Other men than Pepys have suffered in reputation from the yapping of
dogs and the barn-door cackle that attacked their memories. England
blushed as she heard the noise when the name of Carlyle became the
centre of such commotion. But if Samuel Pepys has suffered in the same
way he has no one to thank for it but himself; for, if his own
hand-writing had not revealed it, no one could possibly have guessed
it from the facts of his public career. Yet what a rare show it is, that
multitude of queer little human interests that intermingle with the talk
about great things! It may have been quite wrong to translate it, and
undoubtedly much of it was disreputable enough for any man to write, yet
it will never cease to be read; nor will England cease to be glad that
it was translated, so long as the charm of history is doubled by touches
of strange imagination and confessions of human frailty.
Pepys' connection with literature is that rather of a virtuoso than of a
student in the strict sense of the term. He projected a great History of
the Navy, which might have immortalised him in a very different fashion
from that of the immortality which the Diary has achieved.
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