But, to be quite in sympathy with Pepys, we must return once
more to the experience of children. I can remember to have
written, in the fly-leaf of more than one book, the date and
the place where I then was - if, for instance, I was ill in
bed or sitting in a certain garden; these were jottings for
my future self; if I should chance on such a note in after
years, I thought it would cause me a particular thrill to
recognise myself across the intervening distance. Indeed, I
might come upon them now, and not be moved one tittle - which
shows that I have comparatively failed in life, and grown
older than Samuel Pepys. For in the Diary we can find more
than one such note of perfect childish egotism; as when he
explains that his candle is going out, "which makes me write
thus slobberingly;" or as in this incredible particularity,
"To my study, where I only wrote thus much of this day's
passages to this *, and so out again;" or lastly, as here,
with more of circumstance: "I staid up till the bellman came
by with his bell under my window, AS I WAS WRITING OF THIS
VERY LINE, and cried, `Past one of the clock, and a cold,
frosty, windy morning.'" Such passages are not to be
misunderstood. The appeal to Samuel Pepys years hence is
unmistakable. He desires that dear, though unknown,
gentleman keenly to realise his predecessor; to remember why
a passage was uncleanly written; to recall (let us fancy,
with a sigh) the tones of the bellman, the chill of the
early, windy morning, and the very line his own romantic self
was scribing at the moment.
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