d direct
taxation; and Pepys, with a noble impulse, growing ashamed of this
dishonesty, designed to charge himself with L1000; but finding none to
set him an example, "nobody of our ablest merchants" with this moderate
liking for clean hands, he judged it "not decent;" he feared it would "be
thought vain glory;" and, rather than appear singular, cheerfully
remained a thief. One able merchant's countenance, and Pepys had dared
to do an honest act! Had he found one brave spirit, properly recognized
by society, he might have gone far as a disciple. Mrs. Turner, it is
true, can fill him full of sordid scandal, and make him believe, against
the testimony of his senses, that Pen's venison pasty stank like the
devil; but, on the other hand, Sir William Coventry can raise him by a
word into another being. Pepys, when he is with Coventry, talks in the
vein of an old Roman. What does he care for office or emolument? "Thank
God, I have enough of my own," says he, "to buy me a good book and a good
fiddle, and I have a good wife." And again, we find this pair projecting
an old age when an ungrateful country shall have dismissed them from the
field of public service; Coventry living retired in a fine house, and
Pepys dropping in, "it may be, to read a chapter of Seneca."

Under this influence, the only good one in his life, Pepys continued
zealous and, for the period, pure in his employment. He would not be
"bribed to be unjust," he says, though he was "not so squeamish as to
refuse a present after," suppose the king to have received no wrong. His
new arrangement for the victualling of Tangier, he tells us with honest
complacency, will save the king a thousand and gain Pepys three hundred
pounds a year,--a statement which exactly fixes the degree of the age's
enlightenment. But for his industry and capacity no praise can be too
high. It was an unending struggle for the man to stick to his business
in such a garden of Armida as he found this life; and the story of his
oaths, so often broken, so courageously renewed, is worthy rather of
admiration than the contempt it has received.

Elsewhere, and beyond the sphere of Coventry's influence, we find him
losing scruples and daily complying further with the age. When he began
the Journal, he was a trifle prim and puritanic; merry enough, to be
sure, over his private cups, and still remembering Magdalene ale and his
acquaintance with Mrs. Ainsworth of Cambridge. But youth is a