Howell, JAMES, whose Familiar Letters is still an English classic, was born in July 1593, son of the minister of Abernant, in Carmarthenshire, studied at Hereford and Jesus College, Oxford, and took his B.A. in 1613. He then became steward to a glass-ware manufactory, and traversed in its interests Holland, Flanders, Spain, France, and Italy. He was next employed abroad on public business in 1626, became secretary to Lord Scrope at York, was returned to parliament for Richmond in 1627. From 1632 to 1642 he was mainly employed as a royalist spy; and in 1642 (when he was appointed an extra clerk to the Privy-council) he was sent by the parliament to the Fleet, where he lay till 1650. At the Restoration the office of historiographer-royal was created for him. He died in 1666, and was buried in the Temple church. Howell was a man of considerable humour, learning, and industry. Besides translations from Italian, French, and Spanish, he wrote no less than forty-one original works on history, politics, and philological matters. He had put his travels to much profit. 'Thank God,' he says, 'I have this fruit of my foreign travels, that I can pray unto him every day of the week in a separate language, and upon Sunday in seven.' His Instructions for Forreine Travell (1642) is still interesting, and is reprinted in Professor Arber's series (1869); and his supplement to Cotgrave's French and English dictionary maintains his interest for lexicographers; but it is by his Epistolæ Ho-Eliaenæ: or Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign (1645-55; 10th ed. 1737), that his name continues to be remembered. These display not only shrewd sense and brilliant wit, but also grace and form, and indeed are the earliest letters in our language that are really literary.
Dr Bliss, the crude editor of Wood's Athene Oxonienses, intended to edit Howell's Letters; this was at length adequately done by Mr Joseph Jacobs in 1892.