mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he
was never within the possibility of committing, differs only by the
infrequency of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never
saw; complains of jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself
sometimes invited, and sometimes forsaken; fatigues his fancy, and
ransacks his memory for images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope
or the gloominess of despair; and dresses his imaginary Chloris or
Phyllis sometimes in flowers fading as her beauty, and sometimes in
gems lasting as her virtues.

At Paris, as secretary to Lord Jermyn, he was engaged in transacting
things of real importance with real men and real women, and at that
time did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry.
Some of his letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards Earl of Arlington,
from April to December, in 1650, are preserved in "Miscellanea
Aulica," a collection of papers published by Brown. These letters,
being written like those of other men whose minds are more on things
than words, contribute no otherwise to his reputation, than as they
show him to have been above the affectation of unseasonable
elegance, and to have known that the business of a statesman can be
little forwarded by flowers of rhetoric.

One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice. Speaking
of the Scotch treaty then in agitation:

"The Scotch treaty," says he, "is the only thing now in which we are
vitally concerned; I am one of the last hopers, and yet cannot now
abstain from believing that an agreement will be made; all people
upon the place incline to that opinion. The Scotch will moderate
something of the rigour of their demands; the mutual necessity of an