Since I am unable to express as well as the case demands, my dear Charles, the great and fresh delight which your unexpected letter brought me, I will try to give you at any rate some idea of it by speaking of the sorrow, which is the almost invariable accompaniment of all human joy. While glancing over the first part of your letter, in which there is so charming a rivalry of elegance and friendship, I could have declared that it gave me pure joy, especially as I perceived that you meant to secure the victory to friendship. But as soon as I came to the passage in which you say that you had already written me three letters, which must, I know, have been lost, then the pure joy I had hitherto felt began to be clouded and troubled by sad regrets. Soon an even more depressing thought came into my mind, a thought which often makes me lament my fortune, namely that those who are closely bound to me by the fact of neighborhood or by some other tie of no real importance, either by chance or by some legal claim, though they have nothing else to commend them to me, are with me every day, deafen me with their noise, and, I swear, torment me as often as they choose; while those who are so greatly endeared to me by sympathy of manners, disposition and tastes, are almost all separated from me either by death or by the cruel accident of distance, and are as a rule snatched from my sight so swiftly that I am compelled to spend my life in almost perpetual loneliness. It gives me great satisfaction to hear that since I left Florence you have always been anxious about my health and have never forgotten me, and to find that the feelings which I had, perhaps perversely, imagined to be mine alone, were in fact fully reciprocated. I can assure you that my departure gave real pain to me as well, and that it left a sting which I still feel acutely whenever I recollect all the kind and congenial friends and companions I left behind me in that one city, so distant but so well beloved. It was with the utmost reluctance that I tore myself away. I appeal to the tomb of Damon, which I shall ever hallow and revere. When, in composing my elegy on his death, I was overcome by sadness and grief and sought what solace I might, and some short respite from sorrow, I could find no greater source of joy than the happy recollection of all my friends in Florence, and of yourself in particular. This you must already have discovered for yourself in reading the poem, which, as I now first learn, did not fail to reach you. I had indeed taken particular care to send it, that you might find a very slight proof of my ability, but a very strong one of my affection for you, if only in those few personal verses which form a kind of decorative insertion. I hoped by this means to induce either you or someone else to write to me; feeling that if I were the first to write I should be under the necessity either of writing to all, or else, by showing a preference to one rather than another, incurring the resentment of the rest, should they discover it; for I hoped that I had still many friends in Italy who had a strong claim to my letters. As it is, you are the first of all to write, and by the friendly challenge of your letter and by writing three times in succession you have made it incumbent upon me to fulfil the duty of replying to you, which I have long owed, and so released me from the fear of giving offence to others.

I confess, however, that there have been other reasons for my silence, in the grave disturbances which have troubled England since my return: these almost immediately compelled me to turn my attention from the pursuit of learning to the preservation of my life and fortunes as best might be. You can imagine that any peace and quiet for the leisurely pursuit of literature was out of the question in the midst of civil war, bloodshed, flight, and rapine. Still (since you enquire about my work), even in this time of tribulation, I have been able to publish a fair amount in my native English; if it were not in this language I should gladly send it to you, since I have the highest esteem for your opinion. I will shortly send any of my poems that are in Latin, since you ask me. I should indeed have done so long since of my own accord but for this: I was afraid that the rather harsh expressions about the Pope which are to be found in a few pages might offend your ears. As it is, I beg you to persuade my other friends (for of your own indulgence I feel secure) to extend to me, whenever I have to speak of your religion in the way which is customary among us, the same indulgence which you were all in the habit of granting, not merely to your own Alighieri and Petrarch on similar occasions, but, with remarkable tolerance, to the freedom of speech which you used to allow me when I was with you.

I read your description of King Louis' funeral with enjoyment. In it I recognise the inspiration of Mercury—not however the Mercury of the crossroads and the market, to whose service you playfully declare yourself to be devoted of late, but the Mercury who is the friend of the Muses and the patron of men of a mercurial temperament.

It remains for us to find some way or means by which in future our letters may go and come in safety. This should not be very difficult, since many of our merchants have considerable business with you, and their agents travel to and fro every week, while their ships set sail in either direction almost as often. I will entrust these arrangements to the bookseller James, or to my good friend his master, I hope with safety.

Meanwhile, my dear Carlo, I send my good wishes to you, and to Coltellini, Francini, Frescobaldi, Malatesti, the younger Chimentelli, and to any other of my good friends whom you know; and pray convey my respects to the whole of Gaddi's Academy. Meanwhile, farewell.

London, April 21. 1647.

Translation by Phyllis B. Tillyard