PREFAC E. This little book does not need any long Preface, as the title sufficiently explains the object aimed at. Although the various subjects referred to in the “ Diary ” are annotated in the different editions, there is in none of these any complete analysis of the entire work or of the incidents of Pepys’s life. I have endeavoured in the following pages to draw together some of the most interesting incidents of the “ Diary ” relating both to Pepys’s life and to the manners of his time, and

SAMUEL PEPYS AND THE WORLD HE LIVED I N. CHAPTER I. PEPYS BEFORE THE DIARY . “He was a pollard man, without the top ( i. e. the reason as the source of ideas, or immediate yet not sensuous truths, having their evidence in themselves; or the imagination or idealizing power, by symbols mediating between the reason and the understanding), but on this account more broadly and luxuriantly branching out from the upper trunk.”— Coleridge ’s MS. note in his copy of the “ Diary ” ( Notes and Queries , 1s

CHAPTER II. PEPYS IN THE “ DIARY .” “An exact Diary is a window into his heart that maketh it: and therefore pity it is that any should look therein but either the friends of the party or such ingenuous foes as will not, especially in things doubtful, make conjectural comments to his disgrace.”— Prynne’s Remarks on Abp. Laud . On the 1st of January, 1659–60, Samuel Pepys (then in his twenty-seventh year) commenced to write his famous “ Diary .” If, as seems more than probable, he had previously

CHAPTER III. PEPYS AFTER THE “ DIARY .” “Truly may it be said that this was a greater and more grievous loss to the mind’s eye of his posterity, than to the bodily organs of Pepys himself. It makes me restless and discontented to think what a Diary, equal in minuteness and truth of portraiture to the preceding, from 1669 to 1688 or 1690, would have been for the true causes, process, and character of the Revolution.”— Coleridge’s MS. note in his copy of the “ Diary ” (“ Notes and Queries ,” 1st S

CHAPTER IV. TANGIER. Pepys was so intimately connected with the government of Tangier during the twenty-two years it remained in the possession of the English, that it seems necessary, in a memoir of him, to give some account of the history of the place during that period. Tangier is a seaport, on a small bay or inlet of the Straits of Gibraltar, which affords the only good harbour for shipping on the sea-board of Morocco, an extent of coast of about 900 miles. The town was early coveted by the

CHAPTER V. PEPYS’S BOOKS AND COLLECTIONS. Pepys desired that his name might go down to posterity, but he could little have foreseen the fame that it has attained in the nineteenth century. The mode he took to keep it alive was the bequeathment of his library and collections to a time-honoured foundation; and there is every reason to believe that he would have strongly objected to the publication of his “ Diary .” Now that that book has been published, we all see the full-length figure of the man

CHAPTER VI. LONDON. “I have vow’d to spend all my life in London. People do really live no where else; they breathe and move and have a kind of insipid dull being, but there is no life but in London. I had rather be Countess of Puddle-dock than Queen of Sussex.”— T. Shadwell’s Epsom Wells , 1676. Having concluded that portion of our subject which relates more particularly to the personal character of Pepys, we now pass on to the general consideration of the component parts of the world he lived

CHAPTER VII. PEPYS’S RELATIONS, FRIENDS, AND ACQUAINTANCES. “If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life he will soon find himself left alone; a man should keep his friendship in constant repair.”— Dr. Johnson. Family feeling was strong in Pepys, and we therefore find him in constant communication with persons in all degrees of relationship. These relations varied greatly in social position, from the peer to the little shopkeeper. Thus we find that one Pepys was a Lord C

CHAPTER VIII. THE NAVY. Our literature is singularly deficient in accounts of the official history of the navy. There are numerous books containing lives of seamen and the history of naval actions, but little has been written on the management at home. The best account of naval affairs is to be found in the valuable “Tracts” of the stout old sailor Sir William Monson, which are printed in “Churchill’s Voyages.” [188] Sir William was sent to the Tower in 1616, and his zeal in promoting an inquiry

The Court of Charles II. was not unlike that of Comus, for drunkenness and vice reigned supreme in both. Pepys’s “ Diary ” forms a valuable antidote to the Grammont “Memoirs,” because in the latter work the pictures are drawn in rose colour, while in the former we see the squalid poverty that accompanied the wasteful extravagance. In the courts of most of our sovereigns statesmen have borne an important part, but at the Restoration the court was formed of wits and beautiful women only. Then stat

