Pepys learns the coranto himself in May, 1663, and two years afterwards he disputes with Captain Taylor on the best way of dancing it.[405] At first Pepys’s Puritan leanings led him to look rather unfavourably upon dancing, but in the end he became tolerably fond of it. On January 6th, 1667–68, he had a party for which he engaged four fiddlers at a cost of £3, and everything went off very satisfactorily in consequence. All that Pepys has to say about amusements is to be found in the “Diary,” for his letters contain no information respecting the stage or the balls at Court. This is only another indication of how much we have lost by the discontinuance of the “Diary,” for it is scarcely possible to believe that the man who exhibited so absorbing an interest in the proceedings of the theatre, should suddenly have ceased to visit it.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCLUSION.