ART. VI.-JOHN EVELYN.

1. The Diary of John Evelyn. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by AUSTIN DOBSON. 3 vols. London, 1906. 2. Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn. Edited by HENRY B. WHEATLEY, from the original MSS. by WILLIAM BRAY, F.S.A. A new edition in four volumes, with a life of the author and a new Preface by HENRY B. WHEATLEY, F.S.A. London, 1906.

3. The Life of Margaret Godolphin. By JOHN EVELYN. (The King's Classics.) London, 1904.

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[And other Works.]

T was a misfortune for Evelyn, not without its irony, that the publication of his diary should have been the very voice. that called forth from its carefully hedged seclusion the diary of Pepys. The two books were immediately forced into comparison with each other, and no comparison could be more disastrous to Evelyn, even though none could be more unjust. His manuscript, which had till then lain unprinted at Wotton, was published in 1818, and its appearance directed attention to another seventeenth-century diary, which lay not merely unprinted, but undeciphered, in a neglected little library at Cambridge. The result was that Evelyn reigned undisturbed as the diarist of his age for no more than seven short years. Since 1825, when the rival manuscript at last saw the light, it is probable that Evelyn's diary has seldom or never been mentioned without the qualification that it is not so amusing as Pepys's. A fact which is at the same time so obvious and so profoundly true as this, is never likely to lack tongues to utter it; and no doubt we shall all remain till the end of the chapter incapable of addressing ourselves to Evelyn without winking, with a knowing intimacy, at Pepys over his shoulder. But if there must always be a touch of formality about our relations with Evelyn, it is at least a formality of a picturesque and distinguished kind-the mere space of time that divides us from him can be trusted to see to that. It is true that the peculiar pleasure of intercourse with Pepys is that the lapse of time counts for so little; he is among us and of us just as much as he is of his own period. But with Evelyn the distance operates in exactly the other way; his charm is that he is frankly de l'époque, that he stays in the picture without descending from the frame. He is not, indeed, by any means entirely characteristic of his time. His temperate composure of spirit, his humanity, his suave gravity, recall the lucid age of Anne rather than the restless, fermenting century in which he

actually flourished. Moreover, the type to which he belongsthe dilettante, the amateur, the virtuoso-is a perennial one, equally at home in many other centuries, earlier and later. But he wears his modernity with a difference. The very fact that he seems an incongruous figure against the background of Charles II.'s florid and exuberant Court calls attention to the place he occupies, and makes his relation to his own period the more interesting. And indeed the sobriety of his diary-the diary which is not so amusing as Pepys's-contributes to the same effect. It is not a book to be read simply for its own sake; it is not informal, not discursive, not intimate enough. It has an intrinsic historical value, of course, for it happened that almost every day of the century he lived in added its line, often enough its page, to the book of history, and Evelyn had his opportunities of seeing a good deal of the process. But its artistic value is solely that it implies and illuminates the figure of the writer; it throws out no other attraction, no vivacity or pungent humour by the way. It does not even create an especially entertaining figure, for the man was a little too well-balanced, one might say too priggish, to be exactly lovable, and not priggish enough, and far too genuinely good and generous, to be the subject of ridicule. But then for entertainment it is enough in itself to have a figure re-created, a real character projected upon a faraway background, even if the character has not much that is very amusing to say. This surely is the chief appeal that Evelyn's diary can make to modern readers, and it is sufficient. His narrative is not so guarded that it does not disclose a living presence-a presence through which we see, at a somewhat curious angle, the enthusiasms and contradictions of a restless, an eager, imaginative, and inquisitive age.

The recent publication of two stately editions of the diary shows indeed how far its appeal is from flagging. Mr. Dobson's three volumes and Mr. Wheatley's four have their different points of excellence, but both sets are models of comeliness and convenience. Evelyn's correct text is unfortunately matter of doubt, owing to difficulties in the way of an examination of the manuscript, which have not yet been removed by the owner. It is not necessary here to go into the details of its bibliographical history since the original publication in 1818; Mr. Dobson sets them forth succinctly, and points out that the variations which exist are not in themselves of very great importance. It is enough to say that while the third edition (published in 1827) is that recommended by Mr. W. J. Evelyn of Wotton as being 'correctly printed from the manuscript,' a later edition (1850-52) issued by John Forster contains certain supplementary

passages of the diary, mostly towards the beginning, which had not been before included. The earlier publication contained, besides the diary, a selection from Evelyn's correspondence. In 1879 this edition was reprinted as it stood, with the notes of the original editor, William Bray, by Mr. H. B. Wheatley, who prefixed to it a new life of Evelyn. Mr. Wheatley now re-issues the same volumes (which had long been out of print), with a new and full series of illustrations, in commemoration of the twohundredth anniversary of Evelyn's death. Mr. Dobson on the contrary has taken the later version, and has given himself a freer hand as editor. He has made use of the notes both of Bray and of Forster, correcting them where they had become out of date, and adding to them a large number of his own. He has also followed Forster in modernising the spelling, which is kept by Mr. Wheatley in its original form; he has placed at the head a long and admirable introduction; and he also intersperses an interesting series of portraits and views. The ordinary reader, who merely wants the diary, and who wants it in an attractive shape, with enough elucidation to give life to the names which occur in it, will choose Mr. Dobson's volumes. His annotations are at once ample and unobtrusive, and his introductory sketch could not be improved upon, either for its solidity and good criticism or for its vivacity and ease. To the student both editions will be indispensable, Mr. Wheatley's because it includes the interesting correspondence, Mr. Dobson's because it brings the commentary up to date. Evelyn is very fortunate in the two pairs of hands into which he has fallen.

