ny intention of posthumous publication; and this view is greatly
strengthened by the unblushing and complete manner in which he lays
aside the mask of outward propriety and records his too frequent
quaffing of the wine-cup, his household bickerings, his improprieties
with fair women, and his graver conjugal infidelities. The improprieties
of other persons, and especially those of higher social rank than
himself, might very intelligibly have been written in cipher intended to
have been transcribed and printed after his death; but it would be at
variance with human nature to believe that he could so unreservedly have
reduced to writing all the faults and follies of his life had even
posthumous publication of his _Diary_ been contemplated by him at the
time of writing it. For it is hardly capable of argument that, next to
the instincts of self-preservation and of the maintenance of family
ties, the desire to preserve outward appearances is undoubtedly one of
the strongest of human feelings; and this great natural law, often the
last remnant or the substitute of conscience, character, and
self-respect, is even more fully operative in a highly civilised than in
a savage or a semi-savage state of society. Of a truth, every human
being is more or less of a Pharisee with regard to certain
conventionalities of life. Complete disregard for the maintenance of
some sort of standard of outward appearances is the absolute vanishing
point of self-respect. Till that has been reached by any individual the
hope of his reformation is not lost, though at the same time successful
dissimulation makes the prospect of a turning point in a vicious career
but remote. Still, "it is a long lane that has no turning." It is
therefore most probable that the leaving behind of the key to the cipher
was rather due to inadvertence than to intention and design. And if this
view be correct, then Pepys' charming _Diary_ was the purely natural
outpouring of his mind without ever a thought being bestowed on
authorship and ultimate publication.

With Evelyn's _Diary_, however, it was different. Although it was not
published until 1818, and though it may never have been intended by its
writer to have been given to the world in book form, yet it was very
clearly intended to be an autobiographical legacy to his family. Hence
it is no mere outpouring of the spirit upon pages meant only for the
subsequent perusal of him who thus rendered in indelible characters his