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ART. VIII.-Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reigns of Charles II. and James II.: with a Life and Notes. By RICHARD, LORD BRAYBROOKE. The Third Edition, considerably enlarged. Volume I. London: Colburn. 1848.

THIS, as the title imports, is an amplified edition of a work which, in its abridged form, will be familiar to many of our readers. There is, however, in the book, as now presented to us, so much of new matter that we feel justified, and, probably, but acquit ourselves of a duty, in dealing with it as an original publication. The diary of even the humblest individual would possess an interest and convey a lesson in which an autobiography, with all its attraction, would be found wanting. Autobiographies are ever penned for the eyes of others. The diary is a written soliloquy, in which the heart speaks out without disguise, and to itself. In an autobiography the gloze of self-love is on every passage; obliquities, if not removed, are softened down; and motives, widely differing from the true ones, are linked with bad, or, to say the least, with doubtful actions. Indeed, in many instances, an autobiography is little else than an apology for time ill-spent and opportunities cast to the winds; but a diary is a different thing at least such a diary as that before us: the fact of its having been written in short-hand being presumptive, if not conclusive, evidence, of its not having been intended for the eye of posterity. Independantly however of this presumptive proof we have evidence more unequivocal in the confessions of weakness, folly, and even sin, with which these pages abound. That these confessions did not originate in induration of conscience, engendered by the profligacy of the times in which Pepys lived, is abundantly proved by the expressions of remorse which so frequently followed on acts of folly or sin. The truth is at least we gather it from the pages before usthat he was started in the world with a capital which is better than silver or gold-religious principles: all honour to honest John Pepys, citizen and tailor, his immediate progenitor! Pepys was a man of no mean abilities; but he was of an order of mind calculated rather to receive than to give the tone to the society in which he moved; and the marvel is that he did not oftener yield to the temptation and evil example by which he was surrounded. The keeping of a diary such as this-in which every error is "noted, set in a book "-im

plies no small amount of moral courage: many doubtless, and bitter, were the tears shed upon its pages from the retrospective eye of the writer.

A brief outline of the history of the journalist may be an acceptable, and perhaps necessary, preface to our further consideration of the volume under notice. Samuel Pepys, though believed to have been descended from a younger branch of an ancient family, does not appear to have prided himself much on his ancestry. He was born on the 23rd February, 1632, received the rudiments of education at the Huntingdon School, whence he was removed to St. Paul's, where he continued until 1650, when his name appears as that of a sizar at Trinity College, Cambridge. He subsequently removed to Magdalene. In October, 1655, he married; and in 1658 we find him attending Sir Edward Montagu in his expedition to the Sound. The first entry in his diary is, 1st January, 1659-60. It was continued for nine years, when, from defect of sight, he was compelled to relinquish it. "A more interesting moment for the commencement of a journal (remarks the noble editor) could not well have been selected, as we are at once introduced to the most minute and circumstantial details of the exciting events preceding the Restoration." After having accompanied his patron, Sir Edward Montagu, to Scheveling, to bring back Charles II., he was nominated Clerk of the Acts of the Navy, and was assigned a residence in a house belonging to the Navy-office, in Seething-lane. In this capacity he won the confidence of the Lord High Admiral, the Duke of York. During the plague in 1665, when London was deserted and every branch of the service abandoned, the whole concern of the navy devolving upon him, Pepys remained at his post. "You, sir (he writes to Sir W. Coventry at this juncture), took your turn of the sword: I must not grudge, therefore, to take mine of the pestilence." Pepys was eminently useful at the time of the fire of London. Single-speech Hamilton, he gained much applause by an effort in Parliament, but never made any figure in it afterwards. In 1673, the Duke of York having, on the passing of the Test Act, resigned all his employments, the King appointed Pepys Secretary for the Affairs of the Navy. His success, however, appears to have created him enemies; for we find him subsequently committed to the Tower, whence he was released and again employed by the King, who, having afterwards assumed the office of High Admiral, reinstated Pepys as secretary. On the accession of William and Mary Pepys lost his office and retired into private life; whither,

Like

however, he was pursued by his enemies, and committed, on pretence of attachment to the exiled family, to the Gatehouse. The charge appears to have been abandoned, as we find him afterwards at liberty. The rest of his life appears to have been passed usefully in retirement. He died, after a long illness, on the 26th May, 1703. The "Diary" commences with

"1659-60.-Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain but upon taking of cold. I lived in Axe-yard, having my wife, and servant Jane, and no other in family than us three."

Although there is much curious matter in every page of the "Diary," our limits do not allow of our making any copious extracts from the introductory portion of it-it being inferior in interest to the sequel. From these early pages, however, we gather the fact of the growing feeling on the part of the nation in favour of the exiled family; preparing us for the change which shortly afterwards occurred. One or two characteristic passages we cannot refrain from quoting :—

"Jan. 1, 1659-60 (Lord's day). This morning (we living in the garret), I rose, put on my suit with great skirts-having not lately worn any other clothes but them-went to Mr. Gunning's Chapel at Exeter House, where he made a very good sermon upon these words

That in the fulness of time God sent his Son made of a woman,' &c.; showing that by made under the law' is meant the circumcision, which is solemnized this day: dined at home in the garret, where my wife dressed the remains of a turkey, and in the doing of it she burned her hand."

Under date of the 2nd of February following, he write that he was " up in the morning and had some red herrings to our breakfast, while my boot-heel was a-mending; by the same token, the boy left the hole as big as it was before."

