Excerpt from Epistolae Ho-Elianae: The Familiar Letters of James Howell My Dear Gow, It is some years ago, you may remember, that you asked me to procure you a Howell, if I chanced upon another copy. Here then at last you have him, tricked out in braver apparel than he ever yet has known, and provided with such aids to the better understanding and enjoying of him as my poor skill could devise. You were probably attracted to Howell, as I was, by our Thackeray's perhaps too enthusiastic praise; but, once the ceremony of introduction is over, he wins us to himself by his own merits. His wide range of experience and of interest, his vicissitudes of travel and of fortune, the many cities he visited, the many men he knew, his fund of gossip and anecdote, his quaint yet earnest reflections on life, all combine to make his Letters a more varied literary repast than almost any other collection of the kind in our literature; and with it all there goes his unabashed self-satisfaction in his own cleverness which gives an added piquancy to all he says. In short, he is first in point of time of the order of men to which Pepys, Boswell, and Walpole belong. I am hoping that he will take his place by their side as one of the perennial sources, instructive at once and amusing, of English "Culturgeschichle." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.