A certain soldier suspected his wife of having transferred her affections from himself to another; but not being able to prove the fact, he requested a cunning clerk to assist him in demonstrating his lady's infidelity. The clerk consented, on condition of being allowed to converse with the fair frail one. After having chatted on a variety of indifferent topics for some time, he took her hand, and pressed his finger on her pulse, at the same time mentioning in a carless tone the name of the person whom she was presumed to love. The lady's blood, at that sweet *N. B.-Our samples are literally samples. We have not raked up a few instances of plagiarism, but out of very many deeds of plunder have exposed some of the most barefaced. sound, rushed through her veins like a swollen stream; but when her husband became the theme of their discourse, it resumed its usual tranquil flow. The clerk communicated the result of his experiment to the bamboozled Benedick; but whether the affair furnished employment to the "gentleman of the long robe," as the newspapers say, or whether the soldier did by his own act abate the nuisance that had marred his peace, we are not informed. No. VIII.-OBSEQUIUM AMICOS, VERITAS ODIUM PARIT. A lady, during the absence of her lord, received a visit from her gallant. One of her handmaidens understood the language of birds, and a cock crowing at midnight, the faithless spouse inquired the meaning of his chant. "He says," replied the maiden, "that you are grossly injuring your husband." "Kill that cock instantly," said the lady. Soon after another cock began to crow, and his notes being interrupted to signify that his companion had died for revealing the truth, he shared his fate. Last of all a third cock crew. "And what does he say?" asked the lady. "Hear and see all, but say nothing if you would live in peace.' "Oh, don't kill him!" retorted she. Lectores, scripsimus,—plaudite aut tacete! WESTMINSTER ABBEY. GAZE on this Gothic relic of the past, See o'er its towers does Ruin surely creep; Time has her mantle o'er each buttress cast,On such gray battlement Time's shadows sleep. What will not fade ?-all records cease at last; A few short years, temple and tablet sweep Into the mighty gulf that gathers all: The slow destroyer, Time, sees tottering empires fall. Publish thine edict, Death! call from the tomb Bid the unconscious sleepers hither come, And quit for once their cold eternal bed. At thy command, see, flickering through the gloom, Heroes and kings, poets and statesmen tread: What earthly potentate or victor sees Such subjugated hosts-triumphs so great as these! How silently gray Ruin's footstep falls On arch and aisle, column, and roof, and court, Wearing away the massive mouldering walls Of this old Abbey, where the sinner sought The old confessor in his older halls, And peace and pardon with his money bought! Victims of superstition, dark and deep, Your errors with your ashes, should forgotten sleep! OWEN HOWELL. From the Edinburgh Review. PEPYS'S DIARY. Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, F. R. S., Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reigns of Charles II. and James II., with a Life and Notes. By RICHARD LORD BRAYBROOKE. 3d Edition, considerably enlarged. 5 vols. London: 1848-9. A VARIETY of circumstances have combined to diffuse a more general knowledge of these agreeable volumes than can usually be anticipated by the reviewer of a new publication. Though they really contain, in their present complete form, much attractive novelty, yet the substance of their contents has been long before the public. Even the series now before us appeared in a succession of single volumes; each of which naturally revived the consideration so deservedly due to the whole. Nor can we well omit to mention that the admirable parodies of a popular periodical have familiarized every English reader with those peculiarities of style, sentiment, and character which necessarily furnish the distinctive features of such a book as this. Notwithstanding, however, these forestalments of our functions, we are loth to be altogether deprived of so pleasant a subject of disquisition: and we indulge our inclinations the more readily, from the conviction we feel that the volumes in question will supply not only ourselves, but many a successor, with inexhaustible materials for reflection, reference, parallels, and observation. Who and what Mr. Samuel Pepys was, has been often heretofore related, and will appear, we trust, more particularly as we proceed. Dying in his seventy-second year, on the 26th of May, 1703, he bequeathed to Magdalene College, Cambridge, an extraordinary accumulation of literary treasures. Of these the most conspicuous portion was his private library of books and manuscripts; collected, as tradition says, by no very scrupulous means, and certainly with no inconsiderable expenditure of pains and money. The circumstances of the collection and the bequest were equally curious. There is no reason to believe that Pepys, at least in the early part of his life, had any strong tendency to what is called "book-learning." He was, it is true, of sedentary habits, of a most inquisitive disposition, and gifted besides with many of those tastes or fancies which lead to the acquirement of a good deal of multifarious knowledge. But he certainly was not, in our sense of the word, either a scholar or a student. He neither was nor pretended to be deeply or accurately read in any branch of learning