PEPYS LIBRARY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 33, 8 August 1923, Page 3

PEPYS LIBRARY

GUARDED AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY

A VALUABLE COLLECTION

Treading the old stone passages of Magdalen College, Cambridge, on a visit to the Pepys Library, one experiences all the pleasure of swift transition from present to past, for entering from the street, where youth flies by on wheels of various sorts, one is soon engulfed in the solemn quiet of the beautiful quadrangle in which the library is situated, nor is this pleasureable sense of ancient silence lessened as one climbs the wooden staircase leading to tho upper room dedicated to the memory of Samuel Pepys and containing his books, prints, and manuscripts, exactly as he himself left them in the year 1703.' So jealously is this treasure guarded by the Master and Fellows of Magdalen College, says the "Christian Science Monitor," that the would-be visitor must seek permission to visit the library, and then be met by its custodian, before he can cross the magic threshold and see the cheery winter fire of coals blazing in the oldfashioned grate and throwing bright reflections on to Pepys' own bookcases of red oak, with heavy doors and fine long mirrors,' the very presses that we see him rejoicing over in She Diary, 17th August, 1665-66. "I find one of my new presses for my books brought home, which pleases me mightily. With Sympson, the joyuer, home' to put together the press," says the entry and again, 2nd February, 1667:68, "All day at home and all the morning setting my books in order, in my presses." BOOKS ON STILTS. " Once inside, one is conscious of a very orderly and stately room, where behind glass doors stand rows upon rows of" tine books, tooled and gilded, and bound in sumptuous jackets of golden brown leather. None is taller than his neighbour, in their serried ranks, because each volume which does not reach to the height Qf his brothers on a shelf is raised upon a little "stilt" or platform covered and ornamented to match the binding of the volume to be raised. Pepys' own writing table, stands near a window, and upon it lie his great scrap-books full of prints and portraits, collected in the seventeenth century, and of very great value; objects of great, attraction to the little boy of the party who, being destined for the navy, has been brought to see the great book of ships made for His. Majesty Henry VIII., one of the chief treasures of the library. This is presently produced and opened upon the writing table—a royal tome in red morocco, bearing Pepys! arms and crest upon its great clasps of .silver'gilt, and having a tine coloured drawing of the earliest-English man-of-war, Henry Grace a Dieu, on its first page, besides pictures of galleons, pinnaces, and rowboats, and long lists of seamen and the ports from which they set sail, "The whole given to me," says Pepys, "by a royal master, King Charles II." The grave young librarian (who must surely regard Samuel Pepys as one of his best fiiends.so much' has he lived with his treasures and read his cipher note books), will listen to no witty aspersions on the methods by which his patron built up his collection his book borrowing or book returning, though he admitted smilingly that Pepys catalogued the works he borrowed, quite a few being loans from the Naval Library at Greenwich, where Pepvs was secretary from the years " 1673-1679, and . again from

It is the rich interest of the naval documents or! "Sea Manuscripts/ as Pepys called them, that makes the collection in this room so full of importance to modem seamen and all who love the sea and ships. Pepys' official position a» Secretary to the Admiralty (which has been obscured by the 'fame he achieved as a diarist) gave him a most memorable place in English history, for not only did he undertake the complete reorganisation of the English Navy, but the influence of his reforms and sensible recommendations lasted for a whole century after his passing. The navy was the subject nearest his heart, and he seems to have spared neither money nor trouble in acquiring technical information. • Perhaps the most striking volume is the great sea book by Sir Anthony Deare on shipbuilding, which was admired by Sir John Evelyn, who writes of it thus, "Mr. Pepys showed me a. large folio containing the whole mechanic part and art of building royal ships and men-of-war. . . . I do not think the world can show the like. I esteem, this book as an extraordinary jewel." There is no limit to the charm of these old sea books,; looking over them and reading the names of the ships, the walls of the library fade out of sight and one walks upon the quays of Bideford or Dartmouth in Devon, among, the sailors and fishermen whose surnames, as listed here, are still met with in their native villages.

JEWEL BOOKS. But the _ library has treasures of quite another kind—crown jewels of the world of books, in the beautiful early works of the great English and Continental printers, Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde and many others. "There are whole shelves of books, so perfect ■ in their artistic form and so .hallowed by the loving work of the makers that the reader regards them with mingled awo and admiration, remembering the words spoken long ago by Thomas a Kempis, "Take thou a book into thine hands as Simeon the just took the child Jesus into his arms and carry him and kiss him. And when thou 'hast finished reading close the book and give thanks for every word oufc.of the mouth of God : because in the Lord's field thou hast found a hidden treasure."

Certainly, in no other spirit can one gaze upon the two beautiful volumes of Wicliffc's New Testament • written- and illuminated by hand, or upon Sir Francis Drake's own worn little pocket-book, with maps of the water-ways of the world, especially thumbed on the page depicting, the English Channel : brave Sir -.'Francis Drake whose memory lias suffered so much wrong, but of whom it may now be said (since the recent discoveries in Spain), "his enemies rise up and call him.blessed." •

Subjects arc as interesting as bindings, in most cases, in Pepys' collection of books, and we are not surprised to find such old' English favourites as Sir Thomas Mallory's "Morte d' Arthur." Froissart's "Chronicles," or Langland's "Piers Plowman." That the library was a sojurce of endless pleasure to its founder can be gathered very clearly from the many references to it found in the Diary; but to us in modern days, it has also the romantic interest attached to ciphered secrets of the past. In the collection called the Boscobel manuscripts is the thrilling story of

King Charles ll.'s escapes and adventures, after his royal father's defeat at Worcester, told to Pepys by the King long years afterward, as they sat talking together and, no doubt, losing nothing in the telling.

PEPYS, THE OFFICIAL. Many people, knowing Pepys solely through his Dairy, under-estimate him, regarding him solely as an amusing and conceited writer. As a distinguished naval critic has said, "the worst enemy of Pepys the official is Pepys the diarist." In reality, he was a most efficient administrator, an . authority of very great, weight, a reformer and a man of enormous talent and indefatigable in dustry, respected and revered in the naval world.

The Pepys of the dairy is a young man, a dandy, a musician, a most delightful gossip, a keen critic and a connoisseur in literature. It was, after all, this last Pepys who remained with us as we left his treasured books, for lying undisturbed in , a copy of Davenant's Poems was our hero's own long bronze scarf-pin ; taking it out in a fit of fine peotic admiration he had used it as a book-mark to guide him to that sweet poem, "Beauty Retired," and there dt -was still lying between the pages for us to gaze upon; a relic of a really great man who left his treasures wisely and generously to those who value and guard them for, the use of the whole world.