He was a
great reader, and he knew what other books were like. It
must, at least, have crossed his mind that some one might
ultimately decipher the manuscript, and he himself, with all
his pains and pleasures, be resuscitated in some later day;
and the thought, although discouraged, must have warmed his
heart. He was not such an ass, besides, but he must have
been conscious of the deadly explosives, the gun-cotton and
the giant powder, he was hoarding in his drawer. Let some
contemporary light upon the journal, and Pepys was plunged
for ever in social and political disgrace. We can trace the
growth of his terrors by two facts. In 1660, while the Diary
was still in its youth, he tells about it, as a matter of
course, to a lieutenant in the navy; but in 1669, when it was
already near an end, he could have bitten his tongue out, as
the saying is, because he had let slip his secret to one so
grave and friendly as Sir William Coventry. And from two
other facts I think we may infer that he had entertained,
even if he had not acquiesced in, the thought of a far-
distant publicity. The first is of capital importance: the
Diary was not destroyed. The second - that he took unusual
precautions to confound the cipher in "rogueish" passages -
proves, beyond question, that he was thinking of some other
reader besides himself.
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