. The first is of capital
importance: the Diary was not destroyed. The second--that he took
unusual precautions to confound the cipher in "rogueish"
passages--proves, beyond question, that he was thinking of some other
reader besides himself. Perhaps while his friends were admiring the
"greatness of his behavior" at the approach of death, he may have had a
twinkling hope of immortality. _Mens cujusque is est quisque_, said his
chosen motto; and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook and foible
in the pages of the Diary, he might feel that what he left behind him was
indeed himself. There is perhaps no other instance so remarkable of the
desire of man for publicity and an enduring name. The greatness of his
life was open, yet he longed to communicate its smallness also; and,
while contemporaries bowed before him, he must buttonhole posterity with
the news that his periwig was once alive with nits. But this thought,
although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his first nor his deepest;
it did not color one word that he wrote; the Diary, for as long as he
kept it, remained what it was when he began, a private pleasure for
himself. It was his bosom secret; it added a zest to all his pleasures;
he lived in and for it, and might well write these solemn words, when he
closed that confidant forever: "And so I betake myself to that course
which is almost as much as to see myself go into the grave; for which,
and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God
prepare me."

A LIBERAL GENIUS

Pepys spent part of a certain winter Sunday, when he had taken physic,
composing "a song in praise of a liberal genius (such as I take my own to
be) to all studies and pleasures." The song was unsuccessful, but the
Diary is, in a sense, the very song that he was seeking; and his portrait
by Hales, so admirably reproduced in Mynors Bright's edition, is a
confirmation of the Diary. Hales it would appear, had known his
business; and though he put his sitter to a deal of trouble, almost
breaking his neck "to have the portrait full of shadows," and draping him
in an Indian gown hired expressly for the purpose, he was preoccupied
about no merely picturesque effects, but to portray the essence of the
man. Whether we read the picture by the Diary or the Diary by the
picture, we shall at least agree that Hales was among the number of those
who can "surprise the manners in the face." Here we have a mouth
po