Note 255 — Chapter V · LITERARY ESTIMATE

Cf. The Literary Remains of John Evelyn ... edited ... by William Upcott ... second edition ... London, 1834. On p. xiii Evelyn’s Tyrannus or the Mode (1661) is mentioned as a “very curious and rare pamphlet to be found ... in the second volume of the Evelyn papers,” a pamphlet in which the author argues for the superiority of the Persian fashion of dress over the English. Charles II. adopted the costume for a short while, probably as a result of Evelyn’s reasoning. On pp. 141–167 is printed Evelyn’s A Character of England as it was lately presented in a letter to a nobleman of France (1651; third edition, 1659), a satiric jeu d’esprit, in which the author assumes the guise of a Frenchman and gives a “character” of England from the French point of view. He concludes: “In summe, my Lord, I have found so many particulars worthy of reproof ... that to render you a veritable account of England as it is at present I must pronounce with the poet,—Difficile est satyram non scribere.”