PEPY'S DIARY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3202, 3 October 1881, Page 4

PEPY'S DIARY.

That there should be such a book as Pepy's Diary is incomparably strange. Pepys, in a corrupt and idle period, played the man in public employments, toiling bard and keeping his honor bright. Much of the little good that is set down to James the Second comes by right to Pepys ; and if it ■were little for a king, it is much for a subordinate. To his clear capable head was owing somewhat of the greatness of England on the seas. In the exploits of Hawk, Eodney, or Nelson, this dead Mr Pepys of the Navy office had some considerable share. He stood well by his busines in the apalling plague of 1666. He was loved and respected by some of the best and wisest men in England. He was President of the Boyal Society ; and when he came to die, people said of his conduct in that solemn hour— thinking it needless to say more—that it was answerable to the greatness of his life. Thus he walked in dignity, guards of soldiers sometimes attending him in his walks, subalterns bowing before his periwig; and ■when he uttered his thoughts they were euitable to his state and services. On February 8,1668, we find him writing to Evelyn, his mind bitterly occupied with the

late Dutch war, and some thoughts of the different story of the repulse of the Great Armada: " Sir, you will not wonder at the backwardness of my thanks for the present you made me, so many days since, of the Prospect of the Medway, while the Hollander rodo master in it, when I have told you that the sight of it hath led me to such reflections on my particular interest, by my employment, in the reproach due to that miscarriage, as hath given me less disquiet than he is fancied to have who found his face in Michael Angelo's hell. The same should serve me also in excuse for my silence in celebrating your mastery shown in the design and draught, did not indignation rather than courtship urge me so_ far to commend them, as to wish the furniture of our House of Lords changed from the story of '83 to that of '67 (of Evelyn's designing), till the pravity of this were reformed to the temper of the age, wherein God Almighty found his blessing more operative than, I fear, he doth in ours his judgments." This is a little honourble to the writer, where.the meaning rather than the words is eloqu'-nt. Such was the account he gave of himself to his contemporaries ; such thoughts he chose to utter, and in such language ; givins himself out for v grave and patriotic public servant. We turn to the same date in the diary by which he is known, after two centuries, to his descendants. The entry begins in the same key with the letter, blaming the" madness of the House of- Commons" and " the base proceedings, just the epitome of all of public proceedings in this age, of the House of Lords" ; and then, without the least transition, this is how our diarist proceeds ; "To the Strand, to my bookseikr's, and there bought an idle, rogueish French-, book, L'escholle dcs Miles, which I have bought in plain binding, avoiding the buying of it better bound, because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them, if it should be found." Even in our day, when responsibility is so much more clearly apprehended, the man who wrote the letter would be notable; but what about the man, I do not say who bought a rogueish book, but who was ashamed of doing so, yet did it, and recorded both the doing and the shame in the pages of his daily journal ?—Cornhill Magazine.