Reliquiae Wottonianae, or, A collection of lives, letters, poems with characters of sundry personages : and other incomparable pieces of language and art : also additional letters to several persons, not before printed / by the curious pencil of the ever memorable Sir Henry Wottan ...

Noble Sir; above all the most honoured and loved.

UPon the receipt of a Letter from you (which came late, and I know not by what misad∣venture, half drowned, to my hands) with ad∣vertisement, that you had been at Sudbury in your

passage homewards assailed with a Quartan: I re∣solved immediately to visit you by this Bearer the best of my flights, and lately well acquainted him∣self with farther travellers, who yet hath been kept here after my said resolution, that he might bring you a full account of the business touching my invi∣olate Neece so dear unto us both, which was a part of your foresaid Letter, and wherein I am confi∣dent you will receive very singular contentment out of the very Originals of some, and true Copies of other Letters, which I send you by this my said inward servant; and if he were not so, I would not have intrusted him with so tender Papers. The rest of his stay, was only that I might collect among my poor memorials and experiments some∣thing conducible to the recovery of your health, wherein I reckon my self as much interessed as in any one thing of this world. I will not say unto you, Courage, as the French use to speak: for you have enough of that within your self: Nor, Be merry, in our English phrase (for you can impart enough of that even to others in the incomparable delight of your conversation) But let me give you two comforts, though needless to the serenity of your spirits. The first, That I hope your infirmi∣ty will not hold you long, because it comes (as I may speak, according to the barbarous Translators of Avicenna) In complexionato suo: that is in the very season of the revolution of melancholick humours, for Omnis Morbus contra complexionatum Patientis vel Temporis, est periculosus aut longus. The other, That it hath not succeeded any precedent caustick disease, because those Quartans are of all the most obstinate which arise out of the Incineration of a former Ague. The rest I have committed to the

instructions and memory of this Bearer, being him∣self a Student in Physick; and though I dare not yet call him a good Counsellor, yet I assure you, it is a good Relator: with this dispatch I will in∣termingle no other vulgar subject, but hereafter I will entertain you with as jolly things as I can scamble together. And so, Sir, for the present, commending you into the sweet and comfortable preservation of our dear God: I rest,

Your faithful poor Servant, H. WOTTON.

From the Colledge Novemb. 6. 1638.