or science. He was an admirable man of business, an excellent accountant, endowed, as is evident, with a prodigious faculty of methodical arrangement, and probably as efficient a public servant, in this respect, as ever lived. But of his literary capacities there remain few records more substantial than the diary now under review. All the duties of his pretensions and station he discharged, on the whole, with great liberality and zeal. If not a learned man, he was a "patron of literature and the fine arts," and, as his noble editor most truly remarks, "the numerous books dedicated to him furnish ample testimony of his munificence." He was besides a virtuoso, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a short-hand writer. He was reputed of a good fancy in architecture, in hangings, in jewelry, in costume, and in pictures. He subscribed fifty plates to Willoughby's Historia Piscium, as many pounds to the new buildings of Magdalene College, and a handsome cup to the Clothworkers' Company. He played a pocket flageolet wherever he found an echo, sang catches in public gardens to the admiration of the promenaders, and criticised the performances in the Chapel Royal, with the authority not merely of an amateur, but an artist. He attended at the representation of every new play, and at the exhibition of every new philosophical experiment. He bought all the new mathematical instruments | volumes were selected with infinite care and as they were invented, and occupied himself deliberation, and the reader of the Diary for a reasonable time with each successive will frequently meet with a record of the novelty. While we are upon the subject of precise time and price at which Mr. Pepys his personal qualifications, we may just re- secured particular prizes. Thirty years, at cord one fact in exemplification of our own least, before his death, we find that he had care in perusing his diary. His features resolved on no account to fill more than a have been perpetuated by Sir Godfrey Knel- certain number of "presses ;" and accordingler, in what we must presume to be a strik-ly, as he acquired any new or valuable publiing portrait-though we make bold to say that, unless great allowance is due to the leveling effects of full-bottomed wigs and laced cravats, the individual specimens of the human race must have all resembled each other much more in those days than at present. Such as he was depicted, however, on canvas, he is now to be seen, in the very front of Lord Braybrooke's first volume; but we are not aware that any person has yet discovered his exact height. We have now, therefore, to state that since, on the 4th of Jan., 1669, he "could just stand under the arm of the tall woman in Holborne," which said woman appears, by a subsequent entry, to have been "exactly six feet five inches high." Mr. Pepys, in the 37th year of his age, could not greatly have exceeded the stature of five feet three! If any reader should think the fact thus elicited of small importance, we can assure him that it is just such a one as the ingenious author of the Diary would have been most anxious to see recorded. cation fitted for a place on his shelves, he weeded his library of its least dignified or considerable specimens, to make way for the new-comers. At the beginning of each year, too, with the help of his wife and maid, he was wont to "set them up" afresh; and we are favored with particular records of the appearance which the "presses" made at any one period, compared with the show of the previous year. The 14th of January, 1668, seems to have been devoted to this amusement. "To my chamber, having a great many books brought me home from my bookbinder, and so I to the new setting of my books against the next year-which costs me more trouble than I expected, and at it till two o'clock in the morning." Even this, however, did not content him; for on the 2nd of the next month we again find him "all the morning setting my books in order in my presses for the following year, their number being much increased since the last, so as I am fain to lay by several books to make room for better-being resolved to keep no more than just my presses will contain." After this exercise he adjourns to "a very good dinner, of a powdered leg of pork and a loin of lamb roasted.' With all these qualifications, however, Mr. Pepys was certainly not a bookworm. We rarely find him engaged in the same study for three weeks together; and though his cursory remarks upon the publications This library, thus perfected by thirty which he did not read, often show considera- years' rectification and refinement, Mr. Pepys ble acuteness and judgment, yet his selec- at length bequeathed to Magdalene College, tion of books for perusal was not very dis- Cambridge; on conditions which included criminating, and seems to have savored a its preservation for ages to come in the selfgood deal of that taste which is still catered same plight in which he had left it. The for in the drawing-room of a London club- "presses were to remain unmutilated and house. But, fortunately for posterity, he undefaced, and were to be kept in an apartwas something of a bibliomaniac, and cer- ment exclusively devoted to themselves. tainly contrived to form a remarkably good Their contents were neither to be increased and interesting library; comprising not only nor diminished by a single volume, but were many curiosities of early typography, but to remain exactly in their original state and copious