I carried them to see the piece of carving which I had recommended to the King.' This was a masterpiece of Grinling Gibbon's work, which Charles admired but did not purchase; so Gibbon not long after sold it for L80, though 'well worth L100, without the frame, to Sir George Viner.' Evelyn at this time got Wren, however, to promise faithfully to employ Gibbon to do the choir carving in the new St.Paul's Cathedral.
Each of their Diaries teems with reference to the other.

Pepys asked Evelyn to sit to Kneller for his portrait which he desired for 'reasons I had (founded upon gratitude, affection, and esteeme) to covet that in effigie which I most truly value in the original.' This refers to the well-known portrait, now at Wotton, that has been copied and engraved.
It appears to have been begun in October, 1685, but it was not till July, 1689, that the commission was actually completed.

The portrait exhibits the face of an elderly man distinctly of a high-strung and nervous temperament, though not quite to the extent of being 'sicklied oer with the pale caste of thought.' His right hand, too, which grasps his _Sylva_ is one very characteristic of the nervous disposition.

A bright, shrewd intellect, lofty thoughts, high motives, good resolves, and--last, tho' by no means least--a serene mind, the _mens conscia recti_ which Pepys bluntly called 'a little conceitedness,' are all stamped upon his well-marked and not unshapely features.

It is eminently the face of a philosopher, an enthusiast, a studious scholar, and a gentleman.
No one can ever know Evelyn so well as Pepys did; and here is his opinion of John Evelyn, expressed in the secret pages of his cipher Diary on November, 1665:--'In fine, a most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others.' And this just exactly bears out the rough general impression conveyed by the perusal of Evelyn's Diary and his other literary works.