up in his business, and less open to all the temptations of all pleasures and all vanities, he would have been a better man morally, but his Diary would have been less valuable as an historical authority.

On May 31, 1669, Pepys writes in his Diary, Thence to the World's End, a drinking house by the Park, and there merry, and so home late.' There the Diary closes, with only a brief explanation of the causes of its conclusion. Thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my Journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in hand; and therefore whatever comes of it, I must forbear: and therefore resolve from this time forward to have it kept by my people in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know.'

If Pepys did have a journal in long-hand, written for him by an amanuensis, it seems to have perished. There is a journal of his voyage to Tangiers in 1683, when he went there to superintend its evacuation and the destruction of the harbour works. Though it is not unamusing, it has not the careless frankness of the Diary. His eyesight must have been better, or his optician more skilful, for it is written in short-hand, like the Diary. Perhaps he was more cautious as to what he put down, perhaps age had made him wiser, and he had turned over a new leaf. It is impossible to say, but it is always with a certain shock of surprise and amusement that one finds Évelyn describing our friend in his old age as 'that austere moralist, Mr. Pepys.'

Different in its origin from any of the diaries yet discussed is Swift's Journal to Stella. It covers the critical period of Queen Anne's reign, 1710-1713. Its form is that of a series of some sixty letters written to two ladies, Esther Johnson and her companion Rebecca Dingley, to inform them in Dublin of what he was doing in London. Each letter contains an account of his life in London for a week or a fortnight in the form of a diary of his proceedings each day. For the literary history of the time it is invaluable, and hardly less for the political and the social. see in its pages Harley and St. John in their hours of ease, and can trace the progress of the split which finally alienated the two Tory leaders from each other. Swift's circle of friends is not so wide as that of Pepys; he does not know the court of Queen Anne as well as Pepys knew that of Charles II.; he has little but hearsay to repeat about the Queen. Yet she too passes over the

We

stage-going a-hunting in a chaise with one horse, which she drives herself, and drives furiously like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter like Nimrod.' Swift wrote simply for his two friends as Pepys wrote simply for himself, and there were many autobiographers who wrote merely to tell the story of their lives to their children and grandchildren. But often the motive for writing was more complex; some were inspired to record their experiences by the example of authors they read, and consciously imitated particular literary models.

One evidently derived his inspiration from the romancersperhaps from Barclay's Argenis, or the old Greek romance of Theagenes and Chariclea, perhaps from French or classical models. Born in 1603, Sir Kenelm Digby died on 1665, but the volume published in 1827 as his Private Memoirs' relates only one episode in his earlier life. He undertook to recount the romance of his own life-his love for Venetia Stanley. I will set down in the best manner I can the beginning, progress, and consummation of that excellent love, which only makes me believe that our pilgrimage in this world is not indifferently laid upon all persons for a curse.' He sets it down on paper to teach the world anew what it hath long forgotten, the mystery of loving with honour and constancy.' . . . and to show, by a modern instance, how passion, 'meeting with heroical souls, produced heroical and worthy effects.' Throughout his pages, Digby himself masquerades under the name of Theagenes, Venetia Stanley as Stelliana, and other characters bear equally fantastic titles. The book hardly fulfils the promise with which its author sets out; the narrative is involved and circuitous, fact is continually wrapped up in fiction, movement lost in disquisitions and conversations. It is romance, with a realistic basis of autobiography underneath it, but contains little of value either for the social or political historian.

In Lord Herbert of Cherbury's life of himself, the influence of the romances of chivalry is visible.1 He had an ancestor, Sir Richard Herbert, who was an 'incomparable hero.' At the battle of Banbury in 1469, Sir Richard 'twice passed through a great army of northern men alone, with his poleaxe in his hand, and returned without any mortal hurt, which is more than is famed of Amadis de Gaul, or the Knight of the Sun.' Emulating this ancestor, Lord Herbert, in his famous fight in Scotland Yard,

1 The best edition is that of 1876, edited by Sidney Lee. The life was first published in 1764.

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with nothing but a broken sword in his hand, routed Sir John Ayres and four ruffians who assailed him. I think,' he says, 'I shall not speak vaingloriously of myself if I say, that no man hath understood the use of his weapon better than I did, or hath more dexterously prevailed himself thereof on all occasions.' His oath as a Knight of the Bath bound him to right 'gentlewomen that shall be wronged in their honour, if they demand assistance,' and for this cause alone he sent four challenges, besides many for other reasons. Many feats of valour he performed in the Low Countries, and at the siege of Juliers, and of some he is silent. 'I could relate divers things of note concerning myself during the siege; but do forbear, lest I should relate too much of vanity.' But he does tell us that Maurice of Nassau, Spinola, and the Duke of Savoy, the three great captains of his day, esteemed and honoured him, that three queens distinguished him by unusual favour, that one great lady kept his miniature in her cabinet, and that another wore it in her bosom. And he does relate some things concerning myself, which though they may seem scarce credible yet, before God, are true.' He grew two inches in height when he was middle-aged. I had and still have a pulse on the crown of my head.' Further, 'it is well known to those that wait in my chamber, that the shirts, waistcoats, and other garments wear next my body, are sweet beyond what either easily can be believed or hath been observed in any else which sometimes also was found to be in my breath above others, before I used to take tobacco.' Moreover, his moral nature was as sweet as his physical: no man was more forgiving when it was compatible with honour; when he was a boy he freely confessed his faults whenever he was charged with them, choosing rather to suffer correction than to stain his mind with telling a lie. I can affirm to all the world truly that from my first infancy to this hour I told not willingly anything that was false.' It was natural, therefore, that he should spend his leisure, during his embassy in France, in writing a treatise on the nature of Truth, and on the distinction between probable, possible, and false revelations, and that, having completed it, he should be directed by a sign from heaven to publish it.

