unaffected record
of early history possesses an ethical interest. In the 17th century,
diaries began to be largely written in England, although in most cases
without any idea of even eventual publication. Sir William Dugdale
(1605-1686) had certainly no expectation that his slight diary would
ever see the light. There is no surviving record of a journal kept by
Clarendon, Richard Baxter, Lucy Hutchinson and other autobiographical
writers of the middle of the century, but we may take it for granted
that they possessed some such record, kept from day to day. Bulstrode
Whitelocke (1605-1675), whose _Memorials of the English Affairs_ covers
the ground from 1625 to 1660, was a genuine diarist. So was the elder
George Fox (1624-1690), who kept not merely "a great journal," but "the
little journal books," and whose work was published in 1694. The famous
diary of John Evelyn (1620-1706) professes to be the record of seventy
years, and, although large tracts of it are covered in a very
perfunctory manner, while in others many of the entries have the air of
having been written in long after the event, this is a very interesting
and amusing work; it was not published until 1818. In spite of all its
imperfections there is a great charm about the diary of Evelyn, and it
would hold a still higher position in the history of literature than it
does if it were not overshadowed by what is unquestionably the most
illustrious of the diaries of the world, that of Samuel Pepys
(1633-1703). This was begun on the 1st of January 1660 and was carried
on until the 29th of May 1669. The extraordinary value of Pepys' diary
consists in its fidelity to the portraiture of its author's character.
He feigns nothing, conceals nothing, sets nothing down in malice or
insincerity. He wrote in a form of shorthand intelligible to no one but
himself, and not a phrase betrays the smallest expectation that any eye
but his own would ever investigate the pages of his confession. The
importance of this wonderful document, in fact, lay unsuspected until
1819, when the Rev. John Smith of Baldock began to decipher the MS. in
Magdalene College, Cambridge. It was not until 1825 that Lord Braybrooke
published part of what was only fully edited, under the care of Mr
Wheatley, in 1893-1896. In the age which succeeded that of Pepys, a
diary of extraordinary emotional interest was kept by Swift from 1710 to
1713, and was sent to Ireland in the form of a "Journal to Stella"; i