That this is not a mere passing remark is evident, for on August 10th, 1664, he actually quotes a line from “Troilus and Cressida,” a most unusual practice with this “matter-of-fact” man. He goes to visit the famous Cocker, and has an hour’s talk with him on various matters. “He (Cocker) says that the best light for his life to do a very small thing by (contrary to Chaucer’s words to the Sun, ‘that he should lend his light to them that small seals grave’)[127] it should be by an artificial light of a candle, set to advantage, as he could do it.”
I very much fear that the quotation did not spring up into Pepys’s own mind, but that it was suggested by Cocker, who was “a great admirer, and well read in all our English poets.” More than thirty years after this, Pepys still remained one of Chaucer’s warmest admirers, and we have it on the best authority that we owe Dryden’s modernization of the “Character of a Good Parson” to his recommendation.[128]
To return, however, to the Pepysian Library. On the 7th of July, 1664 (the day before he went to the binder about Chaucer), Pepys bought “Shakespeare’s Plays.” This probably was the third edition, which had just appeared; though it might have been either the first folio of 1623, or the second folio of 1632; but whichever of these three it happened to be, it was replaced in after years by the fourth folio of 1685, which is now in the collection. Although “Paradise Lost” was first published in 1667, we find no notice either of it or of its author in the “Diary.”
John Milton.
Engraved by H. Meyer from a Drawing by Mr. Cipriani, in the Possession of the Rev: Dr. Disney.
Published April 16, 1810, by T. Cadell & W. Davies, Strand London.
The Library contains the collected edition, in three folio volumes, of Milton’s Works, published at London by John Toland in 1698, but stated in the title-page to be published at Amsterdam. Pepys probably thought it wise to have nothing to do with any of the publications of so dangerous a man as Milton before the period of the Revolution; and a curious letter from Daniel Skinner to Pepys, dated from Rotterdam, November 19th, 1676, shows that a man might be injured in his public career by the rumour that he had the works of Milton in his possession. Skinner agreed with Daniel Elzevir, the last of that learned race, to print at Amsterdam certain of Milton’s writings which the poet had left to him. In the meantime a surreptitious edition of some State Letters appears, or as Skinner puts it, “creeps out into the world.” When Sir Joseph Williamson, the Secretary of State, is informed of this, and is asked to give a licence for the proposed authentic edition, he replies that “he could countenance nothing of that man’s (Milton) writings.” Upon this, Skinner gives up his scheme, and lends the papers to Williamson, but he gets shabby treatment in return, for on his arrival in Holland he finds that those likely to employ him have been warned against him as a dangerous character.[129]