nize
myself across the intervening distance. Indeed, I might come upon them
now, and not be moved one tittle--which shows that I have comparatively
failed in life, and grown older than Samuel Pepys. For in the Diary we
can find more than one such note of perfect childish egotism; as when he
explains that his candle is going out, "which makes me write thus
slobberingly;" or as in this incredible particularity, "To my study,
where I only wrote thus much of this day's passages to this, and so out
again;" or lastly, as here, with more of circumstance: "I staid up till
the bellman came by with his bell under my window, _as I was writing of
this very line_, and cried, 'Past one of the clock, and a cold, frosty,
windy morning.'" Such passages are not to be misunderstood. The appeal
to Samuel Pepys years hence is unmistakable. He desires that dear,
though unknown, gentleman keenly to realize his predecessor; to remember
why a passage was uncleanly written; to recall (let us fancy, with a
sigh) the tones of the bellman, the chill of the early, windy morning,
and the very line his own romantic self was scribing at the moment. The
man, you will perceive was making reminiscences--a sort of pleasure by
ricochet, which comforts many in distress, and turns some others into
sentimental libertines: and the whole book, if you will but look at it in
that way, is seen to be a work of art to Pepys's own address.

Here, then, we have the key to that remarkable attitude preserved by him
throughout his Diary, to that unflinching--I had almost said, that
unintelligent--sincerity which makes it a miracle among human books. He
was not unconscious of his errors--far from it; he was often startled
into shame, often reformed, often made and broke his vows of change. But
whether he did ill or well, he was still his own unequalled self; still
that entrancing _ego_ of whom alone he cared to write; and still sure of
his own affectionate indulgence, when the parts should be changed, and
the writer come to read what he had written. Whatever he did, or said,
or thought, or suffered, it was still a trait of Pepys, a character of
his career; and as, to himself, he was more interesting than Moses or
than Alexander, so all should be faithfully set down. I have called his
Diary a work of art. Now when the artist has found something, word or
deed, exactly proper to a favorite character in play or novel, he will
neither suppress nor diminish it, though