Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Duke's House again; and of a rare play to be acted this week of Sir William Davenant's, the story of Harry the Eighth, with all his wives.

11th.-At the coffee-house I went and sat by Mr. Harrington and some east-country merchants, and talking of the country above Quinsborough, and thereabouts, he told us that for fish none than the poorest body will buy a dead fish unless it be in the winter; and then he told us the manner of putting their nets into the water. Through holes made in the thick ice they will spread a net of half a mile long; and he hath known a hundred and thirty and a hundred and seventy barrels of fish taken out at one draught. And then the people come with sledges upon the ice with snow at the bottom, and lay the fish in and cover them with snow and so carry them to market. And he has been where the said fish have been frozen in the sledge and broke in pieces, so hard it has been, and yet the same pieces taken out of the snow and brought into a hot room will be alive and leap up and down.* Swallows are often brought up in the nets out of the mud from under water, hanging together to some twig or other, dead, in ropes, and brought to the fire, will come to life. Fowl killed in December (Alderman Barker said) he did buy, and putting into the box under his sledge, did forget to take them out to eat till April next, and then they were found there and went through the frost as sweet and fresh, and eat as well, as when first killed. Young bears appear there; the flesh sold in market as ordinarily as beef here, and is excellent, sweet meat, They tell us that bears there never do hurt anybody, but fly away from you when you pursue them and set upon them, but wolves do much mischief. Mr. Harrington told us how they do get as much honey as they send abroad. They make hollow a great fir-tree, leaving only a small slit straight through in one place, and this they close up again, only leave a little hole, and there the bees go in and fill the body of those trees as full of wax and honey as they can hold; and the inhabitants at times go and open the slit and take what they please without killing the bees, and so let them live still, and make

more.

The great entertainment and sport of the Duke of Corland, and the princes thereabout, is hunting; which is not with dogs as we; but he appoints such a day, and summons all the country people to a field, and by several companies gives everyone their circuit, and they agree upon a place where the toils is to be set; and so, making fires, every company as they go, they drive all the wild beasts, whether bears, wolves, foxes, swine and stags and roes into the toils, and there the

*This story all sounds rather exaggerated, and we fear this unknown Mr. Harrington may have been gulling Mr. Pepys.

great men have their stands at such and such places, and shoot at what they have a mind to; and this is their hunting. Against a public hunting the Duke orders that no wolves be killed by the people. And whatever harm they do, the Duke makes good to the person that suffers it, as Mr. Harrington instanced in the house where he lodged, where a wolf broke into a hog-sty and bit three or four pieces off the back of the hog before the house could come to help it, and the man of the house told him there were three or four wolves thereabouts that did great hurt; but it was no matter, for the Duke was to make it good to him, otherwise he would kill them.

21st. To Shoe Lane to see a cock-fight at a new pit there, a spot I never was at in my life; but, Lord! to see the strange variety of people, from parliament, men to the poorest 'prentices, bakers, brewers' butchers, draymen and what not, and all these fellows one with another cursing and betting. I soon had enough of it. It is strange to see how people of this low rank, that look as they had not bread to put into their mouths, shall bet three or four pounds at a time and lose it, and yet bet as much at the next battle, so that one will lose £10 and £20 at a meeting.

28th. Walking through Whitehall I heard the King was gone to play at tennis, so I went down the new tennis court and saw him and Sir Arthur Slingsby play against my Lord of Suffolk and my Lord Chesterfield. The King beat three and lost two sets; they all, and he particularly, playing well, I thought. Thence went and spoke with the Duke of Albermarle about his wound, but I find him a heavy, dull man by his answers to me. The Duchess of York is fallen sick with the measles.

31st. The Queen, after a long and sore sickness, is become well again; and the King minds his pleasures a little too much, if it please God! But I hope all things will go well, and in the navy particularly, wherein I shall do my duty, whatever comes of it. The great talk is of the design of the King of France, whether against the Pope or the King of Spain, nobody knows, but a great and promising prince he is, and all the princes of Europe have their eye upon him. The Turk, very far entered into Germany, and all that part of the world is at a loss what to expect from his proceedings. Myself, blessed by God, in a good way, and design and resolution of sticking to my business to get a little money with, doing the best service I can to the King also, which God continue. So ends the old year.

