others of his contemporaries, men of far higher character than Mr. Pepys and of much wider and more reliable infor

mation.

It has been remarked by those who have studied the diarist most carefully that he had no imagination. We fear that it must be admitted also that he had but little heart. Goodnatured, kindly disposed, and affectionate in a superficial way, he was rarely touched with deep emotion. It set him 'weeping heartily' to hear that his mother had died with the name of her 'poor Sam' upon her lips, but this outburst of feeling is not untouched by his inherent selfishness. He was fond of his wife, proud of her gentle birth and good looks, and had 'mighty content' in her when he was not musing on the charms of Deb and Knipp, Mrs. Lane and a score of other sirens, but he was mean and faithless in his treatment of her, and bullied her when she remonstrated. His conduct towards his own family, his associates at the Navy Office, and his superiors was regulated by a peculiar code of prudential philosophy. Whatever the practice of the times may have allowed, it is impossible to deny that his eagerness for money made him stoop to dirty, not to say dishonest, methods of obtaining it. There is ample proof that Pepys enriched himself at the expense of the national interests; and though undoubtedly he was a reformer of abuses in the departments which came under his control, a gross laxity, where his own fortunes were concerned, is laid bare not only in his journal, but also in the report of the shortcomings of the Navy Office during the Dutch War, made some years after by the Commissioners of Accounts and still preserved in the British Museum.*

.

'Our diarist,' wrote Sir Walter Scott in 1825, 'must not be too severely judged. He lived in a time when the worst examples abounded, a time of Court intrigue and State revolution, when nothing was certain for a moment, and when all who were possessed of any opportunity to make profit used it with the most shameless avidity, lest the golden minutes should pass away unimproved.'

But the plea cannot excuse such downright dishonesty as is now exposed to view in the hitherto unpublished pages of Pepys. It might, perhaps, cover his sharp practice in extracting fees and encouraging presents from those who in various ways were brought into official connection with him. It might even

and H-' and

,' are now clearly

*The contemporary pamphlets, Hue and Cry after P. 'Plain Truth, or a Private Discourse between P- and Hshown to express the suspicions commonly entertained, that Pepys and his man Hewer were making large profits by very questionable means.

excuse such an expedient as that which is mentioned in the very beginning of the diary :-

Met at the Dog tavern Capt. Philip Holland, with whom I advised how to make some advantage of my Lord's going to sea, which he told me might be by having of five or six servants entered on board, and I to give them what wages I please, and so their pay to be mine.' (March 8, 1659-60.)

Subsequent entries, however, disclose a course of peculation which it is impossible to extenuate, and which sufficiently explain the anxiety, so often confessed by the Clerk of the Acts, to keep all eyes from his accounts. When, for example, during the Dutch War, the Committee of Parliament appointed to enquire into the administration of the Navy Office, desired to examine his books, this put him into a mighty fear and trouble.'

When come home I to Sir W. Pen's to his boy, for my book, and there find he hath it not, but delivered it to the doore-keeper of the Committee for me. This, added to my former disquiet, made me stark mad, considering all the nakedness of the office lay open in papers within those covers. I could not tell in the world what to do, but was mad on all sides, and that which made me worse, Captain Cocke was there, and he did so swear and curse at the boy that told me.' (Oct. 2, 1666.)

The Captain's perturbation is explained by various dealings with Pepys, previously recorded in the diary; but this alarm did not deter him from making a present of 1007., two months later, to the Clerk of the Acts, for his services in obtaining a bargain of hemp' for him. 'We must arme,' writes Pepys, about this time, to have our accounts examined, which I am sorry for; it will bring great trouble to me, and shame upon the Office'; adding, impenitently, in the next sentence, 'My head full this morning how to carry on Captain Cocke's bargain of hemp.' A douceur of the same amount, brought to Pepys, 'being all alone' (Sept. 14, 1664), by Sir W. Warren, for his 'service and friendship in his present great contract of masts, he expressly taking care that nobody might see this business done,' led to many similar transactions with this miracle of cunning and forecast in his business.' While the enquiry was still impending, the diarist continued to pursue the unworthy courses to which he had been long habituated. 'After supper (Nov. 14, 1666), James Houblon and another brother took me aside and to talk of some businesses of their own, where I am to serve them and will.' 'D. Gawden do give me a good cordiall this morning' (Feb. 4, 1666-7), 'by telling me that he do give

me five of the eight hundred pounds on his account remaining in my hands to myself, for the service I do him in my victualling business.' Such entries throw much light on the motives of the diarist, in 'looking over and burning all the unnecessary letters, which I have had on my file for four or five years backward, which I intend to do quite through all my papers, that I may have nothing by me but what is worth keeping, and fit to be seen, if I should miscarry.' Sometimes indeed he could refuse a tempting offer, for we read (Feb. 5, 1666–7) ::

This morning, before I went to the office, there come to me Mr. Young and Whistler, flaggmakers, and with mighty earnestness did present me with and press me to take a box, wherein I could not guess there was less than 1007. in gold, but I do wholly refuse it, and did not at last take it. The truth is, not thinking them safe men to receive such a gratuity from, nor knowing any considerable courtesy that ever I did do them, but desirous to keep myself free from their reports, and to have it in my power to say I had refused their offer.'

