ave formerly been when in love
with my wife.

Writing of Mrs. Knipp on another occasion, he says:

She and I singing, and God forgive me! I do still see that my nature
is not to be quite conquered, but will esteem pleasure above all
things, though yet in the middle of it, it has reluctances after my
business, which is neglected by my following my pleasure. However,
musique and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.

Within a few weeks of this we find him writing again:

So abroad to my ruler's of my books, having, God forgive me! a mind
to see Nan there, which I did, and so back again, and then out
again to see Mrs. Bettons, who were looking out of the window as I
came through Fenchurch Streete. So that, indeed, I am not, as I
ought to be, able to command myself in the pleasures of my eye.

Though page after page of the Diary reveals Mr. Pepys as an extravagant
pleasure-lover, however, he differed from the majority of pleasure-lovers
in literature in not being a man of taste. He had a rolling rather than a
fastidious eye. He kissed promiscuously, and was not aspiring in his
lusts. He once held Lady Castlemaine in his arms, indeed, but it was in a
dream. He reflected, he tells us,

that since it was a dream, and that I took so much real pleasure in
it, what a happy thing it would be if when we are in our graves (as
Shakespeare resembles it) we could dream, and dream but such dreams
as this, that then we should not need to be so fearful of death, as
we are this plague time.

He praises this dream at the same time as "the best that ever was dreamt."
Mr. Pepys's idea of Paradise, it would be seen, was that commonly
attributed to the Mohammedans. Meanwhile he did his best to turn London
into an anticipatory harem. We get a pleasant picture of a little
Roundhead Sultan in such a sentence as "At night had Mercer comb my head
and so to supper, sing a psalm and to bed."

* * * * *

It may seem unfair to over-emphasize the voluptuary in Mr. Pepys, but it
is Mr. Pepys, the promiscuous amourist; stringing his lute (God forgive
him!) on a Sunday, that is the outstanding figure in the Diary. Mr. Pepys
attracts us, however, in a host of other aspects--Mr. Pepys whose nose his
jealous wife attacked with the red-hot tongs as he lay in bed; Mr. Pepys
who always held an anniversary feast on the date on which he had been cut