Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/377

 library contains three thousand volumes. Among the manuscripts are papers collected by Pepys for his naval history, and a collection of Scottish poetry formed by Sir Richard Maitland, lord Lethington [q. v.] Besides some old printed books there is a collection of broadside ballads said to be the largest ever made, and of tracts on the popish plots, of ‘news pamphlets’ from 1 Jan. 1659–60 to 1 Jan. 1665–6, and one of prints and drawings illustrative of London. Pepys's catalogues and memoranda are especially neat and businesslike. There are also fifty volumes of Pepys's manuscripts in the Rawlinson collection in the Bodleian, and some other of his papers belong to Mr. J. Eliot Hodgkin, formerly of Childwall, Richmond. A portrait of Pepys by John Hayls [q. v.], representing him with his song ‘Beauty Retire,’ is in the National Portrait Gallery. One by Lely is in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene, and another by Kneller in the college hall; another by Kneller is at the Royal Society, and a third by Kneller was exhibited at the Portrait Exhibition of 1866, by Mr. Andrew Pepys Cockerell. Mrs. Frederick Pepys Cockerell has a small portrait also attributed to Kneller, but more probably is the same as that by Savill, mentioned in his ‘Diary’ for 1661–2. A picture by Verrio at Christ's Hospital of James II receiving the mathematical scholars includes a figure of Pepys.

A monument to Pepys in St. Olave's Church, designed by Sir Alfred Blomfield, was unveiled on 18 March 1884, when an address was delivered by J. R. Lowell, then minister for the United States. A ‘contemporary account,’ quoted by Lord Braybrooke, declares Pepys to have been the most useful minister who ever filled his position in England. It is, in fact, plain that Pepys was a very able and energetic official and came at a critical period, when an approach to the modern system of organisation was being introduced. His biographers have expressed some surprise that a man so highly respected, and apparently upon such good grounds, by his contemporaries should have made the unique confessions of weaknesses now famous. The explanation is probably very simple. The ‘Diary’ shows that Pepys was a very keen man of business, careful in money matters, sufficiently honourable in his own conduct, and objecting strongly to corruption in others; a shrewd observer of boundless curiosity, and, though anything but romantic, capable of taking a very lively interest in the art and literature of the day. He was musical at a time when society had not ceased to be musical, and he joined in the pursuits of the ‘virtuosoes’ who were beginning to collect books and pictures, and amusing themselves with the infant science of the Royal Society. Such qualities are certainly not incompatible with the appetite for scandal, the tastes for enjoyment of a not very refined kind, and the odd personal vanities which are so candidly avowed in the ‘Diary.’ Its piquancy is not due to its expression of uncommon emotions, but precisely to the frankness which reveals emotions, all but universal, which most people conceal from themselves, and nearly all men from others. Boswell not only felt but avowed similar weaknesses. Pepys avowed them, though only to himself. He was not a hypocrite in cipher, though no doubt as reserved as his neighbours in longhand. The ‘unconscious humour’ which Lowell attributes to him lies in the coolness of his confession, with which his readers sympathise, though they would not make similar confessions themselves. It seems to be highly improbable that he ever thought of publicity for his diaries, though he may have kept them as materials for an autobiography which was never executed.

Pepys's only acknowledged publication was: ‘Memoirs relating to the State of the Royal Navy of England for ten years determined December 1688,’ 1690. ‘The Portugal History, or a Relation of the Troubles that happened in the Court of Portugal in the years 1667 and 1668 … by S. P., esq.,’ 1677, has also been attributed to him.

Pepys's ‘Diary’ remained in the library at Magdalene until 1825, when it was published in ‘Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, comprising his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. J. Smith … and a Selection of his private Correspondence, edited by Richard, Lord Braybrooke.’ The ‘Diary’ fills six small volumes of closely written shorthand. The Hon. and Rev. George Neville, master of Magdalene College, examined it upon the appearance of Evelyn's ‘Diary,’ and showed it to Lord Grenville, who deciphered a few pages and gave his results to John Smith, then an undergraduate of St. John's College, who afterwards took holy orders, became rector of Baldock, Hertfordshire, in 1832, and died in 1870. He was employed in deciphering the rest from 1819 to 1822, working, it is said, from twelve to fourteen hours a day. Pepys had left in the library a transcript in longhand of his shorthand account of Charles II's escape, which would have given the key. The system is that of Thomas Shelton, who published his ‘Tachygraphy’ in 1641 (see paper ‘on the Cipher of Pepys's Diary,’ communicated to the