write
about. He was an Oxford man; he travelled abroad on
commercial errands (though by no means as what has been more
recently called a "commercial traveller"); he was one of Ben
Jonson's "sons," a Royalist sufferer from the Rebellion, and
finally Historiographer Royal as well as Clerk to the
Council. His letters, which are sometimes only titularly
such[97] but sometimes quite natural, deal with all sorts of
subjects--from the murder of Buckingham by Felton to the
story of the Oxenham "White Bird" which Kingsley has
utilised in _Westward Ho!_ And, to do him justice, there is
a certain character about the book which is not _merely_ the
expression of the character of the writer, though no doubt
connected with it. Now the possession of this is what makes
a book literature. It has been usual to select from Howell's
letters of travel, and from historical ones like the
Buckingham one above mentioned. I have preferred the "White
Bird"; and before it one of several documents, of the same
or nearly the same period, which deal with the old English
life of country houses--between the mediaeval time and the
degradation of the "servant" class, which came in with the
eighteenth century or a little earlier. Howell would
evidently have echoed Isopel Berners--that admirable girl
whom George Borrow slighted--in saying, "Long Melford for
ever!" though the house would not with him, as with her,
have meant a workhouse. Neither letter seems to require
annotation.

11. TO DAN CALDWELL, ESQ., FROM THE LORD SAVAGE'S HOUSE IN LONG MELFORD

My dear Dan,

Tho' considering my former condition of life, I may now be called a
countryman, yet you cannot call me a rustic (as you would imply in your
letter) as long as I live in so civil and noble a family, as long as I
lodge in so virtuous and regular a house as any, I believe, in the land,
both for economical government and the choice company; for I never saw
yet such a dainty race of children in all my life together. I never saw
yet such an orderly and punctual attendance of servants, nor a great
house so neatly kept; here one shall see no dog, nor a cat, nor cage to
cause any nastiness within the body of the house. The kitchen and
gutters and other offices of noise and drudgery are at the fag-end;
there's a back-gate for the beggars and the meaner sort of swains to