James Howell, Epistolae Ho-Elianæ

James Howell's Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ

(1645-1655)

Titlepage of Howell's "Epistolae Ho-Elianae"

James Howell (1594?-1666) was Welsh-born, and educated at Jesus College in Oxford. He spent a fair proportion of his youth searching for a vocation, and served at various times as a diplomat, private secretary, and, for the Parliament of 1627, an MP (for Yorkshire). His wit and easy manners soon brought him into correspondence and friendship with some of the more important literary, political, and religious figures of his age, including Ben Jonson and Brian Duppa.

In 1640, his Royalist tendencies became clear with the publication of his Dendrologia: Dodona's Grove, or the Vocall Forrest, a political allegory in which the increasingly vocal enemies of Charles I (figured here as the Royal Oak) become ravishers of the pastoral paradise that is Stuart England. His loyalism was reward in 1642 by an appointment as Clerk of the King's Privy Council. This triumph, however, was short-lived, for he was imprisoned by order of Parliament in 1643, and sent to the Fleet Prison where he remained for 8 years. The reasons for his incarceration are unclear: Anthony Wood claims it was (disappointingly) for debt, but it seems more likely that it was his Royalism that made him a target.

Released in 1650 during a general amnesty from Parliament, he managed to live at peace with the Commonwealth for the remainder of the Interregnum, but was rewarded for his earlier loyalty — and his literary achievements — by an appointment as Historiographer Royal upon the return of the King in 1660.

Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ (the "letters of Howell") was issued in four volumes, in 1645, 1647, 1650 and 1655; much of the last two volumes were written during his time in prison. The Epistolæ are, as the name suggests, a series of "familiar letters" written to a very diverse collection of friends and associates over the course of more than thirty years. Although most of the letters are quite short, many of the most interesting are, in practice, miniature essays on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from accounts of his travels on the continent in the 1620s, to politics and society, history, philosophy, and aesthetics. As literature, they represent a further step in the evolution of both the "letter" and the "essay" as a literary forms. They are also anticipations of what was to become the dominant discursive prose style of the Restoration: chatty, informal, witty, and gentile. The fold-out engraving that serves as a frontispiece for the third volume serves as an interpretive guide to the contents: the Muses of Philosophy and History appear in the top corners, while engraved busts of Julius Cæsar, Marcus Aurelius, Cicero and Seneca look on approvingly. In the centre, a banner giving the title of this collection of letters is unfurled, appropriately, by Mercury, the messenger of the Olympian gods.

Howell's volumes are quite openly Royalist in their subjects, attitudes, and sympathies; they were published, it is important to note, by Humphrey Mosely, a daringly subversive publisher of strongly Royalist sympathies who produced much subtle and not-so-subtle Stuart propaganda during the Interregnum. (It is, in fact, an important index of the ineffectiveness of Parliament's sporadic attempts at political censorship that works like Howell's were published at all). Below is excerpted a brief letter from Howell, date March 20, 1649 ("1648" in the old-style reckoning of the year) describing his reaction, nearly two months after the event, to the execution of Charles I.

XXIV. To Sir *William Boswell, at the* Hague**,
SIR, That black tragedy which was lately acted heer, as it hath fill'd most hearts among us with consternation and horror, so I believe it hath bin no less resented abroad; For my own particular, the more I ruminat upon it, the more it astonisheth my imagination, and shaketh all the cells of my brain, so that sometimes I struggle with my faith, and have much adoe to believe it yet: I shall give over wondring at anything heerafter, nothing shall seem strange unto me, only I will attend with patience how England will thrive now that she has let bloud in the basilicall veine and cured, as they say, of the Kings Evill. I had one of yours by Mr. Jacob Boeue, and I much thank you for the account you please to give me of vvhat I sent you by his conveyance. Holland may novv be proud, for ther is a younger Common-vvealth in Christendom, than her self. No more novv but that I alwaies rest,
Sir,
Fleet, 20 of Mar. 1648		Your most humble servitor, J. H.

Transcribed from Jame Howell, Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ. Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren. (London, 1655) 3: 36.

Images reproduced from:

Howell, James. Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ. Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren. Divided into Sundry Sections,

Partly Historicall, Politicall, Philosophicall. By James Hovvell Esq. Clerk of the Councell to His Late Majestie. The Third Edition. With a Fourth Volume of New Letters, Never Published Before. London: Printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his shop at the Princes Arms in St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1655.

[24], 309, [5], 115, [23], 38, [14], 126, [10] pp., [1] leaf of plates; 8 .

ESTC: r23382; Wing H3073 and H3078 (Fourth Volume)

References and Further Reading

Howell, James. Instructions for Forreine Travell. 1642. Collated with the Second

Edition of 1650. Ed. Edward Arber. English Reprints 16. London, [s.n.], 1869.

[Includes a "Short Account" of Howell.]

DBW stack PR1121.A65 no.16

Howell, James. Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ; The Familiar Letters of James Howell. Ed. W.H.

Bennett. 2nd Ed. 2 Vols. London. D. Stott, 1891.

[This remains the only "modern" edition: a first edition was published in 1890.]

DBW special NO LOAN PR2294.H6E6 1891

Vann, W. H. Notes on the Writings of James Howell. Waco, 1924.

[An annotated bibliography of relevant materials; now obviously out-of-date.]

[Available through interlibrary loan]

Motten, J. P. Vander. "James Howell's Instructions for Forreine Travell (1642): The

Politics of Seventeenth-Century Continental Travel." Beyond Pug's Tour: National and Ethnic Stereotyping in Theory and Literary Practice. Ed. C. C. Barfoot. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. 115-24.

DBW stack PN51.B49 1997

Nauman, Jonathan. "A New Poem Is New Evidence: Henry Vaughan and James

Howell Reconsidered." Notes and Queries 237 (1992): 460-62.

DBW periodical NO LOAN AG305.N5

Sanchez Escribano, F. Javier. "The Spanish Match through the Texts: Jonson,

Middleton and Howell." Proceedings of the II Conference of the Spanish Society for English Renaissance Studies/Actas del II Congreso de la Sociedad Espanola de Estudios Renacentistas Ingleses. Ed. Fernandez Corugedo S. G. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1992) 231-46.

[Available through interlibrary loan]

Woolf, Daniel. "Conscience, Constancy, and Ambition in the Career and Writings of

James Howell." Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays Presented to G. E. Aylmer. Ed. John Morrill, Paul Slack and Daniel Woolf. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. 243-78.

DBW stack DA375.P85 1993

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