The two chief diarists of the age of Charles the Second are, _mutatis
mutandis_, not ill characterized by the remark of a wicked wit upon the
brothers Austin. "John Austin," it was said, "served God and died poor:
Charles Austin served the devil, and died rich. Both were clever fellows.
Charles was much the cleverer of the two." Thus John Evelyn and Samuel
Pepys, the former a perfect model of decorum, the latter a grievous
example of indecorum, have respectively left us diaries, of which the
indecorous is to the decorous as a zoölogical garden is to a museum:
while the disparity between the testamentary bequests of the two Austins
but imperfectly represents the reputation standing to Pepys's account
with posterity in comparison with that accruing to his sedate and
dignified contemporary.
Museums, nevertheless, have their uses, and Evelyn's comparatively jejune
record has laid us under no small obligation. But for Pepys's amazing
indiscretion and garrulity, qualities of which one cannot have too little
in life, or too much in the record of it, Evelyn would have been esteemed
the first diarist of his age. Unable for want of these qualifications to
draw any adequate picture of the stirring life around him, he has
executed at least one portrait admirably, his own. The likeness is,
moreover, valuable, as there is every reason to suppose it typical, and
representative of a very important class of society, the well-bred and
well-conducted section of the untitled aristocracy of England. We may
well believe that these men were not only the salt but the substance of
their order. There was an ill-bred section exclusively devoted to
festivity and sport. There was an ill-conducted section, plunged into the
dissipations of court life. But the majority were men like Evelyn: not,
perhaps, equally refined by culture and travel, or equally interested in
literary research and scientific experiment, but well informed and
polite; no strangers to the Court, yet hardly to be called courtiers,
and preferring country to town; loyal to Church and King but not
fanatical or rancorous; as yet but slightly imbued with the principles of
civil and religious liberty, yet adverse to carry the dogma of divine
right further than the right of succession; fortunate in having survived
all ideas of serfdom or vassalage, and in having few private interests
not fairly reconcilable with the general good. Evelyn was made to be the
spokesman of such a class, and, meaning to speak only for himself, he
delivers its mind concerning the Commonwealth and the Restoration, the
conduct of the later Stuart Kings and the Revolution.
Evelyn's Diary practically begins where many think he had no business to
be diarising, beyond the seas. The position of a loyalist who solaces
himself in Italy while his King is fighting for his crown certainly
requires explanation: it may be sufficient apology for Evelyn that
without the family estates he could be of no great service to the King,
and that these, lying near London, were actually in the grasp of the
Parliament. He was also but one of a large family and it was doubtless
convenient that one member should be out of harm's way. His three years'
absence (1643-6) has certainly proved advantageous to posterity. Evelyn
is, indeed, a mere sight-seer, but this renders his tour a precise record
of the objects which the sight-seer of the seventeenth century was
expected to note, and a mirror not only of the taste but of the feeling
of the time. There is no cult of anything, but there is curiosity about
everything; there is no perception of the sentiment of a landscape, but
real enjoyment of the landscape itself; antiquity is not unappreciated,
but modern works impart more real pleasure. Of the philosophical
reflections which afterward rose to the mind of Gibbon there is hardly a
vestige, and of course Evelyn is at an immeasurable distance from Byron
and De Staël. But he gives us exactly what we want, the actual attitude
of a cultivated young Englishman in presence of classic and renaissance
art with its background of Southern nature. We may register without undue
self-complacency a great development of the modern world in the
æsthetical region of the intellect, which implies many other kinds of
progress. It is interesting to compare with Evelyn's narrative the
chapters recording the visit to Italy supposed to have been made at this
very period by John Inglesant, who inevitably sees with the eyes of the
nineteenth century. Evelyn's casual remarks on foreign manners and
institutions display good sense, without extraordinary insight; in
description he is frequently observant and graphic, as in his account of
the galley slaves, and of Venetian female costumes. He naturally regards
Alpine scenery as "melancholy and troublesome."