In dealing with the public characters at the time of the Restoration, the two men who were mainly instrumental in bringing that event about—Monk and Montagu—must needs be given a prominent place. George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, was a singularly unheroic character. He was slow and heavy, but had a sufficient supply of good sense, and, in spite of many faults, he had the rare good fortune to be generally loved. [275] He was so popular that ballads were continually being made in his praise. Pepys s

No passages in the “ Diary ” are more valuable than those from which we can gather some idea of the manners of the time in which Pepys lived. It is chiefly, in fact, on account of the pictures of the mode of life among the men and women of the middle classes portrayed in those passages that the book has attained its immense popularity. History instructs, while gossip charms, so that for hundreds who desire to learn the chronicle of events, thousands long to hear how their ordinary fellow creatur

In dealing with the amusements of Pepys’s day, we find how pre-eminent a position the theatre held in popular esteem. The presentation of a new play was looked upon as an event of the greatest moment, and the various appearances of favourite actors were chronicled in the “ Diary ” with considerable regularity. Immediately after the Restoration, two companies of actors were organized, who acted at two different houses: one theatre was known as the King’s house, and the other as the Duke’s house.

Now that all the divisions of our subject have been discussed, there is little to add in a concluding chapter. We have seen Pepys in his poverty, when he and his wife struggled to keep up a decent appearance with an empty larder and a fireless grate at home. We have seen the sudden change, when he became rich and increased his expenses with an ever-present sense of the effect of his movements upon the outer world. And, lastly, we have seen how he lived to an honoured old age, and passed out of l

1. Savill (a painter in Cheapside). 1661. See “ Diary ,” Nov. 23. Jan. 6, 1661–62: “I sent my lute to the Paynter’s, and there I staid with him all the morning to see him paint the neck of my lute in my picture, which I was not pleased with after it was done.” Pepys appears to have sat to this same painter for a miniature or “picture in little,” which cost £ 3 . See “ Diary ,” Feb. 20, 1661–62, June 11, 1662. Jan. 28, 1661–62: “The Paynter, though a very honest man, I found to be very silly as t

Pepys was wrong in the date of the patent, which is numbered 138, and Sir Edward Ford’s name does not appear in it. Sir John Colladon, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, was naturalized by Charles II. , and appointed one of the Physicians to the Queen. St. Michel ’s name evidently puzzled the man who drafted the patent. The following is a copy of the original patent:— “ Charles the Second , by the grace of God, &c. , to all to whom these p ’ sents shall come, greeting “ Whereas

APPENDIX IV. MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. Chapter V. p. 98 .—The following notice of old musical instruments will help to illustrate some of Pepys’s allusions:— “The lute about three hundred years ago was almost as popular as is at the present day the pianoforte. Originally it had eight thin catgut strings arranged in four pairs, each being tuned in unison; so that its open strings produced four tones; but in the course of time, more strings were added. Until the sixteenth century twelve was the largest

“The lute about three hundred years ago was almost as popular as is at the present day the pianoforte. Originally it had eight thin catgut strings arranged in four pairs, each being tuned in unison; so that its open strings produced four tones; but in the course of time, more strings were added. Until the sixteenth century twelve was the largest number, or rather, six pairs. Eleven appear for some centuries to have been the most usual number of strings: these produced six tones, since they were

[The date is that of the letter. B. affixed shows that the MS. is in the Bodleian Library; S. that the letter is printed in Smith’s “ Life, &c. , of Pepys ;” and P. that it is printed in the Correspondence attached to the “ Diary .”] APPENDIX VI. LIST S Of the Secretaries of the Admiralty, and Principal Officers of the Navy; viz. , Treasurers, Comptrollers, Surveyors, Clerks of the Acts, and Commissioners of the Navy at Chatham; to the beginning of the 18th century. ( Compiled by Colonel

From the middle of the 16th to the end of the 17th century, Chatham was by far the most important of the English naval stations, and the Commissioner resident there had from the first a seat and vote at the Board in London—a privilege which was not extended to his colleague at Portsmouth until a much later date. The rise of the latter port dates from the alliance with the Dutch, and war with France which followed the accession of William and Mary, and which made it necessary to establish a first