that he refolved to folicit her for a wife, and did, and obtained her.

By her (who was the daughter of Sir William Finch, of Eaftwell in Kent) he had only Henry his youngest son. His mother undertook to be tutorefs unto him during much of his childhood; for whofe care and pains he paid her each day with fuch vifible figns of future perfection in learning, as turned her employment into a pleafing trouble; which she was content to continue, till his father took him into his own particular care, and disposed of him to a tutor in his own house at Bocton.

And when time and diligent inftruction had made him fit for a removal to an higher form (which was very early), he was fent to Winchefter-school, a place of ftrict difcipline and order, that fo he might in his youth be moulded into a method of living by rule, which his wife father knew to be the most necessary way to make the future part of his life both happy to himself, and useful for the discharge of all business, whether public or private. And that he might be confirmed in this

regularity, he was at a fit age removed from that school, to be a commoner of New-College in Oxford; both being founded by William Wickham, Bishop of Winchester.

There he continued till about the eighteenth year of his age, and was then transplanted into Queen's College; where within that year he was by the chief of that college perfuafively enjoined to write a play for their private use; (it was the Tragedy of Tancredo)-which was fo interwoven with fentences, and for the method and exact perfonating those humours, paffions, and difpofitions, which he proposed to represent, so performed, that the graveft of that fociety declared, he had in a fleight employment given an early and a folid teftimony of his future abilities. And though there may be fome four difpofitions, which may think this not worth a memorial, yet that wise knight, Baptifta Guarini, (whom learned Italy accounts one of her ornaments) thought it neither an uncomely nor an unprofitable employment for his age.

But

But I pass to what will be thought more ferious.

About the twentieth year of his age he proceeded Mafter of Arts; and at that time read in Latin three lectures de Oculo; wherein he having defcribed the form, the motion, the curious compofure of the eye, and demonftrated how of those very many every humour and nerve performs its diftinct office, fo as the God of order hath appointed, without mixture or confufion; and all this to the advantage of man, to whom the eye is given, not only as the body's guide, but whereas all other of his fenfes require time to inform the foul, this in an inftant apprehends and warns him of danger; teaching him in the very eyes of others, to discover wit, folly, love, and hatred. After he had made these observations, he fell to dispute this optique question, "Whether we fee by "the emiffion of the beams from within, "or reception of the fpecies from with"out?" And after that, and many other like learned difquifitions, he in the conclufion of his lectures took a fair occafion

to beautify his difcourfe with a commendation of the bleffing and benefit of "Seeing;-by which we do not only dif"cover Nature's fecrets, but with a con"tinued content (for the eye is never "weary of feeing) behold the great light " of the world, and by it discover the fa"bric of the heavens, and both the order ❝and motion of the celeftial orbs; nay, "that if the eye look but downward, it "may rejoice to behold the bofom of the "earth, our common mother, embroi"dered and adorned with numberlefs and "various flowers, which man fees daily "grow up to perfection, and then filently "moralize his own condition, who in a "fhort time (like those very flowers) decays, withers, and quickly returns again "to that earth, from which both had their "first being."

These were fo exactly debated, and fo rhetorically heightened, as, among other admirers, caused that learned Italian, Albericus Gentilis, then Profeffor of the Civil Law in Oxford, to call him "Henrice mi "Ocelle;" which dear expreffion of his

was

was also used by divers of Sir Henry's dearest friends, and by many other perfons of note during his stay in the University.

But his ftay there was not long, at leaft not fo long as his friends once intended; for the year after Sir Henry proceeded Master of Arts, his father (whom Sir Henry did never mention without this or fome like reverential expreffion; as, "That good man my father," or "My "father, the best of men ;")—about that time, this good man changed this for a better life; leaving to Sir Henry, as to his other younger fons, a rent-charge of an hundred marks a year, to be paid for ever out of fome one of his manors, of a much greater value,

And here, though this good man be dead, yet I wish a circumftance or two that concern him may not be buried without a relation; which I fhall undertake to do, for that I fuppofe they may fo much concern the reader to know, that I may promise myself a pardon for a fhort digres

fion.