Returned to England, Evelyn strictly follows the line of the average
English country gentleman, execrating the execution of Charles I.,
disgusted beyond measure with the suppression of the Church of England
service, but submissive to the powers that be until there are evident
indications of a change, which he promotes in anything but a Quixotic
spirit. Although he is sincerely attached to the monarchy, the condition
of the Church is evidently a matter of greater concern to him: Cromwell
would have done much to reconcile the royalists to his government, had it
been possible for him to have restored the liturgy and episcopacy. The
same lesson is to be derived from his demeanor during the reigns of
Charles and James. The exultation with which the Restoration is at first
hailed soon evaporates. The scandals of the Court are an offense,
notwithstanding Evelyn's personal attachment to the King. But the chief
point is not vice or favoritism or mismanagement, but alliances with
Roman Catholic powers against Protestant nations. Evelyn is enraged to
see Charles missing the part so clearly pointed out to him by Providence
as the protector of the Protestant religion all over Europe. The
conversion of the Duke of York is a fearful blow, James's ecclesiastical
policy after his accession adds to Evelyn's discontent day by day, while
political tyranny passes almost without remark. At last the old cavalier
is glad to welcome the Prince of Orange as deliverer, and though he has
no enthusiasm for William in his character as King, he remains his
dutiful subject. Just because Evelyn was by no means an extraordinary
person, he represents the plain straightforward sense of the English
gentry. The questions of the seventeenth century were far more religious
than political. The synthesis "Church and King" expressed the dearest
convictions of the great majority of English country families, but when
the two became incompatible they left no doubt which held the first place
in their hearts. They acted instinctively on the principle of the Persian
lady who preferred her brother to her husband. It was not impossible to
find a new King, but there was no alternative to the English Church.
Evelyn's memoirs thus possess a value far exceeding the modest measure of
worth allowed them by De Quincey: "They are useful as now and then
enabling one to fix the date of a particular event, but for little
besides." The Diary's direct contribution to historical accuracy is
insignificant; it is an index, not to chronological minutiæ, but to the
general progress of moral and political improvement. The editor of 1857
certainly goes too far in asserting that "All that might have been
excluded from the range of his opinions, his feelings and sympathies
embraced"; but it is interesting to observe the gradual widening of
Evelyn's sympathies with good men of all parties, and to find him in his
latter days criticising the evidence produced in support of the Popish
Plot on the one hand, and deploring the just condemnation of Algernon
Sydney on the other. It is true that, so far as the sufferings of his
country are concerned, his attitude is rather that of the Levite than of
the Samaritan; but more lively popular sympathies would have destroyed
the peculiar value attaching to the testimony of the reluctant witness.
We should, for example, have thought little of such a passage as the
following from the pen of Burnet, from Evelyn it is significant indeed:--
_October 14, 1688._--The King's birthday. No guns from the Tower as
usual. The sun eclipsed at its rising. This day signal for the
victory of William the Conqueror against Harold, near Battel in
Sussex. The wind, which had been hitherto west, was east all this
day. Wonderful expectation of the Dutch fleet. Public prayers
ordered to be read in the churches against invasion.
It might be difficult to produce a nearer approximation in secular
literature to Daniel's "_Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin_."
There is little else in the Diary equally striking, though Evelyn's
description of Whitehall on the eve of the death of Charles the Second
ranks among the memorable passages of the language. It is nevertheless
full of interesting anecdotes and curious notices, especially of the
scientific research which, in default of any adequate public
organization, was in that age more efficaciously promoted by students
than by professors. De Quincey censures Evelyn for omitting to record the
conversation of the men with whom he associated, but he does not consider
that the Diary in its present shape is a digest of memoranda made long
previously, and that time failed at one period and memory at the other.
De Quincey, whose extreme acuteness was commonly evinced on the negative
side of a question, saw the weak points of the Diary upon its first
publication much more clearly than his contemporaries did, and was
betrayed into illiberality by resentment at what he thought its
undeserved vogue. Evelyn has in truth been fortunate; his record, which
his contemporaries would have neglected, appeared (1818) just in time to
be a precursor of the Anglican movement, a tendency evinced in a similar
fashion by the vindication, no doubt mistaken, of the Caroline authorship
of the "Icon Basilike." Evelyn was a welcome encounter to men of this
cast of thought, and was hailed as a model of piety, culture, and
urbanity, without sufficient consideration of his deficiencies as a
loyalist and a patriot. It also conduced to his reputation that all his
other writings should have virtually perished except his "Sylva," like
his Diary a landmark in the history of improvement, though in a widely
different department. But for his lack of diplomatic talent, he might be
compared with an eminent and much applauded, but in our times somewhat
decrescent, contemporary, Sir William Temple. Both these eminent persons
would have aroused a warmer feeling in posterity, and have effected more
for its instruction and entertainment, if they could occasionally have
dashed their dignity with an infusion of the grotesqueness, we will not
say of Pepys, but of Roger North. To them, however, their dignity was
their character, and although we could have wished them a larger measure
of geniality, we must feel indebted to them for their preservation of a
refined social type.
[Illustration: Richard Garnett (signature)]