The hesitation of Hamlet, the credulity of
Othello, the baseness of Emma Bovary, or the irregularities
of Mr. Swiveller, caused neither disappointment nor disgust
to their creators. And so with Pepys and his adored
protagonist: adored not blindly, but with trenchant insight
and enduring, human toleration. I have gone over and over
the greater part of the Diary; and the points where, to the
most suspicious scrutiny, he has seemed not perfectly
sincere, are so few, so doubtful, and so petty, that I am
ashamed to name them. It may be said that we all of us write
such a diary in airy characters upon our brain; but I fear
there is a distinction to be made; I fear that as we render
to our consciousness an account of our daily fortunes and
behaviour, we too often weave a tissue of romantic
compliments and dull excuses; and even if Pepys were the ass
and cowardly that men call him, we must take rank as sillier
and more cowardly than he. The bald truth about oneself,
what we are all too timid to admit when we are not too dull
to see it, that was what he saw clearly and set down
unsparingly.
It is improbable that the Diary can have been carried on in
the same single spirit in which it was begun. Pepys was not
such an ass, but he must have perceived, as he went on, the
extraordinary nature of the work he was producing.
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