upon examining and stating my accounts, in order to the fitting myself to
go abroad beyond sea, which the ill condition of my eyes, and my neglect
for a year or two, hath kept me behindhand in, and so as to render it very
difficult now, and troublesome to my mind to do it; but I this day made a
satisfactory entrance therein. Dined at home, and in the afternoon by
water to White Hall, calling by the way at Michell's, where I have not
been many a day till just the other day, and now I met her mother there
and knew her husband to be out of town. And here je did baiser elle, but
had not opportunity para hazer some with her as I would have offered if je
had had it. And thence had another meeting with the Duke of York, at
White Hall, on yesterday's work, and made a good advance: and so, being
called by my wife, we to the Park, Mary Batelier, and a Dutch gentleman, a
friend of hers, being with us. Thence to "The World's End," a
drinking-house by the Park; and there merry, and so home late.
And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes
in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having
done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in
my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear: and,
therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people
in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is
fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there be any thing, which
cannot be much, now my amours to Deb. are past, and my eyes hindering me
in almost all other pleasures, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my
book open, to add, here and there, a note in short-hand with my own hand.
And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see
myself go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will
accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!
May 31, 1669.
END OF THE DIARY.
PREFACE
[This moved, by the editor, to the end
where it seems to fit more comfortably.]
First issue of this edition June, 1896. Reprinted 1897.
In the present volume the Diary is completed, and we here take leave
of a writer who has done so much to interest and enlighten successive
generations of English readers, and who is now for the first time
presented to the world as he really drew his own portrait day by day.
No one who has followed the daily notes of Samuel Pepys from January,
1660, to May, 1669, but must feel sincere regret at their abrupt
conclusion, more particularly as the writer lays down his pen while in an
unhappy temper.
It is evident from the tone of his later utterances that Pepys thought
that he was going blind, a belief which was happily falsified. The
holiday tour in which Charles II. and James, Duke of York, took so much
interest appears to have had its desired effect in restoring the Diarist
to health.
The rest of his eventful life must be sought in the history of the English
Navy which he helped to form, and in his numerous letters, which on some
future occasion the present editor hopes to annotate. The details to be
obtained from these sources form, however, but a sorry substitute for the
words written in the solitude of his office by Pepys for his own eye
alone, and we cannot but feel how great is the world's loss in that he
never resumed the writing of his journal. All must agree with Coleridge
when he wrote on the margin of a copy of the Diary: "Truly may it be said
that this was a greater and more grievous loss to the mind's eye of
posterity than to the bodily organs of Pepys himself. It makes me restless
and discontented to think what a Diary equal in minuteness and truth of
portraiture to the preceding from 1669 to 1688 or 1690 would have been for
the true causes, process and character of the Revolution."
Most works of this nature are apt to tire when they are extended over a
certain length of time, but Pepys's pages are always fresh, and most
readers wish for more. For himself the editor can say that each time he
has read over the various proofs he has read with renewed interest, so
that it is with no ordinary feelings of regret that he comes to the end of
his task, and he believes that every reader will feel the same regret that
he has no more to read.
In reviewing the Diary it is impossible not to notice the growth of
historical interest as it proceeds. In the earlier period we find Pepys
surrounded by men not otherwise known, but as the years pass, and his
position becomes more assured, we find him in daily communication with the
chief men of his day, and evidently every one who came in contact with him
appreciated his remarkable ability. The survival of the Diary must ever
remain a marvel. It could never have been intended for the reading of
others, but doubtless the more elaborate portraits of persons in the later
pages were intended for use when Pepys came to write his projected history
of the Navy.
The only man who is uniformly spoken well of in the Diary is Sir William
Coventry, and many of the characters introduced come in for severe
castigation. It is therefore the more necessary to remember that many of
the judgments on men were set down hastily, and would probably have been
modified had occasion offered. At all events, we know that, however much
he may have censured them, Pepys always helped on those who were dependent
upon him.
H. R. W.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
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