THE GREATEST DIARIST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 17, 20 January 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GREATEST DIARIST.

ADMIRABLE PEPYS BIOGRAPHY.

"It is impossible not to believe in progress in the face of Samuel Pepys," remarks an American reviewer on the latest book on Pepys, and a New Zealand colleague in the trade may well quote his lively comment. "The world definitely became a cheerier place to live in after he was born. To-day, three centuries or so later, we cannot have too much of him. Each book that tells us more about the incomparable diarist who unflaggingly pursued trollops and beat his wife ('poor wretch'!) and served himself generously in serving his King wisely, and left us the most glowingly alive portrait of seventeenth century England; is worthy per se until proved otherwise." The interest in Pepys docs not flag. There is a Pepys Club and a Pepysian Library. He has been made the central figure in a successful play, which was sta,ged in Auckland by tho Little Theatre Society last year. There are two main reasons for this persistence of interest—Pepys' extraordinary zest for life and his art in conveying his impressions and inmost thoughts. The famous diary runs to 1,300,000 words. It is an amazing piece of selfrevelation and a wonderful picture of the times. In "Samuel Pepys: The Man in the Making" (Cambridge University Press), Mr. Arthur Bryant has produced a first-rate study of the man in relation to his age. He has worked with the advantage of seeing the passages of the diary hitherto unpublished, and using the papers left by great Pepysian scholars, but the biography owes a great deal of its success to his power of selection and weaving a narrative. Mr. Bryant opens with a brilliant picture of London and tho Fen Country in Pepys' boyhood, showing how much he was child of a hustling, eager, wondering world. The boy had a genius for life, and, helped by a powerful friend, he obtained his opportunity early. Probably most people think of Pepys the diarist as a middle-aged man, and it will surprise tkim to learn that he completed his diary at thirty-six. He was under this age in the play we saw the other day. His chance at the Navy Office came when ho was quite young, and ho seized it with all his might. He was only 22 when, throwing prudence to the winds, he married a girl of fifteen. There was a good deal of courage about Pepys, and lie needed it at the Navy Office, where he had to fight corruption, incompetence and the dead hand of tradition. He has been called the first Civil Servant', and he certainly set au example to future generations in industry and good judgment. Moreover, according to the standards of the age, ho was an honest man. His powers of work were extraordinary. One notable naval memorandum lie dictated at a sitting, beginning at five in the morning and continuing, without interval for refreshment, till well on in tho afternoon. His application, coupled with his work on the diary, seriously affected his sight, and for this reason he had to give up the recording of his daily doings and thoughts.

Wo sec here, against a background of politics and commerce, Pepys working ht the Navy Oflicc, loving and quarrelling with his wife, playing the flute, 'philandering with other women, and missing nothing of interest in the things about him. Ho was an astonishing mixture of good and bad, and he knew it. We see, too, England victorious at sea, and then humiliated by the Dutch sailing into the Thames and burning our ships. The ships would have been removed to safety if the men had been paid their wages.

This is a notable biography, and the second volume, which will bear the title "Samuel Pepys, Saviour of the Navy," will be awaited with keen interest.