o escape from the world. He was a man wholly
governed by self-interest and the verdict of society, and his religion
was simply the celestial version of these motives. He has conscience
enough to restrain him from damaging excesses, and to keep him within
the limits of the petty vices and paying virtues of a comfortable man--a
conscience which is a cross between cowardice and prudence. We are
constantly asking why he restrained himself so much as he did. It seems
as if it would have been so easy for him simply to do the things which
he unblushingly confesses he would like to do. It is a question to which
there is no answer, either in his case or in any other man's. Why are
all of us the very complex and unaccountable characters that we are?

Pepys was a pagan man in a pagan time, if ever there was such a man. The
deepest secret of him is his intense vitality. Here, on the earth, he is
thoroughly alive, and puts his whole heart into most of his actions. He
is always in the superlative mood, finding things either the best or the
worst that "he ever saw in all his life." His great concern is to be
merry, and he never outgrows the crudest phases of this desire, but
carries the monkey tricks of a boy into mature age. He will draw his
merriment from any source. He finds it "very pleasant to hear how the
old cavaliers talk and swear." At the Blue Ball, "we to dancing, and
then to a supper of French dishes, which yet did not please me, and then
to dance and sing; and mighty merry we were till about eleven or twelve
at night, with mighty great content in all my company, and I did, as I
love to do, enjoy myself." "This day my wife made it appear to me that
my late entertainment of this week cost me above L12, an expence which I
am almost ashamed of, though it is but once in a great while, and is the
end for which, in the most part, we live, to have such a merry day once
or twice in a man's life."

The only darkening element in his merriment is his habit of examining it
too anxiously. So greedy is he of delight that he cannot let himself go,
but must needs be measuring the extent to which he has achieved his
desire. Sometimes he finds himself "merry," but at other times only
"pretty merry." And there is one significant confession in connection
with some performance of a favourite play, "and indeed it is good,
though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are."
This is one of the very few touches of anything appro