Born at Wotton, 31 Oct. 1620. From age of five lived in household of his grandmother, at Lewes. Educated at Southover Free School. Admitted to Middle Temple as student, 13 Feb. 1637. Fellow Commoner of Balliol Coll., Oxford, 10 May, 1638. Took no degree. Took chambers in Temple, 1640. In Holland, July to Oct. 1641. In Civil War joined King’s army, Nov. 1642, but was not received, and returned to Wotton. In France, Nov. 1643 to Oct. 1644; in Italy, Oct. 1644 to April 1646; returned through Switzerland to Paris; married Mary Browne there, 27 June, 1647. Returned to England, Sept. 1647, without his wife. Returned to Paris, 1 Aug. 1649. Visit to England, 1650. Returned to England to live, Feb. 1652; his wife returned, June 1652; they settled at Sayes Court, Deptford. Inaugurated scheme of Royal Society; first meeting held, Jan. 1661; elected fellow and member of Council. On various Metropolitan Commissions, 1662. On commission for care of prisoners and wounded in Dutch War, 1644. Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, 1669. Member of Council of foreign plantations, 28 Feb. 1671. Commissioner for Privy Seal, Dec. 1685 to March 1687. Sec. to Royal Soc., Dec. 1772 to Dec. 1773. Left Sayes Court and settled with brother at Wotton, May 1694. Treasurer of Greenwich Hospital, 1695 to Aug. 1703. Inherited Wotton estate from his brother, Oct. 1699. Died there, 27 Feb. 1706; buried in Wotton Church. Works: “Of Liberty and Servitude,” 1649; “The State of France … in the ninth year of … Lewis. XIII.” (under initials: J. E.), 1652; “A Character of England” (anon.), 1659; “Apology for the Royal Party” (anon.), 1659: “The Late Newes from Brussels Unmasked” (anon.), 1660; “A Poem upon His Majesty’s Coronation,” 1661; “Encounter between the French and Spanish Ambassadors,” 1661; “Fumifugium,” 1661; “Tyrannus” (anon.), 1661; “Sculptura,” 1662; “Sylva,” 1664; “Kalendarium Hortense,” 1664; “Public Employment, and an Active Life, preferred to Solitude,” 1667; “The three late famous Imposters” (under initials: J. E.), 1669; “Navigation and Commerce,” 1674; “A Philosophical Discourse of Earth,” 1676; “The Whole Body of Antient and Modern Architecture,” 1680; “Mundus Muliebris” (anon.), 1690; “Mundus Foppensis” (anon.), 1691; “Numismata,” 1697; “Acetaria” (anon.), 1699. Posthumous: “Diary,” ed. by W. Bray as “Memoirs … of John Evelyn,” 2 vols., 1818; “Life of Mrs. Godolphin,” ed. by Bp. Wilberforce, 1847; “History of Religion,” ed. by R. M. Evanson, 1850. He translated: Lucretius, Bk. I., 1656; “The French Gardener,” 1658; “The Golden Book” of St. Chrysostom, 1659; Naudé’s “Instructions concerning the erection of a Library,” 1661: Pt. II. of “The Mystery of Jesuitism,” 1658; Fréart de Chambray’s “Parallel of Ancient Architecture with Modern,” 1664, and “Idea of the Perfection of Painting,” 1668; La Quintinie’s “The Compleat Gardener,” 1698. He edited: translation, by his son John, of René Rapin’s “Of Gardens,” 1673. Life: by H. B. Wheatley, in 1879 edn. of “Diary.”

Personal

  By water to Deptford, and there made a visit to Mr. Evelyn, who, among other things, showed me most excellent painting in little, in distemper, in Indian incke, water colours, graveing, and, above all, the whole secret of mezzo-tinto, and the manner of it, which is very pretty, and good things done with it…. In fine, a most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others.

