after the death of my nephew. John Jackson, I do hereby declare,
That could I be sure of a constant succession of heirs from my said
nephew, qualified like himself for the use of such a library, I
should not entertain a thought of its ever being alienated from
them. But this uncertainty considered, with the infinite pains, and
time, and cost employed in my collecting, methodising and reducing
the same to the state it now is, I cannot but be greatly solicitous
that all possible provision should be made for its unalterable
preservation and perpetual security against the ordinary fate of
such collections falling into the hands of an incompetent heir, and
thereby being sold, dissipated, or embezzled. And since it has
pleased God to visit me in a manner that leaves little appearance of
being myself restored to a condition of concerting the necessary
measures for attaining these ends, I must and do with great
confidence rely upon the sincerity and direction of my executor and
said nephew for putting in execution the powers given them, by my
forementioned will relating hereto, requiring that the same be
brought to a determination in twelve months after my decease, and
that special regard be had therein to the following particulars
which I declare to be my present thoughts and prevailing
inclinations in this matter, viz.:
"1. That after the death of my said nephew, my said library be
placed and for ever settled in one of our universities, and rather
in that of Cambridge than Oxford.
"2. And rather in a private college there, than in the public
library.
"3. And in the colleges of Trinity or Magdalen preferably to all
others.
"4. And of these too, 'caeteris paribus', rather in the latter, for
the sake of my own and my nephew's education therein.
"5. That in which soever of the two it is, a fair roome be provided
therein.
"6. And if in Trinity, that the said roome be contiguous to, and
have communication with, the new library there.
"7. And if in Magdalen, that it be in the new building there, and
any part thereof at my nephew's election.
"8. That my said library be continued in its present form and no
other books mixed therein, save what my nephew may add to theirs of
his own collecting, in distinct presses.
"9. That the said room and books so placed and adjusted be called
by the name of 'Bibliotheca Pepysiana.'
"10. That this 'Bibliotheca Pepysiana' be under the sole power and
custody of the master of the college for the time being, who shall
neither himself convey, nor suffer to be conveyed by others, any of
the said books from thence to any other place, except to his own
lodge in the said college, nor there have more than ten of them at a
time; and that of those also a strict entry be made and account
kept, at the time of their having been taken out and returned, in a
book to be provided, and remain in the said library for that purpose
only.
"11. That before my said library be put into the possession of
either of the said colleges, that college for which it shall be
designed, first enter into covenants for performance of the
foregoing articles.
"12. And that for a yet further security herein, the said two
colleges of Trinity and Magdalen have a reciprocal check upon one
another; and that college which shall be in present possession of
the said library, be subject to an annual visitation from the other,
and to the forfeiture thereof to the life, possession, and use of
the other, upon conviction of any breach of their said covenants.
"S. PEPYS."
The library and the original book-cases were not transferred to Magdalene
College until 1724, and there they have been preserved in safety ever
since.
A large number of Pepys's manuscripts appear to have remained unnoticed in
York Buildings for some years. They never came into Jackson's hands, and
were thus lost to Magdalene College. Dr. Rawlinson afterwards obtained
them, and they were included in the bequest of his books to the Bodleian
Library.
Pepys was partial to having his portrait taken, and he sat to Savill,
Hales, Lely, and Kneller. Hales's portrait, painted in 1666, is now in
the National Portrait Gallery, and an etching from the original forms the
frontispiece to this volume. The portrait by Lely is in the Pepysian
Library. Of the three portraits by Kneller, one is in the hall of
Magdalene College, another at the Royal Society, and the third was lent to
the First Special Exhibition of National Portraits, 1866, by the late Mr.
Andrew Pepys Cockerell. Several of the portraits have been engraved, but
the most interesting of these are those used by Pepys himself as
book-plates. These were both engraved by Robert White, and taken from
paintings by Kneller.
The church of St. Olave, Hart Street, is intimately associated with Pepys
both in his life and in his death, and for many years the question had
been constantly asked by visitors, "Where is Pepys's monument?" On
Wednesday, July 5th, 1882, a meeting was held in the vestry of the church,
when an influential committee was appointed, upon which all the great
institutions with which Pepys was connected were represented by their
masters, presidents, or other officers, with the object of taking steps to
obtain an adequate memorial of the Diarist. Mr. (now Sir) Alfred
Blomfield, architect of the church, presented an appropriate design for a
monument, and sufficient subscriptions having been obtained for the
purpose, he superintended its erection. On Tuesday afternoon, March 18th,
1884, the monument, which was affixed to the wall of the church where the
gallery containing Pepys's pew formerly stood, was unveiled in the
presence of a large concourse of visitors. The Earl of Northbrook, First
Lord of the Admiralty, consented to unveil the monument, but he was at the
last moment prevented by public business from attending. The late Mr.
Russell Lowell, then the American Minister, took Lord Northbrook's place,
and made a very charming and appreciative speech on the occasion, from
which the following passages are extracted:--
"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 L100. 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.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Confusion of years in the case of the months of January (etc.)
Else he is a blockhead, and not fitt for that imployment
Fixed that the year should commence in January instead of March
He knew nothing about the navy
He made the great speech of his life, and spoke for three hours
I never designed to be a witness against any man
In perpetual trouble and vexation that need it least
Inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass
Learned the multiplication table for the first time in 1661
Montaigne is conscious that we are looking over his shoulder
Nothing in it approaching that single page in St. Simon
The present Irish pronunciation of English