You see from this what a garrulous fellow Pepys was, and on how many subjects his diary touches, and yet, in the end, you cannot fail to feel a liking for him, and to be sure that,

in an age of corruption, he meant, as he says, to "do his duty, whatever come of it." Pepys kept his journal only ten years from 1659 to 1669. The fine shorthand or cypher in which he wrote it was so trying to his eyesight that he was then obliged to give it up. Evelyn's journal covers a much longer space of time-from 1641 to 1705. Both of these diaries, however, record the return of Charles to the throne, the great plague that spread over London in 1665, the great fire which, in 1666, almost consumed the city, and it is interesting to compare the two accounts of these events.

We will read from Evelyn the account of the great fire, which is a vivid bit of description, and, some other time, I advise you to read the corresponding account in Pepys. It will give you an excellent idea of the difference in these two characters:

EVELYN'S DIARY, SEPTEMBER, 1666.

2d. Sept.-This fatal night, about ten, began the deplorable fire near Fish Street, London.

3rd Sept.-I had public prayers at home. The fire continuing after dinner, I took coach with my wife and son, and went to the Bankside in Southwark, where we beheld that dismal spectacle, the whole city in dreadful flames near the water side; all the houses from the bridge, all Thames street, and upwards towards Cheapside, were now consumed; and so returned exceedingly astonished what would become of the rest. * * * The conflagration was so universal and the people so astonished, that from the beginning, feeling I know not what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting even to save their goods; such a strange consternation there was upon them, and as it burned in breadth and length, the churches, public halls, exchange hospital, monuments and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner from house to house, and street to street, at great distances one from the other. For the heat, with a long set of fair and warm weather, had even ignited the air, and prepared the materials to conceive the fire which devoured after an incredible manner, houses, furniture, and everything. Here we saw the Thames covwith goods floating, all the barges and boats ladened with what some had time and courage to save, as, on the other side,

the carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewn with movables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. O, the miserable and calami. tous spectacle! such as haply the world has not seen since the foundation of it, nor can be out-done till the universal conflagration thereof. All the sky was of a firey aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant than mine eyes may never again behold the like; who ever saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame? The noise and cracking and thunder of the impetuous flames; the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses and churches, was like a hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at the last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still and let it burn on, which they did for near ten miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds of smoke also were dismal, and reached upon computation near fifty miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoon burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or the last day. It forcibly called to my mind that passage, non enim hic habemus stabilem civitatem-the ruins resembling the picture of Troy. London was, but is no more.

Sept. 4.-The burning still rages, and it is now gotten as far as the Inner Temple. All Fleet street, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paul's-chain, Watling street, now flaming, and most of it reduced to ashes; the stones of Paul's* flew like grenadoes, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so that no horse nor man was able to tread on them, the eastern wind still more impetuously driving on the flames. Nothing but the Almighty power of God able to stop them, for vain was the help of man.

On the 6th, however, notwithstanding Evelyn's pious declaration that nothing but the power of God could arrest the flames, they began to blow up some houses by gunpowder, and to tear down others, to make a gap between the portion unburnt and that burning. This, Evelyn said, had been previously proposed, but had met with opposition from some Aldermen of the city, whose houses would have been sacrificed first. By these means, with the favor of an abating wind, they got the fire under check on the evening of the 5th, after it had burned three days. It is interesting to note that on the 13th of September, eight days after the

St. Paul's Cathedral.

fire, Evelyn showed King Charles the survey of the ruins and the plot for a new city, "which extremely pleased the King, Queen and the Duke of York (James II)."

TALK XXXIII.

ON THE PROSE WRITERS OF THE 17TH CENTURY; JOHN BUNYAN AND HIS PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

THERE are not many prose works produced in the 17th century which are interesting to us of the present time. I have before spoken of one grand piece of prose-Milton's plea for a free press-whose spirited sentences ring like the blasts of a bugle calling to freedom. This is only a short tract, but is one of the noblest pieces of prose to be found in literature. I should not do justice to the prose of this century, however, if I left out the name of Isaac Walton, who wrote at least one book, about which we ought to know something. He was a shop-keeper in London, whose delight and almost sole recreation it was to go fishing whenever he could get away from business, and he has made all the little streams and rivers that flowed in and around London, in his life-time, historical waters, by their mention in his Complete Angler. The Angler is one of the quaintest, most delicious books in English. It begins with a discussion between three friends who are sportsmen-one devoted to hawking, the next to hunting and the last to fishing. In the opening chapter, each argues for the merit of his respective sport, till the fisherman's eloquence convinces the others, and the hunter concludes to follow him on his excursion. The two sportsmen wander off on their day's sport, sometimes lying along the green banks of the streams, sometimes sheltered by the shade of a honeysuckle hedge, or the branches of a spreading oak, while Piscator (the fisherman) gives his pupil

« AnteriorContinuar »