  If Mr. Evelyn had not been an artist himself, as I think I can prove he was, I should yet have found it difficult to deny myself the pleasure of alloting him a place among the arts he loved, promoted, patronised, and it would be but justice to inscribe his name with due panegyric in these records, as I have once or twice taken the liberty to criticize him. But they are trifling blemishes compared with his amiable virtues and beneficence; and it may yet be remarked that the worst I have said of him is, that he knew more than he always communicated. It is no unwelcome satire to say, that a man’s intelligence and philosophy is inexhaustible. I mean not to write his life, which may be found detailed in the new edition of his “Sculptura,” in “Collins’s Baronetage,” in the “General Dictionary,” and in the new “Biographical Dictionary;” but I must observe that his life, which was extended to eighty-six years, was a course of inquiry, study, curiosity, instruction, and benevolence. The works of the Creator, and the mimic labours of the creature, were all objects of his pursuit. He unfolded the perfection of the one, and assisted the imperfection of the other.

  His manners we may presume to have been most agreeable: for his company was sought by the greatest men, not merely by inviting him to their own tables, but by their repeated visits to him at his own house; and this was equally the case with regard to the ladies, of many of whom he speaks in the highest style of admiration, affection and respect. He was master of the French, Italian, and Spanish languages. That he had read a great deal is manifest; but at what time he found opportunities for study, it is not easy to say.

  No change of fashion, no alteration of taste, no revolutions of science, have impaired or can impair his celebrity. Satire, from which nothing is sacred, scarcely attempted to touch him while living; and the acrimony of political and religious hatred, though it spares not even the dead, has never assailed his memory.

  Evelyn was at least the Sir Joseph Banks of his times. I have before had occasion to notice his intimacy with the leading families of rank, which appears little, if at all, to have spoilt his natural frankness of manner, and sincerity of character.

  I would also, if you have no objection, and without doing injustice to a valuable, but I think hitherto over-estimated character, propose to show Evelyn in a new light, as a regular town and court gossip, going among people (for curiosity’s sake) whose society he affected to think a contamination, bowing (for he must have bowed) in the levées of the King’s mistresses, and getting himself invited to dinner on purpose to meet Blood, of whose villainous countenance he has given an admirable description.

  Amid all the demoralisation of Whitehall, Evelyn appears never to have waived his higher duties for the sake of mere sublunary considerations,—never to have forgotten his responsibility as a Christian. It is difficult to imagine how he could reconcile the nicety of his principles to the impurity of what he saw and heard; but so it was. We know that some men do live in the world, without being of the world; and Evelyn may have felt that, to carry out schemes for the public benefit, court favour must be maintained. He seems, also, to have felt for the Stuarts that personal liking with which even the most reprehensible of that family inspired their followers…. Evelyn’s name is perhaps dearer to England than that of any other of our countrymen who have been engaged in civil employments, if we except Shakspeare. He lived and died among his people, showing how erroneous is the idea that to be religious, or studious, or philosophic, it is necessary to be a recluse. By his social virtues he did as much good as by his works. He first introduced and ennobled the science of making English homes elegant as well as happy.

  Evelyn is the typical instance of the accomplished and public-spirited country gentleman of the Restoration, a pious and devoted member of the church of England, and a staunch loyalist in spite of his grave disapproval of the manners of the court. His domestic life was pure and his affections strong, and he devoted himself to work of public utility, although prudence or diffidence kept him aloof from the active political life which might have tested his character more severely. His books are for the most part occasional and of little permanent value. The “Sylva,” upon which he bestowed his best work, was long a standard authority, and the “Diaries” have great historical value.

  We can imagine no one whom it would have been more delightful to have had for a friend or relation than the all-accomplished Christian gentleman, philanthropist, scholar, artist, author, and scientist who wrote Evelyn’s Diary. Living in a corrupt yet bigoted and superstitious age, he is our ideal of all that is pure, liberal, charitable, lovely, and of good report…. He entirely escaped depreciation and satire in a day and generation which was in the habit of making a jest of goodness, and was loved and reverenced even by those who were too evil or too weak to follow his example of holy living and dying. The preparation for this noble and vigorous life was a youth of hard and profitable study and travel; of the sowing, not of wild oats, but of good seed which yielded an abundant harvest.

Sylva, 1664

  It may therefore, perhaps, be esteemed a small character of Mr. Evelyn’s discourse of forest-trees to say, that it outdoes all that Theophrastus and Pliny have left us on that subject; for it not only does that and a great deal more, but contains more useful precepts, hints, and discoveries, upon that now so necessary a part of our Res Rustica than the world had till then known, for all the observations of former ages. To name others after him would be a derogation to his performance.

  Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his “Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees,” his name would have excited the gratitude of posterity. The voice of the patriot exults in the dedication to Charles II. prefixed to one of the later editions. “I need not acquaint your majesty, how many millions of timber-trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted throughout your vast dominions, at the instigation and by the sole direction of this work, because your majesty has been pleased to own it publicly for my encouragement.” And surely while Britain retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the “Sylva” of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius of the nation, and who, casting a prophetic eye toward the age in which we live, contributed to secure our sovereignty of the seas. The present navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted!

  The “Sylva” has no beauties of style to recommend it, and none of those felicities of expression by which the writer stamps upon your memory his meaning in all its force. Without such charms, “A Discourse of Forest Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in his Majesty’s Dominions” might appear to promise dry entertainment; but he who opens the volume is led on insensibly from page to page, and catches something of the delight which made the author enter with his whole heart and all his faculties into the subject…. It is a great repository of all that was then known concerning the forest trees of Great Britain, their growth and culture, and their uses and qualities real or imaginary; and he has enlivened it with all the pertinent facts and anecdotes which occurred to him in his reading.

  Say’s Court was afterwards the residence of the celebrated Mr. Evelyn, whose “Silva” is still the manual of British planters, and whose life, manners, and principles, as illustrated in his Memoirs, ought equally to be the manual of English gentlemen.

Diary

  The author was a much more important and worthy personage than his friend Pepys, and yet his work is of somewhat less interest, if not of less value. He travelled extensively in different parts of Europe, and he made record of what impressed him most. But those objects which interested Evelyn were the very objects which Pepys cared least about. In this way the works supplement each other, and give us the most perfect view we have of manners and customs in England during the latter part of the seventeenth century.

  Evelyn’s “Diary” was found, among other papers, at his country seat at Wotton, in Surrey. Evelyn has himself told us in what way the book originated:—“In imitation of what I had seen my father do,” he remarks, when speaking of himself in his twelfth year, “I began to ob serve matters more punctually, which I did use to set down in a blank almanack.” These fragmentary memoranda were, it seems, transferred from the blank almanacs to the quarto blank book in which they were afterwards found, and from which the work was printed. This quarto volume, still at Wotton, consists of seven hundred pages, written closely by Evelyn, in a very small hand, and comprising the continuous records of fifty-six years,—a period the most romantic and stirring in the English annals. Sir Walter Scott said that “he had never seen a mine so rich.” And of Evelyn himself, it may be said that he was one of the noblest and most exemplary of men in an age not remarkable for purity and virtue in its high places of power. The manuscript diary of the celebrated John Evelyn lay among the family papers, at his country seat, from the period of his death, in 1706, until their rare interest and value were discovered in the following singular manner. Mr. Upcott, of the London Institution, was requested to arrange and catalogue the library at Wotton, and one day Lady Evelyn remarked, as he had expressed his great interest in the collection of autographs, the manuscript of Evelyn’s “Sylva” would be interesting to him. Replying, as may be imagined, in the affirmative, the servant was directed to bring the papers from a loft in the old mansion, and soon Upcott had the delight of finding among the collection the manuscript “Diary of John Evelyn,”—one of the most finished specimens of autobiography in the whole realm of English literature. The work was published in 1818.

  John Evelyn, possessing neither the humour, the naïveté, the shrewdness, or the uncompromising frankness of his rival and friend, occupies a much lower place as an autobiographer, though more highly endowed as a scholar and a man of letters…. The chief literary merits of the “Diary” are its unassuming simplicity and perfect perspicuity of style and phrase. Infinitely less interesting than Pepys’s, it has the advantage of covering a much more extensive period, and faithfully reflecting the feelings of a loyal, pious, sensible Englishman at various important crises of public affairs. Unlike Pepys, whose estimates of men and things are very fluctuating, Evelyn is consistent, and we may feel sure that any modification of sentiment that may be observed in him faithfully represents the inevitable influence of circumstances upon a man of independent judgment.

  Over Evelyn’s own diary we shall not linger. It is a most valuable repository of sights and things at home and abroad; but it is photographic, it lacks distinction and temperament. Evelyn himself may be well portrayed by his own account of his younger brother,—“A sober, prudent, worthy gentleman.” A country magnate who survived terrible crises, travelled much when travel was a rarity, he always preserved an open heart and an open mind as well as an open house. He maps out rather than paints his stormy, stirring periods. His own individuality does not modify or tinge his theme. One phase of his, however, we feel constrained to rescue: “This day I paid all my debts to a farthing, O blessed day!”

General

  That most ingenious and virtuous gentleman, Mr. Evelyn, who is not satisfied to have advanced the knowledge of this age by his own useful and successful labours about planting and divers other ways, but is ready to contribute every thing in his power to perfect other men’s endeavours.

  We might justly have expected whatever could have been desired on this subject, from the excellently-learned pen of Mr. Evelyn; and he bent his thoughts, as was believed, towards the consideration of our British coins, as well as medals. It now appears that his “Numismata” carried him no farther than those larger and more choice pieces that are usually called by this latter name; whereon he has, indeed treated with that accuracy and fineness which become a gentleman and a scholar.

  John Evelyn, the English Peiresc, was a gentleman of as universal knowledge as any of his time; and no man was more open and benevolent in the communication of it. He was particularly skilled in gardening, painting, engraving, architecture, and medals; upon all which he has published treatises.

  Evelyn wrote in 1651 a little piece, purporting to be an account of England by a Frenchman. It is very severe on our manners, especially in London; his abhorrence of the late revolutions in church and state conspiring with his natural politeness, which he had lately improved by foreign travel. It is worth reading as illustrative of social history; but I chiefly mention it here on account of the polish and gentlemanly elegance of style, which very few had hitherto regarded in such light compositions…. The later writings of Evelyn are such as his character and habits would lead us to expect; but I am not aware that they often rise above that respectable level, nor are their subjects such as to require an elevated style.

  Although a very miscellaneous as well as voluminous writer, has hardly left any work that is held in esteem for either style or thought, or for anything save what it may contain of positive information or mere matter of fact.

  There are few writers of the XVII century who portray so faithfully the inner life of their era as Evelyn. To the student of history, as well as the student of philology, he is alike rich in suggestion and instruction.

  When we come to Evelyn, we have in him one who fitly represents the new spirit in English prose. His style may be cumbrous, artificial, even tedious; but it is impossible to deny its stateliness, its dignity, its consummate calm. It lacked much which the succeeding generation was to bring, and which was fully attained by those who follow him in this volume. The long roll of his sentences was monotonous, and the reader instinctively calls for the relief of variety. But the essential elements of regularity, formal order, and restraint, were distinctly present. He retains much of the pedantic learning and far-fetched allusion which were so rife in the preceding age; but he retains also—and for this we have to thank him—the richness of ornament and metaphor that prevent an impression of dulness and barrenness. Luxuriance of fancy had yet to be pruned: the spirit of the succeeding generation was to bring greater lucidity and exactness of thought and method, and as a result the cumbrous period was to be shortened, and the movement of our prose made more quick and natural. But even what is best in the full ripeness of the later harvest owes something to the luxuriance of such prose as that of Evelyn.

  Among the many candidates for the praise of having reformed our wild and loose methods in prose, John Evelyn seems to be the one who best deserves it. He was much the oldest of the new writers, and he was, perhaps, the very earliest to go deliberately to French models of brevity and grace. Early in the Commonwealth he was as familiar with La Motte le Vayer as with Aristotle; he looked both ways and embraced all culture. Yet Evelyn is not a great writer; he aims at more than he reaches; there is notable in his prose, as in the verse of Cowley, constant irregularity of workmanship, and a score of faults have to be atoned for by one startling beauty. Evelyn, therefore, is a pioneer.

  In all his work Evelyn’s style is that of a thoroughly cultivated gentleman who, on the one hand, has had the full education of his time, and on the other is familiar with the language of its best society. But he has little idiosyncrasy of composition or expression. He has neither the splendour of the old style nor the precision and telling point of the new.