lute in our grove – which she does outstandingly. She is most beautiful, humble, charitable, etc., and cannot refuse or subdue anyone. One might say of her as Tacitus said of Agrippina: Cuncta alia illi adfuere, praeter animum honestum (All other things are present in her, except an honest mind). Mr Edmund Waller adores her and celebrates her in verse:
Of My Lady Isabella Playing on the Lute
Such moving sounds, from such a careless touch,
So unconcern’d her self, and we so much!
What Art is this, that with so little Pains
Transports us thus, and o’er our Spirits reigns! . . .
. . .
I have seen Dr William Harvey 23 come to Trinity College to visit my friend Ralph Bathurst’s brother George, who is a Fellow here too. I feel too shy, too unimportant, to press for an acquaintance with the famous doctor.
Dr William Harvey was at the Battle of Edgehill with the King last October. When the fighting began, he was given charge of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, aged twelve and ten. He took them to sit under a nearby hedge, produced a book from his pocket and began reading to them. Soon afterwards, a bullet from a great gun grazed the ground nearby, so they moved further off.
I have heard another 24 story about the Battle of Edgehill: terrifying and miraculous. Sir Adrian Scrope was seriously wounded and left for dead, his body stripped like the other corpses. It was cold, clear weather and there was a frost that night which staunched his bleeding. He woke around midnight among the corpses and pulled one of them on top of him to keep warm. I pray that I never lie on a battlefield.
After the Battle of Edgehill, Dr Harvey followed the King to Oxford. Here he keeps busy, tending the King’s health, and pursuing his own researches.
In George Bathurst’s rooms 25 there is a hen laying eggs, which he and Dr Harvey dissect. They are repeating Aristotle’s experiments, hoping to see the progress and way of generation. Their interest is in the interior of the egg and the first beginnings of the chick, which can be seen, like a little cloud, by removing the shell and placing the egg into warm clear water. In the midst of the cloud is a tiny point of blood, as small as the point of a needle, which beats.
. . .
I hope I can find 26 someone to draw the ruins of Osney Abbey before they fall down. I have sought out William Dobson, the court painter, in his rooms on the High Street almost opposite St Mary’s Church. Dobson is a painter of genius, but poor. He became court painter just last year after Van Dyck died, at a time when everything was changing. His father was a St Albans man who helped Lord Bacon build his magnificent Verulam House, within the bounds of the old Roman city walls: a talented man, but a lover of many women, who left his son to make his own way in the world. In his studio today I saw a wonderful work in progress: a sumptuous portrait of the Prince of Wales, commemorating his participation in the Battle of Edgehill. The Prince’s figure dominates the canvas, seeming too big to fit upon it, as he tramples underfoot the head of Medusa and the horrors of war. It is hard to reconcile Dobson’s splendid portrait with Harvey’s story of the young princes being read to under a hedge as the fighting began. Dobson has a new wife called Judith who has accompanied him to Oxford. Her flesh is luminous and her face very sweet and pretty. There was a cast of her hands on a pedestal in that chaos of canvas and paint that I coveted. Dobson is probably too occupied to draw Osney Abbey for me himself, but he says his friend and assistant Mr Hesketh will do it for twenty shillings.
. . .
Robert Greville (Lord Brooke), married to the daughter of the Earl of Bedford, was killed this month on 2 March at the siege of Lichfield. The story is that he was armed head to foot, but his lower face and neck were exposed because his bevor was open.
. . .
April
Camp fever is raging 27 in Oxford. I have fallen sick with
Of My Lady Isabella Playing on the Lute
Such moving sounds, from such a careless touch,
So unconcern’d her self, and we so much!
What Art is this, that with so little Pains
Transports us thus, and o’er our Spirits reigns! . . .
. . .
I have seen Dr William Harvey 23 come to Trinity College to visit my friend Ralph Bathurst’s brother George, who is a Fellow here too. I feel too shy, too unimportant, to press for an acquaintance with the famous doctor.
Dr William Harvey was at the Battle of Edgehill with the King last October. When the fighting began, he was given charge of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, aged twelve and ten. He took them to sit under a nearby hedge, produced a book from his pocket and began reading to them. Soon afterwards, a bullet from a great gun grazed the ground nearby, so they moved further off.
I have heard another 24 story about the Battle of Edgehill: terrifying and miraculous. Sir Adrian Scrope was seriously wounded and left for dead, his body stripped like the other corpses. It was cold, clear weather and there was a frost that night which staunched his bleeding. He woke around midnight among the corpses and pulled one of them on top of him to keep warm. I pray that I never lie on a battlefield.
After the Battle of Edgehill, Dr Harvey followed the King to Oxford. Here he keeps busy, tending the King’s health, and pursuing his own researches.
In George Bathurst’s rooms 25 there is a hen laying eggs, which he and Dr Harvey dissect. They are repeating Aristotle’s experiments, hoping to see the progress and way of generation. Their interest is in the interior of the egg and the first beginnings of the chick, which can be seen, like a little cloud, by removing the shell and placing the egg into warm clear water. In the midst of the cloud is a tiny point of blood, as small as the point of a needle, which beats.
. . .
I hope I can find 26 someone to draw the ruins of Osney Abbey before they fall down. I have sought out William Dobson, the court painter, in his rooms on the High Street almost opposite St Mary’s Church. Dobson is a painter of genius, but poor. He became court painter just last year after Van Dyck died, at a time when everything was changing. His father was a St Albans man who helped Lord Bacon build his magnificent Verulam House, within the bounds of the old Roman city walls: a talented man, but a lover of many women, who left his son to make his own way in the world. In his studio today I saw a wonderful work in progress: a sumptuous portrait of the Prince of Wales, commemorating his participation in the Battle of Edgehill. The Prince’s figure dominates the canvas, seeming too big to fit upon it, as he tramples underfoot the head of Medusa and the horrors of war. It is hard to reconcile Dobson’s splendid portrait with Harvey’s story of the young princes being read to under a hedge as the fighting began. Dobson has a new wife called Judith who has accompanied him to Oxford. Her flesh is luminous and her face very sweet and pretty. There was a cast of her hands on a pedestal in that chaos of canvas and paint that I coveted. Dobson is probably too occupied to draw Osney Abbey for me himself, but he says his friend and assistant Mr Hesketh will do it for twenty shillings.
. . .
Robert Greville (Lord Brooke), married to the daughter of the Earl of Bedford, was killed this month on 2 March at the siege of Lichfield. The story is that he was armed head to foot, but his lower face and neck were exposed because his bevor was open.
. . .
April
Camp fever is raging 27 in Oxford. I have fallen sick with
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