when he set up for himself, wrote many astrological works, which seem to have been very successful.  He was known and visited by all the great men of the day, and probably had brains enough only to prophesy when he knew.  His description of his political creed is beautifully characteristic of the man:  “I was more Cavalier than Round-head, and so taken notice of; but afterwards I engaged body and soul in the cause of the Parliament, but still with much affection to his Majesty’s person and unto Monarchy, which I ever loved and approved beyond any government whatsoever.”  Lilly was, in a word, a self-seeking but successful knave.  People who had been robbed, women in love, men in debt, all in trouble and doubt, from the King downwards, sought his aid.  He pretended to be a man of science, not a man gifted with supernatural powers.  Whether he succeeded in believing in astrology and deceiving himself, it is impossible to say; he was probably too clever for that, but he deceived others admirably, and was one of the noted and most successful of the old astrologers.

How long this letter will be I cannot tell.  You shall have all the time that is allowed me, but upon condition that you shall not examine the sense on’t too strictly, for you must know I want sleep extremely.  The sun was up an hour before I went to bed to-day, and this is not the first time I have done this since I came hither.  ’Twill not be for your advantage that I should stay here long; for, in earnest, I shall be good for nothing if I do.  We go abroad all day and play all night, and say our prayers when we have time.  Well, in sober earnest now, I would not live thus a twelvemonth to gain all that the King has lost, unless it were to give it him again.  ’Tis a miracle to me how my brother endures it.  ’Tis as contrary to his humour as darkness is to light, and only shows the power he lets his wife have over him.  Will you be so good-natured?  He has certainly as great a kindness for her as can be, and, to say truth, not without reason; but all the people that ever I saw, I do not like his carriage towards her.  He is perpetually wrangling and finding fault, and to a person that did not know him would appear the worst husband and the most imperious in the world.  He is so amongst his children too, though he loves them passionately.  He has one son, and ’tis the finest boy that e’er you saw, and has a noble spirit, but yet stands in that awe of his father that one word from him is as much as twenty whippings.

You must give me leave to entertain you thus with discourses of the family, for I can tell you nothing else from hence.  Yet, now I remember.  I have another story for you.  You little think I have been with Lilly, and, in earnest, I was, the day before I came out of town; and what do you think I went for?  Not to know when you would come home, I can assure you, nor for any other occasion of my own; but with a cousin of mine that had long designed to make herself sport with him, and did not miss of