miraculous of reporters? When Bozzy
begins to talk to me, and the old Doctor growls "Sir," all the worries and
anxieties of life fall magically away, and Dismal Jemmy vanishes like the
ghost at cock-crow. I am no longer imprisoned in time and the flesh: I am
of the company of the immortals. I share their triumphant aloofness from
the play that fills our stage and see its place in the scheme of the
unending drama of men.

That sly rogue Pepys, of course, is there--more thumb-stained than any of
them except Bozzy. What a miracle is this man who lives more vividly in our
eyes than any creature that ever walked the earth! What was the secret of
his magic? Is it not this, that he succeeded in putting down on paper the
real truth about himself? A small thing? Well, you try it. You will find it
the hardest job you have ever tackled. No matter what secrecy you adopt you
will discover that you cannot tell yourself the _whole truth_ about
yourself. Pepys did that. Benvenuto Cellini pretended to do that, but I
refuse to believe the fellow. Benjamin Franklin tried to do it and very
nearly succeeded. St. Augustine was frank enough about his early
wickedness, but it was the overcharged frankness of the subsequent saint.
No, Pepys is the man. He did the thing better than it has ever been done in
this world.

I like to have the _Paston Letters_ at my bedside, too. Then I go off to
sleep again in the fifteenth century with the voice of old Agnes Paston
sounding in my ears. Dead half a thousand years, yet across the gulf of
time I hear the painful scratching of her quill as she sends "Goddis
blyssyng" to her son in London, and tells him all her motherly gossip and
makes the rough life of far-off Tudor England live for ever. Dear old
Agnes! She little thought as she struggled with her spelling and her pen
that she was writing something that was immortal. If she had known, I don't
think she would have bothered. She was a very matter-of-fact old lady, and
was too full of worries to have much room for vanities.

I should like to say more about my bedside friends--strapping George Borrow
sitting with Petulengro's sister under the hedge or fighting the Flaming
Tinman; the dear little Boston doctor who talks so chirpily over the
Breakfast Table; the _Compleat Angler_ that takes you out into an eternal
May morning, and Sainte-Beuve whom I have found a first-rate bedside
talker. But I must close.

There is one word, however, to be added. Your