MASTER SAMUEL PEPYS.


No man is a hero to his valet, and unluckily Samuel Pepys, by way of a
valet, chose posterity. 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