in bed or sitting in a certain garden; these were
jottings for my future self; if I should chance on such a note in after
years, I thought it would cause me a particular thrill to recognise
myself across the intervening distance. Indeed, I might come upon them
now, and not be moved one tittle--which shows that I have comparatively
failed in life, and grown older than Samuel Pepys. For in the Diary we
can find more than one such note of perfect childish egotism; as when
he explains that his candle is going out, "which makes me write thus
slobberingly"; or as in this incredible particularity, "To my study,
where I only wrote thus much of this day's passages to this *, and so
out again"; or lastly, as here, with more of circumstance: "I staid up
till the bellman came by with his bell under my window, as _I was
writing of this very line_, and cried, 'Past one of the clock, and a
cold, frosty, windy morning.'" Such passages are not to be
misunderstood. The appeal to Samuel Pepys years hence is unmistakable.
He desires that dear, though unknown, gentleman keenly to realise his
predecessor; to remember why a passage was uncleanly written; to recall
(let us fancy, with a sigh) the tones of the bellman, the chill of the
early, windy morning, and the very line his own romantic self was
scribing at the moment. The man, you will perceive, was making
reminiscences--a sort of pleasure by ricochet, which comforts many in
distress, and turns some others into sentimental libertines: and the
whole book, if you will but look at it in that way, is seen to be a work
of art to Pepys's own address.

Here, then, we have the key to that remarkable attitude preserved by him
throughout his Diary, to that unflinching--I had almost said, that
unintelligent--sincerity which makes it a miracle among human books. He
was not unconscious of his errors--far from it; he was often startled
into shame, often reformed, often made and broke his vows of change. But
whether he did ill or well, he was still his own unequalled self; still
that entrancing _ego_ of whom alone he cared to write; and still sure of
his own affectionate indulgence, when the parts should be changed, and
the writer come to read what he had written. Whatever he did, or said,
or thought, or suffered, it was still a trait of Pepys, a character of
his career; and as, to himself, he was more interesting than Moses or
than Alexander, so all should be faithfully set down. I have called his
Diar