oulness and extravagance of his profanity, looks in his
picture the very type of spiritual wistfulness. Samuel Pepys, whose
large oval eyes and clear-cut profile suggest a somewhat voluptuous and
very fastidious aristocrat, was really a man of the people, sharp to a
miracle in all the detail of the humblest kind of life, and apparently
unable to keep from exposing himself to scandal in many sorts of mean
and vulgar predicament.

Since the deciphering and publication of his Diary, a great deal has
been written concerning it. The best accounts of it are Henry B.
Wheatley's _Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived in_, and Robert Louis
Stevenson's little essay in his _Short Studies of Men and Books_. The
object of the present lecture is not to give any general account of the
time and its public events, upon which the Diary touches at a thousand
points, but rather to set the spirit of this man in contrast with that
of John Bunyan, which we have just considered. The men are very typical,
and any adequate conception of the spirit of either will give a true
cross-section of the age in which he lived. Pepys, it must be confessed,
is much more at home in his times than Bunyan ever could be. One might
even say that the times seem to have been designed as a background for
the diarist. There is as little of the spirit of a stranger and pilgrim
in Pepys, even in his most pathetic hours, as there is in John Bunyan
the spirit of a man at home, even in his securest. It was a very pagan
time, and Pepys is the pagan _par excellence_ of that time, the bright
and shining example of the pagan spirit of England.

His lot was cast in high places, to which he rose by dint of great
ability and indomitable perseverance in his office. He talks with the
King, the Duke of York, the Archbishop, and all the other great folks of
the day; and no volume has thrown more light on the character of Charles
the Second than his. We see the King at the beginning kissing the Bible,
and proclaiming it to be the thing which he loves above all other
things. He rises early in the morning, and practises others of the less
important virtues. We see him touching all sorts of people for the
King's evil, a process in which Pepys is greatly interested at first,
but which palls when it has lost its novelty. Similarly, the diarist is
greatly excited on the first occasion when he actually hears the King
speak, but soon begins to criticise him, finding that he talks very much
l