the first instructing the prince in his duty toward God; the second in his duty when he should be King; and the third informing him how to behave himself in indifferent things, which were neither right nor wrong, but according as they were rightly or wrongly used.[60]
Before he is seven years old we find the child writing a letter in French to the States General of Holland, in which "he expresses his great regard for the States, and gratitude for the good opinion, which they had so early conceived of him, and of which he had received an account from several persons."[61] And on his ninth birthday he writes a letter to his father in Latin, beginning "_Rex serennissime et amantissime pater_," in which he tells the king what progress he has made, and how that "since the king's departure he had read over Terence's _Hecyra_, the third book of Phædrus's _Fables_, and two books of Cicero's _Select Epistles_; and he now thought himself capable of performing something in the commendatory kind of Epistles."[62] This is a good deal for a little boy of eight years old to accomplish. How would boys of our day like to do as much? They would probably prefer the other part of young Prince Henry's education. In 1601, when he was seven years old, he
began to apply himself to, and take pleasure in, active and manly exercises, learning to ride, sing, dance, leap, shoot with the bow and gun, toss the pike, etc., being instructed in the use of arms by Richard Preston, a gentleman of great accomplishments both of mind and body,
who was afterwards made Earl of Desmond in Ireland. Prince Henry was devoted to these manly pursuits as we shall see further on; and his fondness for them and his disregard of fatigue or exposure, helped, some thought, to bring about his untimely death.
In 1603, at Queen Elizabeth's death, the prince was nine years old. Before King James left Scotland, which he did immediately upon receiving the proclamation that raised him to the throne of Great Britain, he wrote a sensible letter to his son, telling him of the immense change in their fortunes, but warning him not to let this news make him "proud or insolent; for a king's son and heir was ye before, and no more are ye now. The augmentation that is hereby like to fall unto you, is but in cares and heavy burthens. Be therefore merry, but not insolent: keep a greatness, but _sine fastu_: Be resolute, but not wilfull: keep your kindness, but in honorable sort."[63] Excellent maxims; and it would have been well for the writer of them to lay them to heart as earnestly as his little son did.
