HENRY WOTTON.
38 lines✦
Postscript._ Sir,--I have expressly sent this my footboy to prevent your departurewithout some acknowledgment from me of the receipt of your obligingletter, having myself through some business, I know not how, neglectedthe ordinary conveyance. In any part where I shall understand you fixed,I shall be glad and diligent to entertain you with home-novelties, evenfor some fomentation of our friendship, too soon interrupted in thecradle.{21:B} FOOTNOTES: {19:A} It is delicacy itself. {20:A} With a sweet taste in his mouth (so that he may desire more). {20:B} Avoid. {21:A} "Thoughts close, countenance open." {21:B} This letter was printed in the edition of 1645, but omitted inthat of 1673. It was written by Sir Henry Wotton, Provost of EtonCollege, just in time to overtake Milton before he set out on his journeyto Italy. As a parting act of courtesy Milton had sent Sir Henry a letterwith a copy of Lawes's edition of his _Comus_, and the above letter is anacknowledgment of the favour. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE{22:A} JOHN, LORD VISCOUNT BRACKLEY, _Son and Heir-Apparent to the Earl of Bridgewater, etc._ MY LORD, This Poem, which received its first occasion of birth from yourself andothers of your noble family, and much honour from your own person in theperformance, now returns again to make a final Dedication of itself toyou. Although not openly acknowledged by the Author, yet it is alegitimate offspring, so lovely and so much desired that the oftencopying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction,and brought me to a necessity of producing it to the public view; andnow to offer it up, in all rightful devotion, to those fair hopes andrare endowments of your much-promising youth, which give a fullassurance to all that know you, of a future excellence. Live, sweetLord, to be the honour of your name, and receive this as your own, fromthe hands of him who hath by many favours been long obliged to your mosthonoured Parents, and as in this representation your attendant_Thyrsis_,{22:B} so now in all real expression, Your faithful and most humble Servant,
✦