proach due to that miscarriage, as
have given me little less disquiet than he is fancied to have who found
his face in Michael Angelo's hell. The same should serve me also in
excuse for my silence in celebrating your mastery shown in the design and
draught, did not indignation rather than courtship urge me so far to
commend them, as to wish the furniture of our House of Lords changed from
the story of '88 to that of '67 (of Evelyn's designing), till the pravity
of this were reformed to the temper of that age, wherein God Almighty
found his blessings more operative than, I fear, he doth in ours his
judgments."

This is a letter honorable to the writer, where the meaning rather than
the words is eloquent. Such was the account he gave of himself to his
contemporaries; such thoughts he chose to utter, and in such language:
giving himself out for a grave and patriotic public servant. We turn to
the same date in the Diary by which he is known, after two centuries, to
his descendants. The entry begins in the same key with the letter,
blaming the "madness of the House of Commons" and "the base proceedings,
just the epitome of all our public proceedings in this age, of the House
of Lords;" and then, without the least transition, this is how our
diarist proceeds: "To the Strand, to my bookseller's, and there bought an
idle, rogueish French book, _L'escholle des Filles_, which I have bought
in plain binding, avoiding the buying of it better bound, because I
resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in
the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them, if it should be
found." Even in our day, when responsibility is so much more clearly
apprehended, the man who wrote the letter would be notable; but what
about the man, I do not say who bought a roguish book, but who was
ashamed of doing so, yet did it, and recorded both the doing and the
shame in the pages of his daily journal?

We all, whether we write or speak, must somewhat drape ourselves when we
address our fellows; at a given moment we apprehend our character and
acts by some particular side; we are merry with one, grave with another,
as befits the nature and demands of the relation. Pepys's letter to
Evelyn would have little in common with that other one to Mrs. Knipp
which he signed by the pseudonym of _Dapper Dicky_; yet each would be
suitable to the character of his correspondent. There is no untruth in
this, for man, being a Protean a