the colleges before dinner, one shilling. To dinner, and then out with my wife, and people, and landlord; and to him that showed us the School and Library ten shillings . . . Go to see Christ Church with my wife, I seeing several others, very fine, alone, and did give the boy that went with me one shilling. Strawberries one and twopence; dinner and servants, one pound and sixpence. After coming home from the schools, I out with the landlord to Brasenose College; to the butteries. Butler two shillings. Then with coach and people to see the Physic Gardens [Botanical Gardens], one shilling. So to Friar Bacon's Study; I up and saw it; and gave the man one shilling. Bottle of sack for the landlord one shilling. Oxford mighty fine place, and well seated, and cheap entertainment."
Unfortunately there is no record of the name of the landlord's hotel, where, as elsewhere, the entertainment seems to have been anything but cheap. The guides must have enjoyed Pepys as much as Pepys enjoyed Oxford; and they must have looked upon him as the delightful fore-runner of the prodigal American, of two centuries later, who pays with both hands. Entertainment, at Oxford, is cheap enough now—as such things go. And Oxford is still "a very sweet place," and " mighty fine."
