The Diary Samuel Pepys (love books to read .TXT) 📖

increasing with her years, other poets sought to obtain recommendations of her wit and beauty to the success of their writings. I have said that Dryden was one of the principal supporters of the King’s house, and ere long in one of his new plays a principal character was set apart for the popular comedian. The drama was a tragicomedy called ‘Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen,’ and an additional interest was attached to its production from the king having suggested the plot to its author, and calling it ‘his play.’ ”Cunningham’s Story of Nell Gwyn, ed. 1892, pp. 38, 39

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John Speed’s Chronicle (“The History of Great Britaine under the Conquests of ye Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans”). ↩

Westhorpe, in Suffolk, originally the magnificent residence of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; it was probably afterwards granted by the Crown to the Duke of Buckingham. The house has long since been demolished. —⁠B. ↩

Two of our greatest poets have drawn the character of the Duke of Buckingham in brilliant verse, and both have condemned him to infamy. There is enough in Pepys’s reports to corroborate the main features of Dryden’s magnificent portrait of Zimri in Absolom and Achitophel:

“In the first rank of these did Zimri stand;
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long,
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking,
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He laughed himself from Court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne’er be chief.”

Pope’s facts are not correct, and hence the effect of his picture is impaired. In spite of the duke’s constant visits to the Tower, Charles II still continued his friend; but on the death of the king, expecting little from James, he retired to his estate at Helmsley, in Yorkshire, to nurse his property and to restore his constitution. He died on April 16th, 1687, at Kirkby Moorside, after a few days’ illness, caused by sitting on the damp grass when heated from a fox chase. The scene of his death was the house of a tenant, not “the worst inn’s worst room” (Moral Essays, epist. iii). He was buried in Westminster Abbey. ↩

The translation of the work of Joannes Henricus Alstedius is entitled: Templum Musicum; the Musical Synopsis; being a compendium of the rudiments both of the mathematical and practical part of music. Translated out of Latin by J. Birchensha. London, 1664, 8vo. (with frontispiece). ↩

This explanation of the word would appear even now to be necessary for those who are unacquainted with the Liturgy of the Church of England. In 1888 the following passage occurred in a leading article in the Times: “We have no doubt whatever that Scotch judges and juries will administer indifferent justice.” A correspondent in Glasgow, who supposed indifferent to mean inferior, wrote to complain at the insinuation that a Scotch jury would not do its duty. ↩

Robert Boreman, D.D. (or Bourman), brother of Sir William Boreman, Clerk of the Green Cloth to Charles II, rector of St. Giles’s in the Fields from 1663 till his death, November 15th, 1675. He was installed Prebendary of Westminster Abbey in December, 1667. ↩

Mr. Chappell, in his account of the ballad of “St. George for England,” refers to this passage (Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. i, p. 286). ↩

“Many men love the treason, though they hate the traitor” is attributed to Anthony Sadler, D.D. (1619⁠–⁠1680), in Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopædia of Prose Quotations. ↩

Devonshire House (the town house of the Earls of Devonshire) was in Bishopsgate Street, where Devonshire Square now stands. ↩

A tragedy by J. Caryl. Betterton acted King Richard; Harris, the Earl of Richmond; and Smith, Sir William Stanley. ↩

Mary Davis, sometime a comedian in the Duke of York’s troop, and one of those actresses who boarded with Sir W. Davenant, was, according to Pepys, a natural daughter of Thomas Howard, first Earl of Berkshire. She captivated the king by the charming manner in which she sang a ballad beginning, “My lodging it is on the cold ground,” when acting Celania, a shepherdess mad for love in the play of The Rivals. Charles took her off the stage, and she had by him a daughter named Mary Tudor, married to Francis, second Earl of Derwentwater; and their son James, the third earl, was attainted and beheaded for high treason. Miss Davis was also a fine dancer; see Hawkins’s History of Music, vol. iv, p. 525, where the ballad alluded to will be found; which, as Downes quaintly observes, “raised the fair songstress from her bed on the cold ground to the bed royal.” According to another account, she was the daughter of a blacksmith at Charlton, in Wiltshire, where a family of the name of Davis had exercised that calling for many generations, and has but lately become extinct. There is a beautiful whole-length portrait of Mary Davis, by Kneller, at Audley End, in which she is represented as a tall, handsome woman; and her general appearance ill accords with the description given of her by our journalist. —⁠B. ↩

As Florimel in Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen. See 2nd of this month. ↩

£4 the chaldron. On November 26th, post, Pepys speaks of them as being £5 10s. In 1812, “Napoleon’s winter,” £6 6s. were paid in the suburbs of London; an extraordinary price; but, the difference of money considered, cheap, when compared with 1667. —⁠B.