xxx INTRODUCTION 



who came to visite me this afternoone, and recounted all the 

 circumstances. ' 



While he f went through a course of chymestrie at Sayes 

 Court,' and otherwise engaged in study and in the examin- 

 ation of works of art, he became disquieted about the con- 

 dition of affairs in Paris. Communications with his wife 

 appear to have been very few and far between, although with 

 his father-in-law he c kept up a political correspondence ' in 

 cipher * with no small danger of being discovered. ' In 

 April he touched { suddaine resolutions ' of going to France, 

 before he received the news that Conde's siege of Paris had 

 ended by peace being concluded. The immediate carrying 

 out of this intention was hindered by a rush of blood to the 

 brain. ( I fell dangerously ill of my head : was blistered and 

 let blood behind ye ears and forehead : on the 23rd. began 

 to have ease by using the fumes of a cammomile on embers 

 applied to my eares after all the physicians had don their 

 best. ' On i yth June, however, he ' got a passe from the 

 rebell Bradshaw, then in greate power,' and on I2th July 

 went via Gravesend to Dover and Calais, arriving at Paris 

 on i st. August. Curiously enough his Diary makes no 

 mention of the child-wife, from whom he had ' been 



absent about a yeare and a halfe, ' save that on * Sept. yth. 



Went with my Wife and dear cosin to St. Germains, and 

 kissed the Queene-mother's hand. ' He remained in Paris 

 till the end of June, 1650, when he made a flying visit to 

 England, and again obtained a pass from Bradshaw to pro- 

 ceed to France. On 3oth August, he was back again in 

 Paris, where he stayed till his final return to England in 

 February 1652. His life in Paris at this time was that of a 

 cultured dilktante. He studied, or at any rate dabbled in, 

 chemistry, philosophy, theology, and music; and he found 

 amusement in examining gardens and collections of all sorts 

 of virtuosities and antiquities. He had * much discourse of 

 chymical matters ' with Sir Kenelm Digby ; f but the truth 

 is, Sir Kenelm was an arrant mountebank. ' Here, too, he 

 wrote his second literary composition, The State of France y as 

 it stood in the IXth yeer of this present monarch Lewis XIIII^ 

 which was published in England in 1652. Apart from these 

 occupations, his time was chiefly spent in the pleasures and 



