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The nearest approach to it which she has ever seen was under the sway of Charles the Second, and, accordingly, the nearest approach to French memoirs which our literature possesses is in the volumes of Pepys and Hamilton. To the almost universal exemption of Englishwomen from taking an overt part in political affairs a striking exception must be made in Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.
The names of the artists who won Mr. Pepys' applause have not come down to us. But previously to 1679, one Robert Aggas, a painter of some fame, was producing scenes for the theatre in Dorset Gardens. Nicholas Thomas Dall, a Danish landscape-painter, settled in London in 1760, was engaged as scene-painter at Covent Garden Theatre, and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1771.
Pepys would observe, "mighty pretty to see". If he could by any effort imagine himself committing such a high crime and misdemeanour as that in question, he could only imagine himself as doing it of a set purpose, under the sting of some vast injury, to inflict a great affront. A deliberately designed affront on the part of another man, it therefore remained to the end of his days.
Horace tiptoed over to the bureau and opening the top drawer found a heap of closely scrawled, lead-smeared pages. He looked at the first sheet: SANDRA PEPYS, SYNCOPATED BY MARCIA TARBOX He smiled. So Samuel Pepys had made an impression on her after all. He turned a page and began to read. His smile deepened he read on.
He failed, and it was not till some years after his death that the play, having been stamped with the approbation of the court, won a tardy recognition from the general public; and even when, after the restoration, Pepys records a successful revival in 1663, he adds that it was 'much thronged after for the scene's sake .
But the habit of reading at the open stalls was not only with the poor. You will remember that Mr. Brownlow was addicted. Really, had not the Artful Dodger stolen his pocket handkerchief as he was thus engaged upon his book, the whole history of Oliver Twist must have been quite different. And Pepys himself, Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., was guilty.
He dined with us, and after dinner took coach and carried him with us as far as my cozen Scott's, where we set him down and parted, and my wife and I staid there at the christening of my cozens boy, where my cozen Samuel Pepys, of Ireland, and I were godfathers, and I did name the child Samuel.
But Pepys has all the advantage of the man living in the busiest world over the recluse in that famed library, with the mottoes on the wall. Montaigne wrote in a retired and contemplative home, viewing life, as Osman Digna has viewed strife, "from afar," almost safe from the shots of fortune.
But at noon comes my Lord Hinchingbroke, and Sidney, and Sir Charles Harbord, and Roger Pepys, and dined with me; and had a good dinner, and very merry with; us all the afternoon, it being a farewell to Sidney; and so in the evening they away, and I to my business at the Office and so to supper, and talk with my brother, and so to bed. 14th. Up, and to St.
Students of Pepys' Diary must have gasped with amazement at learning of the prodigious quantities of food considered necessary in the seventeenth century for a dinner of a dozen people. Samuel Pepys gives us several accounts of his entertainments, varying, with a nice sense of discrimination, the epithet with which he labels his dinners.
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