INTRODUCTION xvii 



sation, that upon frequent recollection, and calling to mind 

 passages of his life and discourse, I could never charge him 

 with the least passion or inadvertence. His estate was 

 esteem'd about 4,000 per ann. well wooded and full of 

 timber.' As for his mother, 'She was of proper personage ; 

 of a brown complexion ; her eyes and haire of a lovely 

 black ; of constitution inclyned to a religious melancholy, 

 or pious sadnesse ; of a rare memory and most exemplary 

 life ; for ceconomie and prudence esteemed one of the most 

 conspicuous in her Country. 



Apparently John Evelyn thought he had made a very 

 judicious choice of his father and mother when he wrote 

 'Thus much in brief touching my parents; nor was it reason- 

 able I should speake lesse to them to whom I owe so much. ' 



These passages, occurring in the first two pages of his 

 Diary serve at once to illustrate a very characteristic feature 

 of Evelyn's mind, and one that is everywhere discernible in 

 his writings. He was a man with a highly cultured and a 

 very well balanced mind, but he was somewhat inclined to 

 exaggerate ; and he certainly had the rather enviable gift of 

 considering everything pertaining to him, or approved or 

 advocated by him, as very superior indeed. All his eggs 

 had two yolks, and all his geese were swans. What he liked, 

 he lo^ed ; and what he did not like, he hated. There was 

 no golden mean with him ; he was either very optimistic or 

 else intensely pessimistic. Hence, naturally, he gave hard 

 knocks to those who differed from him in opinion, and 

 particularly after the Restoration ; for he was one of the 

 most expressive among King Charles II's courtiers. Direct 

 evidence of this special temperament was characteristic of 

 Evelyn throughout all his life, and was of course particularly 

 noticeable in his writings, as we shall subsequently see. It 

 is therefore only to be expected that he prized his father's 

 little estate of Wotton in Surrey as one of the finest in the 

 kingdom. * Wotton, the mansion house of my Father, left 

 him by my Grandfather, (now my eldest Brother's), is situat- 

 ed in the most Southern part of the Shire, and though in 

 a valley, yet really upon part of Lyth Hill one of the most 

 eminent in England for the prodigious prospect to be seen 

 from its summit, tho ' of few observed. From it may be 



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