With my wife and Deb. to the King's House, to see "The Virgin Martyr."[1] … But that which did please me beyond anything in the whole world was the wind-musique when the angel comes down, which is so sweet that it ravished me, and indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife; that neither then, nor all the evening going home, and at home, I was able to think of anything, but remained all night transported, so as I could not believe that ever any musick hath that real command over the soul of a man as this did upon me.[2] …
But when he is dejected, music is his consolation:
At night home and to my flageolet. Played with pleasure, but with a heavy heart, only it pleased me to think how it may please God I may live to spend my time in the country with plainness and pleasure, though but with little glory. So to supper and to bed.[3]
Though my heart is still heavy to think of my poor brother, yet I could give way to my fancy to hear Mrs. T. M. play upon the Harpsicon."[4]
It must be admitted that Pepys had not very often occasion to repair to this consolation, for he was not often melancholy; he regards music rather as an unmixed delight, the most perfect in life:
I do consider that musick is all the pleasure that I live for in the world, and the greatest I can ever expect in the best of my life.[5]
***
All those about him must share his mania for music; and, above all, his wife.
He had married her about the year 1655, when she was only fifteen, and he was twenty-three. He took it into his head to teach her singing, and he was so much in love with her that he found his "apt
