stout, butt a generous and mercifull heart withall; and in all your life you could never behold any person in miserie butt with compassion and relief; which hath been notable in you from a child:  so have you layd up a good foundation for God’s mercy; and, if such a disaster should happen, Hee will, without doubt, mercifully remember you.  How euer, let God that brought you in the world in his owne good time, lead you through it; and in his owne season bring you out of it; and without such wayes as are displeasing vnto him.  When you are at Cales, see if you can get a box of the Jesuits’ powder at easier rate, and bring it in the bark, not in powder.  I am glad you haue receaued the bill of exchange for Cales; if you should find occasion to make vse thereof.  Enquire farther at Tangier of the minerall water you told mee, which was neere the towne, and whereof many made use.  Take notice of such plants as you meet with, either upon the Spanish or African coast; and if you knowe them not, putt some leaves into a booke, though carelessely, and not with that neatenesse as in your booke at Norwich.  Enquire after any one who hath been at Fez; and learne what you can of the present state of that place, which hath been so famous in the description of Leo and others.  The mercifull providence of God go with you. Impellant animae lintea Thraciae.

TO HIS SON EDWARD

Centenarians

15 Dec. [1679.]

DEARE SONNE,

Some thinck that great age superannuates persons from the vse of physicall meanes, or that at a hundred yeares of age ’tis either a folly or a shame to vse meanes to liue longer, and yet I haue knowne many send to mee for their seuerall troubles at a hundred yeares of age, and this day a poore woeman being a hundred and three yeares and a weeke old sent to mee to giue her some ease of the colick.  The macrobii and long liuers which I haue knowne heere haue been of the meaner and poorer sort of people.  Tho.  Parrot was butt a meane or rather poore man.  Your brother Thomas gaue two pence a weeke to John More, a scauenger, who dyed in the hundred and second yeare of his life; and ’twas taken the more notice of that the father of Sir John Shawe, who marryed my Lady Killmorey, and liueth in London, I say that his father, who had been a vintner, liued a hundred and two yeares, or neere it, and dyed about a yeere agoe.  God send us to number our dayes and fitt ourselves for a better world.

JOHN MILTON

1608-1674

TO A CAMBRIDGE FRIEND

The choice of a profession

[1631-2.]

SIR,