Читать книгу Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1660 N.S - Samuel Pepys - Страница 7

"It was proper," his Excellency said, "that he should read a note he

had received from Lord Northbrook. This was dated that day from the

Admiralty, and was as follows:

"'My dear Mr. Lowell,

"'I am very much annoyed that I am prevented from assisting at the

ceremony to-day. It would be very good if you would say that

nothing but very urgent business would have kept me away. I was

anxious to give my testimony to the merits of Pepys as an Admiralty

official, leaving his literary merits to you. He was concerned with

the administration of the Navy from the Restoration to the

Revolution, and from 1673 as secretary. I believe his merits to be

fairly stated in a contemporary account, which I send.

"'Yours very truly,

"'NORTHBROOK.

"The contemporary account, which Lord Northbrook was good enough to

send him, said:

"'Pepys was, without exception, the greatest and most useful

Minister that ever filled the same situations in England, the acts

and registers of the Admiralty proving this beyond contradiction.

The principal rules and establishments in present use in these

offices are well known to have been of his introducing, and most of

the officers serving therein since the Restoration, of his bringing-

up. He was a most studious promoter and strenuous asserter of order

and discipline. Sobriety, diligence, capacity, loyalty, and

subjection to command were essentials required in all whom he

advanced. Where any of these were found wanting, no interest or

authority was capable of moving him in favour of the highest

pretender. Discharging his duty to his Prince and country with a

religious application and perfect integrity, he feared no one,

courted no one, and neglected his own fortune.'

"That was a character drawn, it was true, by a friendly hand, but to

those who were familiar with the life of Pepys, the praise hardly

seemed exaggerated. As regarded his official life, it was

unnecessary to dilate upon his peculiar merits, for they all knew

how faithful he was in his duties, and they all knew, too, how many

faithful officials there were working on in obscurity, who were not

only never honoured with a monument but who never expected one. The

few words, Mr. Lowell went on to remark, which he was expected to

say upon that occasion, therefore, referred rather to what he

believed was the true motive which had brought that assembly

together, and that was by no means the character of Pepys either as

Clerk of the Acts or as Secretary to the Admiralty. This was not

the place in which one could go into a very close examination of the

character of Pepys as a private man. He would begin by admitting

that Pepys was a type, perhaps, of what was now called a

'Philistine'. We had no word in England which was equivalent to the

French adjective Bourgeois; but, at all events, Samuel Pepys was the

most perfect type that ever existed of the class of people whom this

word described. He had all its merits as well as many of its

defects. With all those defects, however perhaps in consequence of

them—Pepys had written one of the most delightful books that it was

man's privilege to read in the English language or in any other.

Whether Pepys intended this Diary to be afterwards read by the

general public or not—and this was a doubtful question when it was

considered that he had left, possibly by inadvertence, a key to his

cypher behind him—it was certain that he had left with us a most

delightful picture, or rather he had left the power in our hands of

drawing for ourselves some, of the most delightful pictures, of the

time in which he lived. There was hardly any book which was

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."

In concluding this account of the chief particulars of Pepys's life it may be well to add a few words upon the pronunciation of his name. Various attempts appear to have been made to represent this phonetically. Lord Braybrooke, in quoting the entry of death from St. Olave's Registers, where the spelling is "Peyps," wrote, "This is decisive as to the proper pronunciation of the name." This spelling may show that the name was pronounced as a monosyllable, but it is scarcely conclusive as to anything else, and Lord Braybrooke does not say what he supposes the sound of the vowels to have been. At present there are three pronunciations in use—Peps, which is the most usual; Peeps, which is the received one at Magdalene College, and Peppis, which I learn from Mr. Walter C. Pepys is the one used by other branches of the family. Mr. Pepys has paid particular attention to this point, and in his valuable "Genealogy of the Pepys Family" (1887) he has collected seventeen varieties of spelling of the name, which are as follows, the dates of the documents in which the form appears being attached:

1. Pepis (1273); 2. Pepy (1439); 3. Pypys (1511); 4. Pipes (1511); 5. Peppis (1518); 6. Peppes (1519); 7. Pepes (1520); 8. Peppys (1552); 9. Peaps (1636); 10. Pippis (1639); 11. Peapys (1653); 12. Peps (1655); 13. Pypes (1656); 14. Peypes (1656); 15. Peeps (1679); 16. Peepes (1683); 17. Peyps (1703). Mr. Walter Pepys adds:—

"The accepted spelling of the name 'Pepys' was adopted generally

about the end of the seventeenth century, though it occurs many

years before that time. There have been numerous ways of

pronouncing the name, as 'Peps,' 'Peeps,' and 'Peppis.' The

Diarist undoubtedly pronounced it 'Peeps,' and the lineal

descendants of his sister Paulina, the family of 'Pepys Cockerell'

pronounce it so to this day. The other branches of the family all

pronounce it as 'Peppis,' and I am led to be satisfied that the

latter pronunciation is correct by the two facts that in the

earliest known writing it is spelt 'Pepis,' and that the French form

of the name is 'Pepy.'"

The most probable explanation is that the name in the seventeenth century was either pronounced 'Pips' or 'Papes'; for both the forms 'ea' and 'ey' would represent the latter pronunciation. The general change in the pronunciation of the spelling 'ea' from 'ai' to 'ee' took place in a large number of words at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth-century, and three words at least (yea, break, and great) keep this old pronunciation still. The present Irish pronunciation of English is really the same as the English pronunciation of the seventeenth century, when the most extensive settlement of Englishmen in Ireland took place, and the Irish always pronounce ea like ai (as, He gave him a nate bating—neat beating). Again, the 'ey' of Peyps would rhyme with they and obey. English literature is full of illustrations of the old pronunciation of ea, as in "Hudibras;"

"Doubtless the pleasure is as great

In being cheated as to cheat,"

which was then a perfect rhyme. In the "Rape of the Lock" tea (tay) rhymes with obey, and in Cowper's verses on Alexander Selkirk sea rhymes with survey.' It is not likely that the pronunciation of the name was fixed, but there is every reason to suppose that the spellings of Peyps and Peaps were intended to represent the sound Pepes rather than Peeps.

In spite of all the research which has brought to light so many incidents of interest in the life of Samuel Pepys, we cannot but feel how dry these facts are when placed by the side of the living details of the Diary. It is in its pages that the true man is displayed, and it has therefore not been thought necessary here to do more than set down in chronological order such facts as are known of the life outside the Diary. A fuller "appreciation" of the man must be left for some future occasion.

H. B. W.