Everything in the world amuses him, and from first to last there is an immense amount of travelling, both physical and mental.  With him we wander among companies of ladies and gentlemen walking in gardens, or are rowed up and down the Thames in boats, and it is always exciting and delightful.  That is a kind of allegory of the man’s view of life.  But nothing is quite so congenial to him, after all, as plays at the theatre.  One feels that he would never have been out of theatres had it been possible, and in order to keep himself to his business he has to make frequent vows (which are generally more or less broken) that he will not go to see a play again until such and such a time.  When the vow is broken and the play is past he lamentably regrets the waste of resolution, and stays away for a time until the next outburst comes.  The plays were then held in the middle of the day, and must have cut in considerably upon the working-time of business men; although, to be sure, the office hours began with earliest morning, and by the afternoon things were growing slacker.  The light, however, was artificial, and the flare of the candles often hurt his eyes, and gave him a sufficient physical reason to fortify his moral ones for abstention.  His taste in the dramatic art would commend itself to few moderns.  He has no patience with Shakespeare, and speaks disparagingly of Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Othello; while he constantly informs us that he “never saw anything so good in his life” as the now long-forgotten productions of little playwrights of his time.  He would, we suspect, prefer at all times a puppet show to a play; partly, no doubt, because that was the fashion, and partly because that type of drama was nearer his size.  Throughout the volumes of the Diary there are few things of which he speaks with franker and more enthusiastic delight than the enjoyment which he derives from punchinello.

Next to the delight which he derived from the theatre must be mentioned that which he continually found in music.  He seems to have made an expert and scientific study of it, and the reader hears continually the sound of lutes, harpsichords, violas, theorbos, virginals, and flageolets.  He takes great numbers of music lessons, but quarrels with his teacher from time to time.  He praises extravagantly such music as he hears, or criticises it unsparingly, passing on one occasion the desperate censure “that Mrs. Turner sings worse than my wife.”

His interest in science is as curious and miscellaneous as his interest in everything else.  He was indeed President of the Royal Society of his time, and he is immensely delighted with Boyle and his new discoveries concerning colours and hydrostatics.  Yet so rare a dilettante is he, in this as in other things, that we find this President of the Royal Society bringing in a man to teach him the multiplication table.  He has no great head for figures, and we find him listening to long lectures upon abstruse financial questions, not unlike the bimetallism discussions of our own day, which he finds so clear, while he is listening, that nothing could be clearer, but half an hour afterwards he does not know anything whatever about the subject.