Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/81

 unfortunately never printed. It is stated to have been for many years an heirloom in a Roman catholic family in Cork; it was for some time in the possession of the Rev. Alban Butler [q. v.], who published an abridgment (in which for the original phrasing is substituted the decorous prose of the last century) in the form of an octavo pamphlet (thirty-seven pages) in 1795. It passed into the hands of Dr. W. C. Neligan, who printed thirty-five copies of a ‘Brief Description of a Curious MS.,’ consisting of a number of brief and tantalising extracts. To the ‘Relation’ he states was appended ‘Posthumus, or the Survivour’ (twenty-one pages), signed and dated 1640, in which Sir Tobie strenuously denied that he was in receipt of a pension either from Barberini or the pope.

For the rest of his life he would seem to have stayed, with few interruptions, at Ghent. In 1650, however, he went to Brussels, and tried, without success, to obtain a canonry there (Cal. Clar. State Papers, ii. 60). He died at the English College, Ghent, on 13 Oct. 1655, and was buried in a vault beneath the college, with the plain inscription on his coffin, ‘Hic jacet D. Tobias Matthæi.’ There is no evidence that he was an actual member of the Society of Jesus, but he very probably received as a benefactor a diploma of aggregation to the merits and prayers of the society. His will, making a valuable bequest to the jesuits, is preserved in the English College at Rome (Collect. Topog. et Geneal. v. 87).

When Lord Thomas Fairfax once found Sir Tobie's father very melancholy and inquired the reason of his grace's pensiveness, the archbishop replied, ‘My lord, I have great reason of sorrow with respect of my sons; one of whom has wit and no grace, another grace but no wit, and the third neither grace nor wit.’ Sir Tobie's father merely expressed the universal opinion with regard to his eldest son's possession of wit, while the denial of grace was probably merely official, and was so echoed by Fuller, who says of the son that ‘having all his father's name and many of his natural parts, he had few of his moral virtues and fewer of his spiritual graces.’ Less qualified is Harrington's portrait of him as ‘likely for learning, memory, sharpness of wit, and sweetness of behaviour.’ His character, like that of Sir Kenelm Digby, Endymion Porter, and other highly cultivated contemporaries, presents some interesting contrasts. A zealous catholic, he was no pietist. Despite his being the most ‘Italianate’ Englishman of his time, he seems to have been a thoroughly loyal subject, though his ubiquity, his subtle and secret manner, together with his exotic graces, his knowledge of foreign courts and of the Spanish and Italian tongues, caused him to be regarded by many as a dangerous schemer (cf. introduction of him into his Session of the Poets, ‘whispering nothing in somebody's ear’). He was a sedulous courtier, who had the gift of gossip and a finger in all court intrigues, about which he was a sure informant; he was moreover an esteemed virtuoso, who bought pictures and articles of vertu for Buckingham and other English nobles. By Horace Walpole, Sir Tobie is described contemptuously as ‘one of those heteroclite animals who finds his place anywhere.’ He certainly had no title to a place and a woodcut in the ‘Anecdotes of Painting,’ in which Walpole gave him a niche on the mistaken assumption that the ‘Picture of the Infanta’ was drawn not on letter-paper but on canvas. In this error (which he demonstrated himself in a subsequent edition) he was followed by Granger and others. Besides the rough woodcut of Matthew in Walpole's ‘Anecdotes,’ an engraved portrait in which he appears in company with Jean Petitot, the Genevese, and Johann Hans Torrentius, the Dutch artist, was executed while he was in Rome (, Cat. of Engraved Portraits, p. 227).

The work most frequently associated with Matthew's name appeared five years after his death, under the title ‘A Collection of Letters made by Sr Tobie Mathews, Kt., with a Character of the most excellent Lady, Lucy Countess of Carleile: to which are added many Letters of his own to several Persons of Honour who were contemporary with him. For Henry Herringman, at the sign of the Anchor, 1660.’ Prefixed are a portrait engraved by J. Gammon and an epistle dedicatory, signed by John Donne, son of the poet. The scheme of the collection is the inverse of James Howell's, its object being, not to illustrate history or biography, but to exhibit specimens of epistolary composition. The author in most instances has taken pains to remove names and dates, and such particulars as might serve to identify persons. Letters from Bacon, Digby, Carleton, and Dr. Donne are given under the names of the writers, but the majority are headed after this fashion: ‘One friend gives another many thanks for the service which he did him with his Lord.’ Some were doubtless from originals in his possession. Others were by himself, and are characterised by the sprightliness and ingenuity of the writer. The collection includes Matthew's eulogy on Lucy Hay, countess of Carlisle [q. v.], to whose interest at court Sir Tobie was very greatly indebted.