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Samuel Pepys was born in 1632, of a family which had some pretensions to gentility, though he himself confesses his secret belief that they had never been very considerable.' His father followed for some time the creditable, certainly, but not exalted calling of a tailor, and we may hereafter notice the influence which this genealogy seems to have exercised over the style and sentiments of his son's diary. He was educated regularly at St. Paul's school, and afterwards at the University of Cambridge, and probably went through his studies with success. Early in life he took one of those decided steps which tend, according to circumstances, to a man's marring or making. He appears to have married a beautiful girl of fifteen, when he himself was only about twenty-three. The patronage of his relation Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards first Earl of Sandwich, prevented the ill consequences with which such a step might naturally have been attended, and young Pepys's talents for business soon came to render him useful. The distresses of the young couple at this period were subjects of pleasant reflection during their prosperity, for 25th February, 1667, we find this entry in the diary.

'Lay long in bed, talking with pleasure with my poor wife, how she used to make coal fires, and wash my foul clothes with her own hand for me, poor wretch! in our little room at my Lord Sandwich's; for which I ought for ever to love and admire her, and do; and persuade myself she would do the same thing again, if God should reduce us to it.-vol. ii. p. 21.

But better times were approaching Mr. Pepys; he accompanied Sir Edward Montagu upon his expedition to the Sound, in March, 1658, and upon his return obtained some species of clerkship in the Exchequer. Here the Restoration found him, poor but active, and well befriended by a patron who, having had no small share in the great event which had changed the fate of England, reaped his own proportion of the rewards bestowed by the Monarch amongst those who had favoured his restoration.

Through the interest of the Earl of Sandwich we find Mr. Pepys nominated Clerk of the Acts, by which style one of the Commissioners of the Navy board continued within our own time to be distinguished. This was the commencement of his connection with a great national establishment, to which in the sequel his diligence and acuteness were of the highest service. From the mass of his Papers still extant, it may be inferred, that he never lost sight of the public good, and took infinite

different offices connected with the navy, which Pepys himself successively held, and is thus led to speak often of the Diarist in terms applicable to him only at a period of his life long subsequent to the close of the diary.

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pains to check the rapacity of the contractors, by whom the naval stores were then supplied, and to establish such regulations in the dock-yards as might be productive of order and economy. He was also most anxious for the promotion of the old established officers of the navy, uniformly striving to counteract the superior influence of the court favourites, which too often prevailed in that unprincipled government over every claim of merit or service, and resisting to the utmost the infamous system of selling places, practised at that period, in every department of the state, in the most open and unblushing manner.'-Life, p. xviii-xix.

In the course of those dreadful afflictions, the Plague and the Fire of London, Pepys remained at his post, and behaved with a calm and deliberate courage more rare, and perhaps more valuable, also, than that which is merely constitutional, or which stimulates only to sudden and occasional efforts. The Duke of York being Lord High Admiral, the diligent and useful Pepys was by degrees drawn into a close personal connection with his Royal Highness, and, as he enjoyed his good opinion, he had also the misfortune to experience some part of the calumnies with which he was loaded during the cruel and infamous persecution commonly called The Popish Plot,' when a vertigo seemed suddenly to possess the heads of the people of England, rendering them incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood, justice from oppression, or common sense from the grossest absurdity. The Earl of Shaftesbury, the foster-father of that most wicked delusion, showed a great desire to implicate Pepys in a charge of Catholicism, and even, it would seem, went so far as to spread a report, for it could be traced to no other quarter, that the Clerk of the Acts had in his house an altar and a crucifix.* The absence of every thing like evidence, or even ground of suspicion, did not prevent Mr. Pepys being committed to the Tower on the charge of being an aider and abettor of the plot, and he was, for a time, removed from the navy board. He was soon replaced in a situation where his skill and experience could not be well dispensed with, by the special commands of Charles II.; and rose afterwards to be Secretary of the Admiralty, which office he retained till the Revolution. It is remarkable, that James II. was sitting to Sir Godfrey Kneller for a portrait designed as a present to Pepys, when the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange was brought to that unhappy monarch. The king commanded the painter to proceed and finish the por

These were the days, when a noble lord declared in parliament he would not have zo much as a popish dog or a popish cat to fawn or pur about the court.

trait, that his good friend might not be disappointed. In a prince, whose ideas of the danger were justly formed, and who was prepared to meet it by corresponding efforts, this would have been equanimity;-in James we must term it apathy. Pepys had been too much personally connected with the king (who had been so long at the head of the admiralty) to retain his situation under the new government; and he retired into private life accordingly, but without being followed thither, either by persecution or ill-will. He died in May, 1703, a victim, in part, to the stone, which was hereditary in his constitution, and to the increase of that malady in the course of a laborious and sedentary life.

