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1620–1706

To SAMUEL PEPYS

In retirement at Wotton

Wotton, 2 Aug. 1692.

I have been philosophizing and world-despising in the solitudes of this place, whither I am retired to pass and mourn the absence of my worthiest friend. Here is wood and water, meadows and mountains, the Dryads and Hamadryads; but here's no Mr. Pepys, no Dr. Gale. Nothing of all the cheer in the parlour that I taste; all's insipid, and all will be so to me, till I see and enjoy you again. I long to know what you do, and what you think, because I am certain you do both what is worthy the knowing and imitation. On Monday next will Mr. Bentley resume his lecture, I think, at Bow Church: I fear I shall hardly get through this wilderness by that time. Pray give him your wonted confidence if you can, and tell him how unhappily I am entangled. I hope, however, to get home within this fortnight, and about the end of October to my hyemation in Dover Street. My son is gone with the Lord Lieutenant, and our new relation, Sir Cyril Wych, into Ireland: I look they should return wondrous statesmen, or else they had as well have stayed at home. I am here with Boccalini, and Erasmus's Praise of Folly, and look down upon the world with wondrous contempt, when I consider for what we keep such a mighty bustle. O fortunate Mr. Pepys! who knows, possesses, and enjoys all that's worth the seeking after. Let me live among your inclinations, and I shall be happy.

To THE SAME

An old man's occupations

Wotton, 22 July, 1700.

I could no longer suffer this old servant of mine to pass and repass so near Clapham without a particular account of your health and all your happy family. You will now inquire what I do here? Why, as the patriarchs of old, I pass the days in the fields, among horses and oxen, sheep, cows, bulls, and sows, et cetera pecora campi. We have, thank God! finished our hay harvest prosperously. I am looking after my hinds, providing carriage and tackle against reaping time and sowing. What shall I say more? Venio ad voluptates agricolarum, which Cicero, you know, reckons amongst the most becoming diversions of old age; and so I render it. This without: now within doors, never was any matron more busy than my wife, disposing of our plain country furniture for a naked old extravagant house, suitable to our employments. She has a dairy, and distaffs, for lac, linum, et lanam, and is become a very Sabine. But can you thus hold out? Will my friend say; is philosophy, Gresham College, and the example of Mr. Pepys, and agreeable conversation of York Buildings, quite forgotten and abandoned? No, no! Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret. Know I have been ranging of no fewer than thirty large cases of books, destined for a competent standing library, during four or five days wholly destitute of my young coadjutor, who, upon some pretence of being much engaged in the mathematics, and desiring he may continue his course at Oxford till the beginning of August, I have wholly left it to him. You will now suspect something by this disordered hand; truly I was too happy in these little domestic affairs, when, on the sudden, as I was about my books in the library, I found myself sorely attacked with a shivering, followed by a feverish indisposition, and a strangury, so as to have kept, not my chamber only, but my bed, till very lately, and with just so much strength as to scribble these lines to you. For the rest, I give God thanks for this gracious warning, my great age calling upon me sarcinam componere every day expecting it, who have still enjoyed a wonderful course of bodily health for forty years. …