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courageth any of you to despise or neglect him, that person, whoever he be, loves not you nor the office he bears. And, therefore, as the laws of the land and the Divine Providence hath placed him at Alderly, to have a care of your souls, so I must tell you I do expect you should reverence and honour him for his own, for your, and for his office sake.

And now I have written this long epistle to you, to perform that office for me that I should have done in person, if I could have taken this journey. The epistle is long, but it had been longer, if I had had more time. And though, perchance some there may be in the world, that when they hear of it will interpret it to be but the excursions and morose rules of old age, unnecessary, and such as might have been spared; yet, I am persuaded, it will find better acceptation thereof from you that are my children. I am now on the shady side of threescore years. I write to you what you have often heard me in substance speak. And possibly, when I shall leave this world, you will want such a remembrancer as I have been to you. The words that I now, and at former times have written to you, are words of truth and soberness; and words and advices that proceed from a heart full of love and affection to you all. If I should see you do amiss in any thing, and should not reprove you; or if I should find you want counsel or direction, and should not give it, I should not perform the trust of a father: and, if you should not thankfully receive it, you would be somewhat defective in the duty you owe to God and me as

children. As I have never spared my purse to supply you, according to my abilities and the reasonableness of occasions, so I have never been wanting to you in good and prudent counsels. And the God of heaven give you wisdom, constancy, and fidelity in the observance of them.

I am your ever loving father,

MATTHEW HALE.

LORD ROOS TO THE MARQUIS OF DOR-
CHESTER *.

SIR,

February 25, 1659. SURE you were among your gallypots and glister pipes when you gave your chollor so violent a purge, to the fouling of so much innocent paper, and your own reputation (if you had any, which the wise very much doubt). You had better been drunk, and set in stocks for it, when you sent the post with a whole pacquet of chartells to me, in which you have discovered so much vapouring nonsense and rayling, that it is wholesomer for your credit to have it thought the effect of drink than your own natural talent, imperfect minde and memory for if you understand any thing in your own trade, you could not but know that the hectic of your own brain is more desperate than

This choice specimen of patrician vituperation was addressed by Lord Roos to his father in law, the Marquis of Dorchester, in consequence of the marquis having published a letter, respecting the differences which had arisen between Lord Roos and his wife. Butler, the author of Hudibras, is said to have assisted Lord Roos in the composition of this goodly epistle.

the tertian fits of mine, which are easily cured with a little sleep; but yours is past the remedy of a mortar and braying. But I wonder with what confidence you can accuse me with the discovery of private passages between us, when you are so open yourself, that every man sees through you; or how could I disclose perfectly any thing in your epistles to my father and mother, which was not before very well known to your tutors and schoolmasters, whose instructions you used in compiling those voluminous works? Let any man judge whether I am so likely to divulge secrets as you, who cannot forbear printing and publishing. Your letters are now cried in the streets of London, with ballads on the Rump; and Hewson's Lamentations; and the lord of Dorchester's name makes a greater noyse in a close alley than "kitchen stuffe," or "work for a tinker;" and all this by your own industry, who are not ashamed at the same instant to pretend to secrecy, with no less absurdity than you commit when, accusing me for using foul language, you doe outdoe Billingsgate yourself. But now you begin to vapour, and to tell us you have fought before; so I have heard you have, with your wife and poet; but if you come off with no more honour than when you were beaten by my Lord Grandison, you had better have kept that to yourself, if it were possible for you to conceale any thing; but I cannot but laugh at the untoward course you take to render yourself formidable, by bragging of your fights, when you are terrible only in your medicines. If you had told us how many you had killed that way, and how many

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