Page:Works of Sir John Suckling.djvu/339

Rh services I shall be able to render you will be no longer presents, but payments of debts, since I can do nothing for you hereafter which I was not obliged to do before.''Madam, Your most humble and faithful Servant.''

My Noble Friend, That you have overcome the danger of the land and of the sea is news most welcome to us, and with no less joy received amongst us than if the King of Sweden had the second time overcome Tilly, and again passed the Meine and the Rhine. Nor do we in this look more upon ourselves and private interests than on the public, since in your safety both were comprised; and though you had not had about you the affairs and secrets of state, yet to have left your own person upon the way had been half to undo our poor island, and the loss must have been lamented with the tears of a whole kingdom.

But you are now beyond all our fears, and have nothing to take heed on yourself but fair ladies. A pretty point of security, and such a one as all Germany cannot afford. We here converse with northern beauties, that had never heat enough to kindle a spark in any man's breast, where heaven had been first so merciful as to put in a reasonable soul.

There is nothing either fair or good in this part of the world, and I cannot name the thing can give me any content, but the thought that you enjoy enough otherwhere; I having ever been, since I had the first honour to know you,Yours, more than his own.

My Lord, To persuade one that has newly shipwracked upon a coast to imbark suddenly for the same place again, or your lordship to seek that content you now enjoy in the innocence of a solitude among the disorders and troubles of a court, were, I think, a thing the king himself (and majesty is no ill orator) would find some difficulty to do; and yet, when I consider that great soul of yours, like a spider, working all inwards, and sending forth nothing but, like the cloistered schoolmen's divinity, threads fine and unprofitable—if I thought you would not suspect my being serious all this while; for what I should now say, I would tell you that I cannot but be as bold with you