May 31, 1669. Up very betimes, and continued all the morning examining my accounts, in order to the fitting myself to go abroad beyond sea, which the ill-condition of my eyes and my neglect hath kept me behindhand in.  Had another meeting with the Duke of York at White Hall on yesterday’s work, and made a good advance; and so being called by my wife, we to the park, Mary Batelier and a Dutch gentleman, a friend of hers, being with us.  Thence to “The World’s End,” a drinking house by the park; and there merry, and so home late.

And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and therefore resolve, from this time forward to have it kept by my people in longhand, and must be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know.  And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!  S.P.

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PLINY THE YOUNGER

Letters

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, or Pliny the Younger, was born in 62 A.D. at Novum Comum, in the neighbourhood of Lake Como, in the north of Italy.  His family was honourable, wealthy, and able, and his uncle, Pliny the Elder, was the encyclopaedic student and author of the famous “Natural History.”  On his father’s death, young Pliny, a boy of nine, was adopted by the elder Pliny, educated in literary studies and as an advocate, and was a notable pleader before his twentieth year.  Through a succession of offices he rose to the consulship in the year 100, and afterwards continued to hold important appointments.  He was twice married, but left no children.  The date of his death is unknown.  The “Letters of Pliny the Younger” are valuable as throwing light upon the life of the Roman people; but they are also models of Latin style, and have all the charm of their author’s upright, urbane, and tolerant character.  His epistle to the Emperor Trajan with regard to the Christians is of peculiar interest.

To Cornelius Tacitus

You will certainly laugh, and well may you laugh, when I tell you that your old friend has turned sportsman, and has captured three magnificent boars.  “What,” you say, “Pliny?” Yes, I myself, though without giving up my much loved inactivity.  While I sat at the nets, you might have found me holding, not a spear, but my pen.  I was resolved, if I returned with my hands empty, at least to bring home my tablets full.  This open-air way of studying is not at all to be despised.  The activity and the scene stimulate the imagination; and there is something in the solemnity and solitude of the woods, and in the expectant silence of the chase, that greatly promotes meditation.  I advise you whenever you hunt in future to take your tablets with you as well as your basket and flask.  You will find that Minerva, as well as Diana, haunts these hills.