all winter in his study—­in whose fall fame makes this kingdom a greater loser; and, having taken this resolution from counsel with the highest wisdom, as I doubt not you have, I hope and pray that the same power will crown it with a blessing answerable to our wish.  The way you take with my other friend shows you to be none of the Bishop of Exeter’s converts; [Hall, Bishop of Exeter, had written strongly, both in verse and in prose, against the fashion of sending young men of quality to travel.] of whose mind neither am I superstitiously.  But had my opinion been asked, I should, as vulgar conceits use me to do, have showed my power rather to raise objections than to answer them.  A temper between France and Oxford might have taken away his scruples, with more advantage to his years. . . .  For although he be one of those that, if his age were looked for in no other book but that of the mind, would be found no ward if you should die tomorrow, yet it is a great hazard, methinks, to see so sweet a disposition guarded with no more, amongst a people whereof many make it their religion to be superstitious in impiety, and their behaviour to be affected in all manners.  But God, who only knoweth the periods of life and opportunities to come, hath designed him, I hope, for his own service betime, and stirred up your providence to husband him so early for great affairs.  Then shall he be sure to find Him in France that Abraham did in Shechem and Joseph in Egypt, under whose wing alone is perfect safety.”

Sir John Eliot employed himself, during his imprisonment, in writing a treatise on government, which he transmitted to his friend.  Hampden’s criticisms are strikingly characteristic.  They are written with all that “flowing courtesy” which is ascribed to him by Clarendon.  The objections are insinuated with so much delicacy that they could scarcely gall the most irritable author.  We see too how highly Hampden valued in the writings of others that conciseness which was one of the most striking peculiarities of his own eloquence.  Sir John Eliot’s style was, it seems, too diffuse, and it is impossible not to admire the skill with which this is suggested.  “The piece,” says Hampden, “is as complete an image of the pattern as can be drawn by lines, a lively character of a large mind, the subject, method, and expression, excellent and homogeneal, and, to say truth, sweetheart, somewhat exceeding my commendations.  My words cannot render them to the life.  Yet, to show my ingenuity rather than wit, would not a less model have given a full representation of that subject, not by diminution but by contraction of parts?  I desire to learn.  I dare not say.  The variations upon each particular seem many; all, I confess, excellent.  The fountain was full, the channel narrow; that may be the cause; or that the author resembled Virgil, who made more verses by many than he intended to write.  To extract a just number, had I seen all his, I could easily have bid him make fewer; but if he had bade me tell him which he should have spared, I had been posed.”