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       analogous to it. … . If one were asked what were the reasons

       for liking Pepys, it would be found that they were as numerous as

       the days upon which he made an entry in his Diary, and surely that

       was sufficient argument in his favour. There was no book, Mr.

       Lowell said, that he knew of, or that occurred to his memory, with

       which Pepys’s Diary could fairly be compared, except the journal of

       L’Estoile, who had the same anxious curiosity and the same

       commonness, not to say vulgarity of interest, and the book was

       certainly unique in one respect, and that was the absolute sincerity

       of the author with himself. Montaigne is conscious that we are

       looking over his shoulder, and Rousseau secretive in comparison with

       him. The very fact of that sincerity of the author with himself

       argued a certain greatness of character. Dr. Hickes, who attended

       Pepys at his deathbed, spoke of him as ‘this great man,’ and said he

       knew no one who died so greatly. And yet there was something almost

       of the ridiculous in the statement when the ‘greatness’ was compared

       with the garrulous frankness which Pepys showed towards himself.

       There was no parallel to the character of Pepys, he believed, in

       respect of ‘naivete’, unless it were found in that of Falstaff, and

       Pepys showed himself, too, like Falstaff, on terms of unbuttoned

       familiarity with himself. Falstaff had just the same ‘naivete’, but

       in Falstaff it was the ‘naivete’ of conscious humour. In Pepys it

       was quite different, for Pepys’s ‘naivete’ was the inoffensive

       vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass. Falstaff had

       a sense, too, of inadvertent humour, but it was questionable whether

       Pepys could have had any sense of humour at all, and yet permitted

       himself to be so delightful. There was probably, however, more

       involuntary humour in Pepys’s Diary than there was in any other book

       extant. When he told his readers of the landing of Charles II. at

       Dover, for instance, it would be remembered how Pepys chronicled the

       fact that the Mayor of Dover presented the Prince with a Bible, for

       which he returned his thanks and said it was the ‘most precious Book

       to him in the world.’ Then, again, it would be remembered how, when

       he received a letter addressed ‘Samuel Pepys, Esq.,’ he confesses in

       the Diary that this pleased him mightily. When, too, he kicked his

       cookmaid, he admits that he was not sorry for it, but was sorry that

       the footboy of a worthy knight with whom he was acquainted saw him

       do it. And the last instance he would mention of poor Pepys’s

       ‘naivete’ was when he said in the Diary that he could not help

       having a certain pleasant and satisfied feeling when Barlow died.

       Barlow, it must be remembered, received during his life the yearly

       sum from Pepys of £100. The value of Pepys’s book was simply

       priceless, and while there was nothing in it approaching that single

       page in St. Simon where he described that thunder of courtierly red

       heels passing from one wing of the Palace to another as the Prince

       was lying on his death-bed, and favour was to flow from another

       source, still Pepys’s Diary was unequalled in its peculiar quality

       of amusement. The lightest part of the Diary was of value,

       historically, for it enabled one to see London of 200 years ago,

       and, what was more, to see it with the eager eyes of Pepys. It was

       not Pepys the official who had brought that large gathering together

       that day in honour of his memory: it was Pepys the Diarist.”