Читать книгу Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681 онлайн

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To face p. 42.

Further, Finch’s face reveals vanity, and Baines’s letters a turn for flattery—gross and inflated beyond even a seventeenth-century measure. Thomas, clearly, had established over John an ascendancy by accustoming him to lean upon his strength and to feed upon his praises. There is also evidence to show that Thomas was not the man to relax his hold: to surrender or share a domination which interest and sentiment alike made precious to him. In 1661 Finch met in Warwickshire a young lady who had the good fortune to please him. The moment Baines got wind of this matrimonial project, he set vigorously to work to defeat it. He used many arguments of a prudential nature, but the one that clinched the matter was this: Suppose you have children, then you die, and she marries again, how can you be sure that she will not dispose of her estate to her second husband and his progeny?ssss1 The logic of Thomas triumphed over what John called his love, and he never again caused his friend any uneasiness upon that score. Thenceforward his whole life was annexed and welded to the life of Baines in a degree which, perhaps, has no counterpart in authentic history. As to Baines, he does not seem to have ever loved anybody except Finch and himself.