But a resolve, due to motives so Pepysian, will hardly retrieve the diarist's character for incorruptibility. His unblushing rapacity stands out for the first time in its full proportions, in the volumes before us. The incriminating entries occur for the most part in the account of Pepys' 'daily work in the office,' which even Mr. Bright discarded as 'tedious.' One element of hope as to the improvement of his principles existed in the frequent prickings of a sensitive if ill-enlightened conscience. He is constantly ashamed of his misdoings; and the vows and fines by which he repressed his excessive addiction to wine, the theatres, and promiscuous kissing, which have excited so much merriment, were, though amusing enough, honest, and on the whole successful efforts at self-correction. He seems, indeed, to have steadily advanced in moral as in intellectual worth. The loss of his wife at the age of twenty-nine, his impaired eyesight, the unjust treatment which removed him for awhile in 1673 from the post which he had filled with rare efficiency and zeal, and all the experience and discipline of an eventful life, were alike calculated to mellow and purify his nature. Correspondence can never be so true an index to character as a secret diary; but there certainly appears in his later letters, as in the notices of his contemporaries, the image of a far more estimable as well as more polished gentleman, than the coarse-minded and roystering gallant, whose portrait is bequeathed to us on the canvas of Hayls, and still more accurately delineated in the touches of his own self-accusing hand.

It is needless to dilate on the unique value which Pepys' graphic

graphic pages possess as depicting the life and manners of the age of the Restoration. In them we possess materials for its social delineation which no historian could be inclined to disregard. The diarist was always on the move, opened every door through which he could gain admittance, listened to the talk of every circle, and set down all that he observed and heard. As we read, the old London which the fire swept away rises from its ruins, as well as the more stately city which so speedily replaced it. We see the river alive with traffic (nervous people dreading the almost inevitable drenching as they shoot the bridge'), and feel almost as though present in person at the yacht races, pleasure trips to Greenwich or 'Moreclacke,' and the sumptuous water-pageants which are so picturesquely described. The great palaces of the town and its ancient churches reappear in their splendour; we are jostled along the narrow streets, with their quaint signs, and pick our way about the dirty squares. The life of the Court and the City, the resorts of the learned, the haunts of the loungers, the excitement on 'Change, the civic functions, the royal masques and balls, the revels' at the Inns of Court, the festive dinners, the promenade in the parks and public walks, the recreations in the Mall, the diversions of Fox Hall and Mulberry Garden, the savage sports of the Cockpit and of Southwark Fair, the cruel sights at Tyburn and at Temple Bar, the pillory in Cheapside, the duels and street brawls, the accessories of the restored theatre, the humours of 'Fops' Corner' and of Fleet Alley, Slingsby's Lottery, Lely's studio, and Nell Gwynne's dressing-room, all move before us in living tints on the canvas of this marvellous panorama. We can watch our forefathers at church and market, notice their 'company manners,' and follow them into the privacy of their homes. The customs of Twelfth Night, May Morning, and St. Valentine's Day assume a fresh interest when we see how they were observed by our hapless ancestors who had yet to learn that time was money. We watch the hackney-coaches ply their slow course over the stones, mark the gleam of the link which escorts belated banqueters home at night, and are roused by the monotonous call with which the sleepy watchman breaks the dull silence of the dawn. Strange as is the setting of the picture, it is striking to observe the substantial identity of

I sat with the Commissioners about reforming the buildings and streetes of London, and we ordered the paving of the way from St. James North, which was a quagmire, and also of the Haymarket about Piqudillo, and agreed upon instructions to be printed and published for the better keeping the strectes cleane.' (Evelyn's Diary, July 31, 1662.)

the

the characters, interests, and moods portrayed with those of our own time. We feel that there is indeed 'nothing new under the sun. Impoverished landlords, bankrupt tenants, prolonged agricultural depression, unequal taxation, murmurs of disaffection to the British connection from Ireland and the colonies, conflicts between the two Houses, all-night sittings of the Commons, election cries of 'Reformation and Reducement,' the affectation by the gentler sex of masculine habits, society scandals, and sensational horrors in low life, these all have a place in the diary, and excited just the same passions as similar incidents do at the present day, and will do two hundred years hence if the world shall last so long.

A similar interest, derived from its picture of his social environment, belongs to Evelyn's diary, but the main sources of its attraction are of a different kind. The entries were made at longer intervals, and not unfrequently revised. He probably expected that his journal would be read by a limited circle, and took no means for the concealment of his memoranda from any who might care to look over them. Less detailed and pictorial than the light gossip of Pepys, their interest is great for those who can appreciate the varied accomplishments, extensive information, and discriminating judgment which distinguished their author, not less than the elevation of his character and his constancy in noble aims.

To appreciate the value of Evelyn's opinions of men and things, not only must his advantages of birth and training and the consistent purity of his conduct be considered, but also his extensive commerce with the world. From the time that the death of his excellent parents left him, 'when he most stood in need of their counsel and assistance, in a conjuncture of the greatest and most prodigious hazard that ever the youth of England saw,' until seventy-five years later, when he was laid beside them in the dormitory' at Wotton, he had watched events with vigilant and anxious eyes in an age of extraordinary revolutions. He had hastened with horse and armes' to the Battle of Brentford in the autumn of 1642, and survived to take part in the public celebration of the victory at Blenheim. In his twenty-first year he was present at the trial in Westminster Hall, as a spectator and auditor, of the greatest malice and the greatest innocency that ever met before so illustrious an assembly,' and beheld on Tower Hill the fatal stroke which sever'd the wisest head in England from the shoulders of the Earle of Strafford.' During the seventy years that followed he recorded many great State Trials (up to the acquittal of Lord Somers in 1701); ending, many of them, in public

executions