What a glorious gossip he is! What strange things he has to tell you, what
a noble candour he shows! He turns out his mind as carelessly as a boy
turns out his pockets, and gives you the run of his whole estate. You may
wander everywhere, and never see a board warning you to keep off the grass
or reminding you that you are a trespasser.

And Bozzy. Who could do without Bozzy by his bedside--dear, garrulous old
Bozzy, most splendid of toadies, most 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