r, an enthusiast, a studious scholar, and a
gentleman.

No one can ever know Evelyn so well as Pepys did; and here is his
opinion of John Evelyn, expressed in the secret pages of his cipher
Diary on November, 1665:--'In fine, a most excellent person he is, and
must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well be
so, being a man so much above others.' And this just exactly bears out
the rough general impression conveyed by the perusal of Evelyn's Diary
and his other literary works. The long friendship of these two was only
terminated by the death of Pepys on 26th May, 1703, not long before
Evelyn had himself to depart from this life. 'This day died Mr. Sam.
Pepys, a very courtly, industrious and curious person, none in England
exceeding him in knowledge of the navy, in which he had passed through
all the most considerable offices, Clerk of the Acts and Secretary of
the Admiralty, all which he performed with great integrity. When King
James II., went out of England, he laid down his office and would serve
no more..... He was universally belov'd, hospitable, generous, learned
in many things, skilled in music, a very great cherisher of learned men
of whom he had the conversation..... Mr. Pepys had been for near 40
yeares so much my particular friend, that Mr. Jackson sent me compleat
mourning, desiring me to be one to hold up the pall at his magnificient
obsequies, but my indisposition hinder'd me from doing him this last
office.'

II

_Evelyn's Childhood, Early Education, and Youth._

The essential facts of Evelyn's life, as he himself would have us know
them, are set forth at full length in autobiographical form,
chronologically arranged in what is always spoken of as his _Diary_,
although evidently this was (much of it, at any rate) merely a
subsequent personal compilation from an actual diary, kept in imitation
of his father, from the age of 11 years onwards and down even to within
one month of his death in 1706.

The second son and the fourth child of Richard Evelyn of Wotton in
Surrey, and of his wife Eleanor, daughter of John Stansfield 'of an
ancient honorable family (though now extinct) in Shropshire,' he was
born at Wotton on 31st. October, 1620. His father, 'was of a sanguine
complexion, mixed with a dash of choler; his haire inclining to light,
which tho' exceeding thick became hoary by the time he was 30 years of
age; it was somewhat curled towards the extremity; his beard, which he