The Diary of Sir Henry Slingsby 1 is a complete contrast to Lord Herbert's Autobiography. He was a Yorkshire baronet who had fought for Charles I. during the Civil War, and died for Charles II. on the scaffold in 1658. It is not really a Diary, but 1 Edited by D. Parsons, 1836.

rather a collection of notes and reflections written down from time to time, and it contains reminiscences of Charles I., a sketch of the campaigns in the north of England, and brief narratives of the battles of Marston Moor and Naseby. These are prefaced by an account of his own life for three or four years before the war began, containing details about his family and his servants, his building and his farming, and common things of daily occurrence. It was not vanity which led him to record things which others might have thought unimportant, but the example of one of his favourite authors. 'I followed,' he says, "the advice of Michael de Montaigne, to set down in this book such accidents as befall me, not that I make a study of it, but rather a recreation at vacant times, without observing any time, method, or order in my writing.' We might have had some record of Slingsby's military services if he had never read Montaigne, but we should not have had this picture of the life of an English country gentleman.

Foreign literary influence is also visible in the Autobiography of Sir Simonds D'Ewes.1 He refers more than once in it to the example which he had before him in the life of Thuanus or De Thou, whose Historia sui Temporis (1544-1607) appeared

in 1620.

'Because I find,' he says, 'that both Josephus and Thuanus, men admirably learned, in the historical narration of their own lives, do largely set down their descents and extractions, I shall in this place shortly discourse of my own,' and so, after thanking God that he is well descended, he devotes twenty pages to his pedigree. Again, because 'Monsieur de Thou doth frequently insert in the books of his life the verses he made,' D'Ewes inserts a number of copies of Greek and Latin verses he wrote whilst he was at school. None of them,' he boasts, 'except the Greek Sapphics, were very troublesome or difficult to me.' Fortunately his judicious editor leaves them out. Finally, he inserts amongst the recollections of his boyhood, accounts of a number of public occurrences which happened during that period of his life. I have interlaced them with the narration of my own life,' he says, 'in imitation of that unmatched historian, De Thou.'

D'Ewes was born in 1602 and died in 1650, but unluckily his life of himself ends in 1636. It is a very valuable authority upon many different subjects; the account of his education at school,

1 Edited by J. O. Halliwell, 1845.

at Cambridge, and at the Inns of Court, would alone make it worth reading. But he gives us much besides this. No one represents better the opinion of the average educated Puritan on the religious questions of the day and the political questions so closely connected with them. In his pages we see reflected as in a glass the changes of feeling which the success or failure of the Protestant cause excited amongst his party during the Thirty Years' War. Besides this we have a description of his daily life, of his management of his household, of his domestic felicities and infelicities, of his ideas and his studies. One of the most eager antiquarians in an age when antiquarians were many, he tells us with special satisfaction that it was on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 1631, 'I began my search in that august and rare record called Domesday, in the Tally Office of the Exchequer,' and how much he transcribed from it. And he relates with the same exactness the progress of his various researches in the Tower and elsewhere. With equal particularity he inserts a letter to his wife, 'the only lines I sent her in my wooing time,' to prove his ability in that kind of composition.

Yet another type of mixed Autobiography and Diary is represented by Anthony Wood's life of himself. He compiled two autobiographies-one written in the first person, carrying his story down to March, 1660; another written in the third person, carrying it down to 1672. Besides this he kept a series of journals in the form of notes in a set of interleaved almanacs extending from 1657 to 1695. The autobiography was printed by Hearne in 1730, and in two editions, in 1813 and 1848, by Dr. Bliss. The last edition, by Mr. Andrew Clark, incorporates the journal with the autobiography, and is styled The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Related by Himself. In this way Wood's autobiography has been converted into a Diary again.

The autobiography gives us a vivid picture of the development of Wood's interest in English history and antiquities. It was about 1652 that he was first admitted to read in the Bodleian, 'which he took to be the greatest happiness in his life, and into which he never entered without great veneration.' In 1653 he lighted upon William Burton's Description of Leicestershire, Gwillim's Display of Heraldry, and similar books on antiquarian subjects to which he felt irresistibly attracted. He perceived it was his natural genie and could not avoid it.' His mother and his brother pressed him in vain to take to studies which

1 Published by the Oxford Historical Society in five volumes, 1891-1900.