Mrs. Manuel … sings mightily well, and just after the Italian manner, but yet do not please me like one of Mrs. Knipp's songs, to a good English tune.[1]
Here I did hear Mrs. Manuel and one of the Italians … sing well. But yet I confess I am not delighted so much with it, as to admire it. … and was more pleased to hear Knipp sing two or three little English things that I understood, though the composition of the other, and performance, was very fine.[2]
But these airs must be strictly, purely English. He does not approve even of the Scottish airs:
At supper there played one of their servants upon the viallin some Scotch tunes only; several, and the best of their country, as they seemed to esteem them, by their praising and admiring them; but, Lord! the strangest ayre that ever I heard in my life, and all of one cast.[3]
We see that for Pepys music is restricted to a narrow province. It is curious to find such a passion for music combined with this poverty of task! His taste has but one great quality; its frankness. Pepys is at least unassuming; he does not seek to be otherwise; he says sincerely what he feels; his is the British commonsense which mistrusts unreasonable infatuations. The reader will take especial note of the instinctive distrust which he displays in respect of Italian music, which was then beginning its invasion of England. When he hears it at the house of Lord Brouncker, one of the patrons of the Italian musicians then in London, he observes, amid the general enthusiasm:
