Excerpt from Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Allan George Finch, Esq., Of Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland, Vol. 2

Tis now full thirty-six years [over thirty-three erased] since I began the happiness Of an uninterrupted friendship which the world never yet did equal. Those happy five years that in Christ College in Cambridge gave me the advantage not only of an education under so great a distinguisher of realities from airy notions, but also the freedom of an unreserved converse, make me blush that from so deep a foundation, I have raised no higher a building.

Then it was that we resolved upon a five years' travel into Italy, where, after we had first spent one year in France, it pleased God to fix us upon our private.

In six and twenty years' further intimate and endearing communication together (of which two and twenty was spent in Italy, in our joint private study and then our joint serving Of Ferdinand II, the Great Duke of Tuscany, and we never having been separated two months from each other but in the exercising of some act of kindness, though two and twenty of those years were spent in foreign parts, and eleven Of them I was employed in his Majesty's service in Italy and Turkey) no wonder if our thought-s became so familiar to each other that sometimes we forgot to whom they originally belonged.

Further On in the paper, he differentiates the time more particularly, showing that of the first eleven years, they spent eight in private study in Italy, and three in the joint service Of the Grand Duke before Finch became resident at his Court. [the visit to England, between these two, is subtracted from the calculation.

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