorts of people. His present majesty’s descent was concerted with most of the princes of the empire after it was so earnestly propos’d to him, and almost press’d upon him by the very best of your nation. The friendship between the two crowns was no longer a secret, tho’ the English envoy at the Hague deny’d it positively when I was there: This was more than an umbrage to the discerning part of your kingdom, and what the very commonality could not think on without terrible apprehensions: and all of us here in like manner look’d upon this enterprize as a thing on which depended the safety or ruin of the whole protestant affairs of Europe.
I cannot comprehend what unlucky planet rules over you! that any one person should be dissatisfy’d, is prodigious to me. You are freed from all those oppressions, whose probability alone having made no small part of your misery. You were very uneasy under the administration of king James, and now you are deliver’d, you murmur! you know his royal highness was so unwilling to embark himself in this affair, tho’ his interest and his honour were very much concern’d at it, that he did not yield but to the iterated solicitations of your countrymen, join’d with full assurance that they would stand by him with their lives and fortunes. You must pardon the freedom of my expression, if I assure you, that this ungrateful false step lessens my value for the English nation: for after having made such terrible complaints of their miseries and injuries, and fill’d Europe with their tears and lamentations, implor’d a neighbouring prince to come to their rescue, at a season of the year that wou’d have quell’d the greatest courage that ever was, if it had not been supported with charity; and add to this, the unavoidable necessity of so vast an expence, as would have sunk some princes fortunes, now they are happily settled in their affairs at home, have glorious armies abroad, and that king at their head, who has so justly merited that title of Defender of the Faith, whose prudence and vigilancy has corroborated their native force with so many powerful allies; that these people should be so little sensible of their own felicity, as to murmur and be discontented, is to me a paradox, but I am sure unpardonable. The knowledge I have of the English genius, makes me believe there are but a few malecontents, and tho’ they call themselves protestants, ’tis only to bring an odium upon those that really are, by such perverse measures. I hope ’tis only your fears for your country, which proceed from your love of it, that multiplies these disagreeable objects. You have a protestant prince, on a protestant throne, liberty of conscience, and even the Roman Catholicks, that were always plotting against the government, are permitted so much freedom under it, that they would be mad if they were out of it.
Look back to the desolations in France, and to the storm you are deliver’d from, and see if you can ever thank God enough for your deliverance.