It
seems he has no design but to appear respectable, and here he
keeps a private book to prove he was not. You are at first
faintly reminded of some of the vagaries of the morbid
religious diarist; but at a moment's thought the resemblance
disappears. The design of Pepys is not at all to edify; it
is not from repentance that he chronicles his peccadilloes,
for he tells us when he does repent, and, to be just to him,
there often follows some improvement. Again, the sins of the
religious diarist are of a very formal pattern, and are told
with an elaborate whine. But in Pepys you come upon good,
substantive misdemeanours; beams in his eye of which he alone
remains unconscious; healthy outbreaks of the animal nature,
and laughable subterfuges to himself that always command
belief and often engage the sympathies.
Pepys was a young man for his age, came slowly to himself in
the world, sowed his wild oats late, took late to industry,
and preserved till nearly forty the headlong gusto of a boy.
So, to come rightly at the spirit in which the Diary was
written, we must recall a class of sentiments which with most
of us are over and done before the age of twelve. In our
tender years we still preserve a freshness of surprise at our
prolonged existence; events make an impression out of all
proportion to their consequence; we are unspeakably touched
by our own past adventures, and look forward to our future
personality with sentimental interest.
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