terity. All the trifles of temper, habit, vice, and
social ways which a keen-eyed valet may observe in his master Samuel
Pepys carefully recorded about himself, and bequeathed to the diversion
of future generations. The world knows Pepys as the only man who ever
wrote honest confessions, for Rousseau could not possibly be candid for
five minutes together, and St. Augustine was heavily handicapped by being
a saint. Samuel Pepys was no saint. We might best define him, perhaps,
by saying that if ever any man was his own Boswell, that man was Samuel
Pepys. He had Bozzy's delightful appreciation of life; writing in
cypher, he had Bozzy's shamelessness and more, and he was his own hero.

It is for these qualities and achievements that he received a monument
honoured in St. Olave's, his favourite church. In St. Olave's, on
December 23, 1660, Samuel went to pray, and had his pew all covered with
rosemary and baize. Thence he went home, and "with much ado made haste
to spit a turkey." Here, in St. Olave's, he listened to "a dull sermon
from a stranger." Here, when "a Scot" preached, Pepys "slept all the
sermon," as a man who could "never be reconciled to the voice of the
Scot." What an unworthy prejudice! Often he writes, "After a dull
sermon of the Scotchman, home;" or to church again, "and there a simple
coxcombe preached worse than the Scot." Frequently have the sacred walls
of St. Olave's, where his effigy may be seen, echoed to the honest
snoring of the Clerk of the Navy. There Pepys lies now, his body having
been brought "in a very honourable and solemn manner," from Clapham,
where, according to that respected sheet, the _Post-boy_, he expired on
May 26, 1703. No stone marked the spot, when Mr. Mynors Bright's
delightful edition of Pepys was published in 1875.

Now Pepys is honoured in that church where he sleeps even sounder than in
days when the Scot preached worse than usual. But he is rewarded in
death--not, it may be feared, for his real services to England, but
because he has amused us all so much. A dead humorist may be better than
a living official, however honest, industrious, and careful.

In all these higher things Pepys was not found wanting. The son of a
tailor in the City, he yet had connections of good family, who were of
service to him when he entered public life. Samuel Pepys was born in
1632. He was educated at Magdalene, Cambridge, where he was once common-
roomed for being "scandalou