It is in no disparaging sense, it is in the best and most honourable meaning of the word, that we should describe Evelyn as an amateur. It is true that on one subject, that of arboriculture, his knowledge was more than that of an amateur; it is also true that his dilettantism did not prevent his devoting himself for many years to useful public work. But a man of comfort and peace, with a taste for culture and the means to arrange the circumstances of his life as suits him best, is divided by a natural gulf from the man who by temperament or by necessity has to take life as he finds it. Evelyn was able to plan out his sphere of action as he pleased, and very well he planned it. He enjoyed his life, did some useful work, and was a pleasure to his friends. The elimination of difficulty did no harm to his serene and benevolent nature; it simply meant that he was spared the effort of concentration. Such people not only add to the amenity of the world, but have also, for posterity, a very definite place of their own in the interpretation of history. They interpret it, that is to say, in a manner that is particularly easy to understand,

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because their outlook upon life varies so little from century to century. They do not pursue the same objects, but they pursue them in the same kind of way. The idea of what constitutes physical comfort may change, but intellectual comfort never. To understand the more trenchant and heroic spirits of history, it is necessary to understand the forces that produced them, to measure the ideals that were the most potent in their time, to realise the purpose of the work which they accomplished. To see through the eyes of Pliny, on the other hand, or Evelyn, or Horace Walpole, is as easy as to look out of window. do not necessarily know what we shall see, but we know that we shall see it. The despised dilettante, the trifler, the scorn of the earnest in every generation, thus becomes a stable and universal factor, uniting past and future. Other temperaments, like coins of the realm, have no immutable value; to express them in terms of modern life requires as much previous knowledge and previous mental adjustment as to explain the purchasing power of a Stuart penny. The dilettante, moreover, besides being for us the most accessible personage of his time, is also the character who best serves, as we look back, to correct the historical perspective which so many things combine to falsify. There are few things more pleasant than to generalise, because by that means we can gain the sense of dominating a great number of facts without the effort of remembering them. But though this is proper enough, it is difficult not to be carried away by the happy process of disencumbering the memory. If in this spirit we examine some particular period, its essential complexion seems contained in a few of the most striking figures, the fewer the better for the harassed mind. But the dilettante of the time, all unsuspicious, upsets these simplifications as soon as we come across him-that easy, ambling, mildly versatile habit of mind of his, which we understand so well, existed, it appears, even in times which we think of as entirely engulfed in vivid passions and combating enthusiasms. His presence, by righting the proportion of the picture, puts the whole thing into a new light. It makes it more real, more familiar, more true, and often enough more amiable as well. To enter thoroughly into the world of the past, more is required than that it should seem vivid; it must seem natural, it must give the feeling of a life which could be led from day to day, not of a series of dramatic climaxes. Here comes in the diarist, and if he is a diarist who belongs to the undying and unchanging race of amateurs, the existence he describes is so much the easier for posterity to take part in and to understand.

Whatever the seventeenth century was in England, it was

not a time of trifling. The robust northern blood, strengthened by generations of prosperity, which nourished the extraordinary vigour of the middle classes, the imaginative richness which had started from the Renaissance long before, and had not yet begun to be formalised, the epic memories of the Elizabethan wars, which cast a romantic glow both upon the wars and upon the religion in the name of which they had been waged-it was such great elements as these that produced, over the length and breadth of the country, a passion for independence, curiously Hebraic in its high, self-sacrificing fervour, its compact self-confidence, its scorn of cultured subtleties. A spirit such as this, kindled in an age when the principle of toleration was still unknown, would be likely to make its vibrations felt to the very bottom of the national life. It is not as though it were merely a long-drawn protest against material hardships, an onslaught of angry poor against passive rich. It was a conflict of principles which were equally active upon both sides, so active and so universal that it seems there could be no outlying pool of thought or society left undisturbed. We all know the map of England, half pink and half blue, which figures in our history books at the opening of the Civil War, one colour standing for the King and the other for the Parliament. The colour scheme has its uses, but it is a most blighting method of conveying information to anyone who wants, not a pair of labels, but a picture of life. If the end of it is that we think for a moment that everybody was either pink or blue, that two uniform shades of thought and conduct accounted between them for the whole island, the sense of vanished life, the one thing that can keep history fresh, has been lost. Moreover, the corresponding map at the end of the war, with the colours almost reversed, proves how shallow after all were the roots of the distinction. Human nature has more resources than can be shown on a coloured map, or even two. At the world's most agitated moments the current of normal life yet goes somehow forward, for it is not in average humanity to live at exceptional pressure for more than an occasional moment. But where, one sometimes wonders, in times of national convulsion, in times when every force of imagination and conscience seem to have joined issue in a universal crisis, where was there room for the plain, the everyday life? Well, here is Evelyn, a man of property, a staunch Royalist who did not dissemble his sympathies, who loved the arts of peace, whose desire was for an orderly life of benevolence and culture-the kind of man, one would say, who must inevitably have found, in those troubled days, the life he wished for closed to himhere is Evelyn enjoying just the kind of existence that an amiable