Pepys having been appointed "secretary to the two generals of the fleet," accompanied his patron, Sir Edward Montagu, to Scheveling to bring home Charles II. We have the following interesting narrative of the King's embarkation for England. We should mention, in explanation of the term "my lord" so frequently occurring in the "Diary," that this title, "not by right nor even by courtesy," was often given to the republican officers and their dependants.

"The King, with the two Dukes and Queen of Bohemia, Princesse Royalle, and Prince of Orange, come on board, where I, on their coming in, kissed the King's, Queen's, and Princess's hands, having done the other before. Infinite shooting off of the guns, and

that in a disorder on purpose, which was better than if it had been otherwise. All day, nothing but lords and persons of honour on board, that we were exceeding full. Dined in a great deal of state, the royalle company by themselves in the coach, which was a blessed sight to see. After dinner, the King and Duke altered the name of some of the ships-viz., Nazeby into Charles; the Richard, James; the Speaker, Mary; the Dunbar (which was not in company with us), the Henry; Winsley, Happy Return; Wakefield, Richmond; Lambert, the Henrietta; Cheriton, the Speedwell; Bradford, the Successe. That done, the Queen, Princesse Royalle, and Prince of Orange, took leave of the King, and the Duke of York went on board the London, and the Duke of Gloucester, the Swifture, which done we weighed anchor, and with a fresh gale and most happy weather set sail for England. All the afternoon the King walked here and there, up and down (quite contrary to what I thought him to have been), very active and stirring. Upon the quarter-deck, he fell into discourse of his escape from Worcester, where it made me ready to weep to hear the stories that he told of his difficulties that he had passed through, as his travelling four days and three nights on foot, every step up to his knees in dirt, with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches on, and a pair of country shoes that made him so sore all over his feet that he could scarcely stir. Yet he was forced to run away from a miller and other company that took them for rogues; his sitting at table at one place, where the master of the house, that had not seen him in eight years, did know him, but kept it private; when at the same table there was one, that had been of his own regiment at Worcester, could not know him, but made him drink the King's health and said that the King was at least four fingers higher than he. At another place, he was by some servants of the house made to drink, that they might know that he was not a Roundhead, which they swore he was. In another place, at his inn, the master of the house, as the King was standing with his hands upon the back of a chair by the fireside, kneeled down and kissed his hand privately, saying that he would not ask him who he was, but bid God bless him whither he was going. Then the difficulties in getting a boat to get into France, where he was fain to plot with the master thercof to keep his design from the foreman and a boy (which was all the ship's company), and so get to Fècamp, in France. At Rouen, he looked so poorly that the people went into the room, before he went away, to see whether he had not stolen something or other. In the evening I went up to my lord to write letters for England, which we sent away with word of our coming by Mr. Edward Pickering. The King supped alone in the coach; after that I got a dish, and we four supped in our cabin, as at noon. About bed-time my Lord Bartlett [properly Lord Berkeley, of Berkeley] who [whom] I had offered my services to

"The Nazeby, now no longer England's shame,

But better to be lost in Charles his name."

-Dryden's Astræa Reduc.

VOL. XXIV.-N

before, sent for me to get him a bed, who [whom] with much ado I did get to bed with my Lord Middlesex in the great cabin below, but I was cruelly troubled before I could dispose of him, and quit myself of him."

Then follows a profane jest of Killegrew, which might have been omitted, characteristic though it be of the profligacy of the times. After this he writes:

"At supper the three doctors of physique again at my cabin; where I put Dr. Scarborough in mind of what I heard him say, that children do, in every day's experience, look several ways with both their eyes, till custom teaches them otherwise; and that we do now see but with one eye, our eyes looking in parallel lines."

To this remark-dpropos to nothing as it appears to ushe adds:" After this discourse, I was called to write a pass for my Lord Mandeville to take up horses to London, which I wrote in the King's name, and carried to him to sign, which was the first and only one that ever he signed in the ship Charles." The landing of the King in England is thus related:

"By the morning we were come close to the land, and every body made ready to get on shore. The King and the two dukes did eat their breakfast before they went; and there being set some ship's diet before them, only to show them the manner of the ship's diet, they eat of nothing else but pease, and pork, and boiled beef. I had Mr. Darcy in my cabin, and Dr. Clerke, who eat with me, told me how the King had given 50%. to Mr. Shepley for my lord's servants, and 500l. among the officers and common men of the ship. I spoke to the Duke of York about business, who called me Pepys by name, and, upon my desire, did promise me his future favour. Great expectation of the King's making some knights, but there was none. About noon (though the brigantine that Beale made was there ready to carry him), yet he would go in my lord's barge with the two dukes. Our captain steered, and my lord went along bare with him. I went, and Mr. Mansell, and one of the king's footmen, and a dog that the King loved, in a boat by ourselves, and so got on shore when the King did, who was received by General Monk with all imaginable love and respect at his entrance upon the land at Dover. Infinite the crowd of people and the gallantry of the horsemen, citizens, and noblemen of all sorts. The mayor of the town came and give him his white staff, the badge of his place, which the King did give him again. The mayor also presented him, from the town, a very rich Bible, which he took, and said it was the thing that he loved above all things in the world. A canopy was provided for him to stand under, which he did, and talked awhile with General Monk and others, and so, into a stately coach there set for him, and so away through the town towards Canterbury, without making any stay at Dover. The shouting and joy expressed by all is past imagination."