or his regard.
Or if he went by chair, the carriers held their noses up as though offended
by the common air. When he spoke before the Commons, the galleries were
hushed. He gave his days to the signing of stiff parchments--Admiralty
Orders or what not. He checked the King himself at the council table. In
short, he was not only a great personage, but also he was quite well aware
of the fact and held himself accordingly.

But now many years have passed, and Time, that has so long been at bowls
with reputations, has acquired a moderate skill in knocking them down. Let
us see how it fares with Pepys! Some men who have been roguish in their
lives have been remembered by their higher accomplishments. A string
of sonnets or a novel or two, if it catches the fancy, has wiped out a
tap-room record. The winning of a battle has obliterated a meanly spent
youth. It is true that for a while an old housewife who once lived on the
hero's street will shake a dubious finger on his early pranks. Stolen
apples or cigarettes behind the barn cram her recollection. But even a
village reputation fades. In time the sonnets and glorious battle have the
upper place. But things went the other way with Pepys. Rather, his fate
is like that of Zeus, who--if legend is to be trusted--was in his life a
person of some importance whose nod stirred society on Olympus, but who is
now remembered largely for his flirtations and his braggart conduct. A not
unlike evil has fallen on the magnificent Mr. Pepys.

This fate came to him because--as the world knows--it happened that for
a period of ten years in comparative youth, he wrote an interesting and
honest diary. He began this diary in 1659, while he was still a poor clerk
living with his wife in a garret, and ended it in 1669, when, although he
had emerged from obscurity, his greater honors had not yet been set on him.
All the facts of his life during this period are put down, whether good or
bad, small or large, generous or mean. He writes of his mornings spent in
work at his office, of his consultations with higher officials. There
is much running to and fro of business. The Dutch war bulks to a proper
length. Parliament sits through a page at a stretch. Pepys goes upon the
streets in the days of the plague and writes the horror of it--the houses
marked with red crosses and with prayers scratched beneath--the stench and
the carrying of dead bodies. He sees the great fire of London from his
window on the