ruthless sincerity throws the truth-telling of the great biographer into the shade. Were it not for this strange cipher record, ten years long, the world—or that small portion of it which reads history unabridged—would know Mr. Samuel Pepys, secretary to the Admiralty, as an excellent public servant, loyal, capable, and discreet. The bigger, lazier world, to which he is now a figure so familiar, would never have heard of him at all, thereby losing the most vivid bit of human portraiture ever given for our disedification and delight.
We can understand how Mr. Pepys found time to write his diary when we remember that he was commonly in his office by four o'clock in the morning. We can appreciate its wonderful candor when we realize how safe he thought it from investigation. With the reproaches of his own conscience he was probably familiar, and the crowning cowardice of self-told lies offered no temptation to him. "Why should we seek to be deceived?" asks Bishop Butler, and Mr. Pepys might have answered truthfully that he did n't. The romantic shading, the flimsy and false excuses with which we are wont to color our inmost
