Hold no truth worthy to be known Not as they are, but as they please ; In vain strive Nature to suborn, And for their pains are paid with scorn." XXXII. THE DIARIES OF SAMUEL PEPYS AND JOHN EVELYN. T is one of the weaknesses of human nature to relish gossip; to be interested in details about one's neighbors; to want to know what they have been doing, what sort of clothes they wear, and what they had for dinner on a feast-day. The student in history and literature finds just this kind of relish in gossip about people of the past. He likes to know all the little facts about them, as what they wore and what they ate for dinner; and thus it is quite natural that two old books full of gossip and small-talk about the time of Charles II. have come to be two of the most read books written in that age. These are the diaries of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys, both of whom kept a careful record of their daily life and all that was going on about them. There is no history of their time which gives such a familiar picture of the life of the day, and the people who figured in it, as either of these two books. 1620-1706 JOHN EVELYN was a gentleman of leisure and fortune, of rather scholarly habits, and the author of several books, all dignified and learned. He had a fine house and a good library, and his home was resorted to by many literary men and men of learning, who were his friends. Cowley the poet was one of his intimates, and Jeremy Taylor, with whom he kept up many years a correspondence, was a very dear friend. Cowley and Evelyn sympathized in a taste for gardening, and the latter was noted for the beauty of his trees and plants, his fine hedges and smooth lawns. When Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, was in London, in the last part of the century, he rented Evelyn's house for his royal quarters; and the Russian autocrat used to take a barbaric delight in demolishing the fine garden of his landlord. Among other things, he used to amuse himself by driving a wheelbarrow through the thick garden hedge which Evelyn had cultivated with great care. Evelyn's diary, although it is full of details, is yet dignified, like himself, and makes us respect him in all his goings and comings. 1632-1703 SAMUEL PEPYS, who was his exact contemporary in time, has left a journal less dignified, but a great deal more amusing. Pepys was a Secretary of the Navy, and was constantly in court circles, so that he knew all that was said and done there. He had an excellent faculty for business, was a good financier, and a man of taste in artistic matters, in books, music, and the drama. He also wrote some books, now almost forgotten, and he kept his journal in a sort of short-hand of his own, which was not deciphered till long after his death. Probably he never would have written with quite the frankness he has shown there if he had known that two hundred years later we But as he believed it to should be gloating over his pages. be solely for his own eye, he wrote down at night all the petty occurrences of his day, mingled with a great deal that goes to make up history. He is a garrulous, delightful old gossip, who tells the color of his silk stockings; how much his new suit cost; when his wife had a new dress and how she looked in it; what play he saw at the theatre, and how he liked it; how King Charles behaved when he was on his most unkingly behavior; and all the scandal of the palace at Whitehall. One gets from this an excellent idea of the manners of the court of Charles II., and can see what very bad manners they were. In order that you may see what a gossip Samuel Pepys was, and how many things, both little and great, he touches on in his diary, I am going to quote most of his entries for the last month of the year 1663, beginning with the last Sunday in November: "Nov. 29th,- Lord's Day. - This morning I put on my best black-cloth suit, trimmed with scarlet ribbons, very neat, with my cloak lined with velvet, and a new beaver, which altogether is very noble, with my black silk knit canons I bought a month ago. "30th.-. At Whitehall, Sir W. Penn and I met the [Duke of York] in the matted gallery, and then he discoursed with us; and by and by my Lord Sandwich came and stood by and talked; but it being St. Andrew's Day, he went to the chapel, and we parted. "Dec. 1st. At noon I home to dinner with my poor wife, with whom nowadays I enjoy great pleasure in her company and learning of arithmetic. After dinner I to the Guildhall to hear a trial at King's Bench before Lord Chief Justice Hyde, about the insurance of a ship; . . . and it was pleasant to see what mad sort of testimonies the seamen did give, and could not be got to speak in order, and then their terms such as the judge could not understand; and to hear how sillily the counsel and judge would speak as to the terms necessary in the matter, would make one laugh; and above all, a Frenchman that was forced to speak in French and took an English oath he did not understand, and had an interpreter sworn to tell us what he said, which was the best testimony of all. "7th. At Whitehall I hear and find that there was the last night the greatest tide that ever was remembered in England to have been in this river, — all Whitehall having been drowned. ... . . To Whitehall, and anon the King, and Duke [of York] and Duchess came to dinner in the vane-room, where I never saw them before; but it seems since the tables are done he dines there altogether. The Queen is pretty well, and goes out of her chamber to her little chapel in the house. The King of France, they say, is hiring of sixty sail of ships of the Dutch, but it is not