The Diary now published comprehends the ten first years of Mr. Pepys's official life, extending from January 1659-60 to May 1669. Lord Braybrooke informs us, that as Mr. Pepys was 'in the habit of recording the most trifling actions of his life, it became absolutely necessary to curtail the MS. materially, and, in many instances, to condense the matter, but the greatest care has been taken to preserve the original meaning.' It would be unreasonable to find fault with this freedom, nor are we disposed to suspect that it has, in any respect, been misused, On the contrary, judging from the peculiar character of Pepys, so uniformly sustained through the whole diary, we feel perfect conviction that the pruning knife has been exercised with that utmost caution necessary for preserving the shape and appearance of the tree in its original state. It may, besides, be accounted very superfluous to wish for a larger share of Mr. Pepys's private thoughts and confidences, than are to be found in that space of some five or six hundred pages of royal quarto. But when will antiquarian eyes be entirely satisfied with seeing? The idea of a work being imperfect, from whatever cause, the restless suspicion that something has been kept back, which would have rendered the whole more piquant, though perhaps less instructive, will always, in spite of us, haunt the curious indagator after the minute curiosities of literature,

That cruel something unpossessed

Corrodes and leavens all the rest,'

But we will push these observations no further at present, than just to observe that where contemporary documents are published for the use of the antiquary or historian, we think the editor will, generally speaking, best attain his purpose by giving a literal transcript of the papers in his hands; whatever falls short of this, diminishes, to a certain degree, our confidence in the genuine character of his materials-it is giving us not the actual speech of the orator, but the substance of what was spoken. When

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there exists no moral reason for suppression of particular passages, we are not fond of abridgments or castrations-especially in cases like the present, where, after all, the matter communicated is not always so interesting as the peculiar mode in which it is told. Nay, even when decency or delicacy may appear on the one hand to demand omissions, it comes to be, on the other, a matter of very serious consideration in how far such demands can be complied with, without actual injustice to the characters handled by the author, the self-supplied key to whose own character and dispositions is thus mutilated and impaired.

We must follow some species of arrangement in the view which we are about to give the reader of the contents of these volumes, and perhaps it will be as natural as any other, first, to consider those passages which affect Mr. Pepys personally, and introduce us to a knowledge of his character; and here we are compelled in some measure to draw a comparison betwixt our journalist and his contemporary Evelyn, who has left a similar, and, at least, equally valuable record referring to the same period. Evelyn and Pepys were friends, and it is to the credit of the latter that he enjoyed the good opinion of the former. Both were men of sound sense, both were attached to science and the fine arts, both were, generally speaking, of sober and studious habits, both were attached to the crown from principle, and both were grieved and mortified by the unkingly mode in which it was worn by the merry monarch, scandalous, and poor,' under whose authority it was their fate to live, and by whom they were, each in his degree, held in estimation. Both writers were, moreover, shrewd and sharp critics of the abuses of the times, had seen the reign of fanaticism and hypocrisy succeeded by that of open profligacy and irreligion, and were mortified and grieved spectators of an extent of licentiousness to which no other age, perhaps, could in England produce a parallel.

But yet the characters of the two diarists were essentially different, and the distinction, it must be owned, is not in favour of Pepys. This may, in some measure, be owing to the difference of their relative situations. Evelyn, highly born and independent in fortune, had been bred up in the principles of the cavaliers, and has been justly said to constitute one of the best and most dignified specimens of the old English country gentleman. The restoration found him in his own place; he had nothing to repent of, nothing to sue for; was willing to view the conduct of his master with lenient eyes, but, having nothing to fear from the resentment of king or minister, was not obliged to wink at such vices as his conscience called on him to condemn. Pepys's original political opinions, on the other hand, though they must be con

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sidered as those of a boy, did not quite fit the great change which took place at the restoration;-of which he himself gives us the following naive instance. Here dined with us two or three more country gentlemen; among the rest. Mr. Christmas, my old school-fellow, with whom I had much talk. He did remember that I was a great roundhead when I was a boy, and I was much afraid that he would have remembered the words that I said the day the king was beheaded (that, were I to preach upon him, my text should be-"The memory of the wicked shall rot"); but I found afterwards that he did go away from school before that time.'-vol. i. p. 82. Again, when Sir John Bunch upbraided him that it was a fine time for such as he who had been for Oliver to be full of employment, while the old cavaliers got none,' he frankly owns that he answered nothing to the reproach, for fear of making bad worse. This alteration of opinion, which led Pepys to dread the tenacity of his old schoolfellow's memory, may serve to indicate a little versatility of principle foreign to the character and practice of Evelyn. We must not, indeed, forget that he began life poor, the son of a mechanic, dependent upon a powerful relative, and was obliged for his own rise to use the prevailing arts of corruption, (for so the giving presents to his superiors must be termed,) and thus early tempted to judge with less severity even vices which he disapproved of, when practised by those on whose efficient services his advance in life must depend. But there was by nature, as well as by situation and habit, a loftier tone about the character and virtues of Evelyn than Pepys seems to aspire

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He was, like Sully at the court of Henry IV., a contemner of the frivolities and foibles exhibited by the king and courtiers. Pepys's abhorrence of vice and of the dissipations of fashion was not of a character so decisive. Like Old Gobbo, he did somewhat smuck, somewhat draw to,'-he had a certain degree of indulgence towards the upper abuses' of the times, which prevents the full effect of his censures, and would sometimes half persuade us that a quiet secret sip from the cup of Circe was a cordial haud alienum a Scævolæ studiis. Thus, we find he kept occasional company with Harry Killigrew, young Newport and others, wild rogues as any about town, whose mad talk made his heart ache. And although he tells us this was only for once, to know the nature of their life and conversation, yet the air of Vauxhall is not very favourable to rigid virtue when breathed in such society, and the question will occur whether it is for gravity to play at cherry-pit with Satan.'-Again, a decent degree of censure is no doubt bestowed on those Light o' Loves,' who adorned the court and disputed the good graces

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