Nevv epistles of Mounsieur de Balzac. Translated out of French into English, by Sr. Richard Baker Knight. Being the second and third volumes

To Mounsieur Descartes. LETTER XXIX.

SIR, your Letter found mee in the blackest humour I was ever in in all my life. To tell you, that in that estate it brought mee joy; were to speake too boldly for a man in misery: but it is true, it did a little mitigate my sadnesse, and made mee capable of consola∣tion. I did not then live but in the hope I had to go see you at Amsterdam; and to embrace that deare Head, which is so full of reason & under∣standing. This is that which hinders me from inviting you to come hither; or—: He is ever in the slavery of Ceremonies & Compliments; and plaies the coward with such a valour of spirit, that one could not imagine. He hath the soule of a Rebell; & the submission of a slave: if you may beleeve him, he hath no ambition; yet he consents to that of another; and dies of a sicknesse that is not his owne. See what it

is to be a sycophant; and to be undutifull by o∣bedience. But you Sir, have raised your minde above these vulgar considerations: and when I thinke upon the Stoicks Wiseman, who onely was free, was rich, was a King; me thinkes, I see you foretold long agoe; and that Zeno was but the Figure of Mounsieur Descartes:

Foelix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes, & inexorabile fatum, Subjecit pedibus.

Either you are this happy man, or heē is not to be found in the world; and the conquest of truth, for which you labour with so great force and industry seemes to mee a more noble busi∣nesse, then all that is done with so great bruite and tumult in Germany and Italy, I am not so vaine to pretend, I should be a companion of your travell herein; but I shall at least be a spe∣ctator; and shall enrich my selfe with the rel∣licks of the prey; and with the superfluitie of your abundance. Thinke not that I make this proposition by chance; I speake it in great ear∣nest; and if you stay never so little in the place where you are; you shall finde mee a Hollander as well as your selfe; and my Masters, the States, shall not have a better citizen: nor one more passionate for libertie than I am. Although I love extremely the aire of Italy; and the soyle that beares Orenges; yet your vertue is able to draw me to the bankes of the frozen sea; and even to the uttermost border of the North. It is

now three yeares, that my imagination goes in quest after you; and that I even die with lon∣ging to be united to you, and never to part from you againe: and to testifie unto you, by a continuall subjection, that I passionately am,

Sir,

Your, &c.

At •…•…arisc, 25. Aprill. 1631.