said for what design. "Ioth. To St. Paul's Churchyard, to my bookseller's. . . . I could not tell whether to lay out my money for books of pleasure, as plays, which my nature was most earnest in; but at last, after seeing Chaucer, Dugdale's History of Paul's, Stow's London, besides Shakespeare's, Jonson's, and Beaumont's plays, I at last chose Doctor Fuller's Worthies, the Cabbala, or Collection of Letters of State, with another little book or two, all of good use or serious pleasure; and Hudibras, both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies. My mind being thus settled, I went by link home, and so to my office, and to read in Rushworth, and so home to supper and to bed. Calling at Wotton's, my shoemaker's, to-day, he tells me that Sir H. Wright is dying; and that Harris is come to the Duke's House again; and of a rare play to be acted this week of Sir William Davenant's, the story of Harry the Eighth, with all his wives. "IIth. I to the coffee-house. . Then I went and sat by Mr. Harrington and some east-country merchants, and talking of the country about Quinsborough and thereabouts, he told us himself that for fish none than the poorest body will buy a dead fish, but must be alive, unless it be in the winter; and then they told us the manner of putting their nets into the water. Through holes made in the thick ice they will spread a net of half a mile long; and he hath known a hundred and thirty and a hundred and seventy barrels of fish taken out at one draught. And then the people come with sledges upon the ice with snow at the bottom, and lay the fish in and cover them with snow, and so carry them to market. And he hath seen when the said fish have been frozen in the sledge so that he hath taken a fish and broke a-pieces, so hard it has been; and yet the same fishes taken out of the snow and brought into a hot room will be alive and leap up and down. Swallows are often brought up in their nets out of the mud from under water, hanging together to some twig or other, dead, in ropes; and brought to the fire, will come to life. Fowl killed in December, Alderman Barker said he did buy, and putting into the box under his sledge, did forget to take them out till April next, and they then were found there, and were through the frost as sweet and fresh, and eat as well, as at first killed. Young bears are there; their flesh sold in market as ordinarily as beef here, and is excellent sweet meat. They tell us that bears there never do hurt anybody, but fly away from you, unless you pursue them and set upon them; but wolves do much mischief. Mr. Harrington told us how they do to get so much honey as they send abroad. They make hollow a great fir-tree, leaving only a small slit down straight in one place, and this they close up again, only leave a little hole, and there the bees go in and fill the bodies of those trees as full of wax and honey as they can hold; and the inhabitants at times go and open the slit and take what they please without killing the bees, and so let them live there still, and make more.... "The great entertainment and sport of the Duke of Corland, and the princes thereabout, is hunting, which is not with dogs, as we, but he appoints such a day, and summons all the country people as to a campagnia, and by several companies gives every one their circuit, and they agree upon a place where the toil is to be set; and so, making fires, every company as they go, they drive all the wild beasts, whether bears, wolves, foxes, swine, and stags and roes into the toil, and there the great men have their stands in such and such places, and shoot at what they have a mind to; and that is their hunting. . . . Against a public hunting the Duke sends that no wolves be killed by the people. And whatever harm they do, the Duke makes it good to the person that suffers it, as Mr. Harrington instanced in the house where he lodged, where a wolf broke into a hogsty and bit three or four great pieces off the back of the hog before the house could come to help it, and the man of the house told him that there were three or four wolves thereabouts that did get hurt; but it was no matter, for the Duke was to make it good to him, otherwise he would kill them. "21st. I did go to Shoe Lane to see a cock-fight at a new pit there, - a spot I never was at in my life; but, Lord! to see the strange variety of people, from parliament men to the poorest prentices, bakers, brewers, butchers, draymen, and what not, and all these fellows one with another in swearing, cursing, and betting. I soon had enough of it. And yet I would not but have seen it once. It is strange to see how people of this poor rank, that look as if they had not bread enough to put into their mouths, shall bet three or four pounds at one bet and lose it, and yet bet as much the next battle, so that one of them will lose £10 or £20 at a meeting. "28th. - Walking through Whitehall, I heard the King was gone to play at tennis, so I down to the new tennis court and saw him and Sir Arthur Slingsby play against my Lord of Suffolk and my Lord Chesterfield. The King beat three and lost two sets; they all, and he particularly, playing well, I thought. Thence went and spoke with the Duke of Albemarle about his wound at Newhall; but I find him a heavy, dull man, methinks, by his answers to me. The Duchess of York is fallen sick of the measles. "31st. — To dinner, my wife and I, a fine turkey and a mince pie; and dined in state, poor wretch, she and I, and have thus kept our Christmas together alone almost, having not once been out. . . . I bless God I do, after a large expense, even this month, find that I am worth in money, besides all my |