return of Charles the Second? Round went the whole fleet of England
on the other tack; and while a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, still
sailed a lonely course by the stars and their own private compass, the
cock-boat, Pepys, must go about with the majority among "the stupid
starers and the loud huzzas."

The respectable are not led so much by any desire of applause as by a
positive need for countenance. The weaker and the tamer the man, the
more will he require this support; and any positive quality relieves
him, by just so much, of this dependence. In a dozen ways, Pepys was
quite strong enough to please himself without regard for others; but his
positive qualities were not co-extensive with the field of conduct; and
in many parts of life he followed, with gleeful precision, in the
footprints of the contemporary Mrs. Grundy. In morals, particularly, he
lived by the countenance of others; felt a slight from another more
keenly than a meanness in himself; and then first repented when he was
found out. You could talk of religion or morality to such a man; and by
the artist side of him, by his lively sympathy and apprehension, he
could rise, as it were dramatically, to the significance of what you
said. All that matter in religion which has been nicknamed
other-worldliness was strictly in his gamut; but a rule of life that
should make a man rudely virtuous, following right in good report and
ill report, was foolishness and a stumbling-block to Pepys. He was much
thrown across the Friends; and nothing can be more instructive than his
attitude towards these most interesting people of that age. I have
mentioned how he conversed with one as he rode; when he saw some brought
from a meeting under arrest, "I would to God," said he, "they would
either conform, or be more wise and not be catched"; and to a Quaker in
his own office he extended a timid though effectual protection.
Meanwhile there was growing up next door to him that beautiful nature,
William Pen. It is odd that Pepys condemned him for a fop; odd, though
natural enough when you see Pen's portrait, that Pepys was jealous of
him with his wife. But the cream of the story is when Pen publishes his
"Sandy Foundation Shaken," and Pepys has it read aloud by his wife. "I
find it," he says, "so well writ as, I think, it is too good for him
ever to have writ it; and it is a serious sort of book, and _not fit for
everybody to read_." Nothing is more galling to the merely respec