specimens of the fugitive literature form. As he willed, so it has been. In a cerof his day. Six large folio volumes, for in-tain room of what was once called "the new stance, are filled with broadsides, songs, and building" of Magdalene College, and on the ballads of every description, each of which exterior wall of which may still be deciphered is now almost unique; while the marketable the inscription BIBLIOTHECA PEPYSIvalue of the whole has been computed by ANA, was this collection for many years dethousands of pounds sterling. In addition posited; until, at a recent period, it was to these treasures is an admirable library of removed to an apartment in the new lodge the choicest books, bound after the choicest lately erected for the Master of the College. fashion, of the days of the Stuarts. These There it now remains,—the "presses" and their contents being just as they were left, | the former in all the glory of black mahogany and glazed doors, the latter in their original bindings, and, probably enough, in their original order. But the most precious specimen of this treasury was that with which we are now concerned. Amongst the books in the presses were six large volumes filled with writing in short-hand; which remained undeciphered, if not unnoticed, for a century and a quarter. At length, some twenty or thirty years ago, they attracted the attention of persons competent to estimate their value, and the cipher was soon after snbmitted to a gentleman of St. John's College for interpretation. The problem proved not very difficult of solution: the cipher employed being but slightly varied from one commonly in use in those times, and even regularly taught in certain schools, for the purpose of enabling students to write rapidly from dictation. The contents of the mysterious volumes were, accordingly, soon translated into the vulgar tongue; and they were found to be nothing less than a faithful and particular Diary of Mr. Pepys's life and conversation from the 1st of January, 1660, to the 31st of May, 1669. This Diary, or rather, a large selection from it, was first published by Lord Braybrooke in 1825; and the speedy sale of two large editions proved how accurately its interest had been estimated by its noble editor. For reasons, however, to be hereafter noticed, it was not then thought proper to publish the journal in full,-its records being subjected to an expurgatorial process, which is now shown to have been conducted with rather excessive severity. When, therefore, a third edition of the Diary was determined upon, it became a question of some interest to decide whether the original scheme should or should not be abandoned, for a more unreserved communication of the author's thoughts. Fortunately for the reading portion of the public, this question was decided in the affirmative; and the result now finally appears in the five volumes specified at the head of this paper. Trite as the biography has become, the convenience of our readers may, perhaps, be consulted by such a recapitulation of the leading facts of Mr. Pepys's life as will conduce to the ready appreciation of the Diary he left behind him. He was born on the 23rd of February, 1632; but whether at Brampton, in Huntingdonshire, or in London, appears to be now only ascertainable from the internal evidence supplied by his journal. It is plain that he was in very early youth familiar with the Metropolis and its suburbs; but on the other hand Brampton was the residence of his father, and he was undoubtedly first sent to school at Huntingdon. Subsequently he went to St. Paul's, and received the completion of his education at Cambridge, where he was originally entered at Trinity; but having been attracted, apparently by a scholarship, to Magdalene, he commenced his academical residence at that college in 1651. Concerning his exploits at this seat of learning his biographers have unhappily been able to rescue only a single fact from oblivion, and that, too, not particularly to his honor. In the Registrar's book of Magdalene is recorded the following:-" Memorandum, Oct. 21, 1653. That Pepys and Hind were solemnly admonished by myself and Mr. Hill, for having been scandalously overserved with drink ye night before. was done in the presence of all the Fellows then resident, in Mr. Hill's chamber. JOHN WOOD, Registrar." Whether this admonition produced any permanent effects is, we sear, rather doubtful. We do not, it is true, meet with many confessions of his absolute intoxication, which certainly would not, had it occurred, have been omitted from his records This and he even remarks once that his father did, "for the first time in his life, discern that I had been drinking." On the other hand, the notices of protracted and rather outrageous merry-makings are so frequent, that we suspect a scientific faculty of resisting the effects of liquor must have been among the endowments or academical attainments of Mr. Pepys. At least, he speaks with the air of a critic in such matters. "April 10, 1660. Did see Mr. Creed make the strangest emotions to shift his drink, that ever I saw !" Mr. Pepys, however, must certainly have proceeded through the regular university course, for we find mention of his M. A. degree and its cost (£9 15s.); and in 1662, being at Cambridge on his way to Huntingdonshire, he exercised his franchise as a member of the senate. "Oct. 10. Dr. Fairbrother telling me that this day there is a congregation for the choice of some officers in the University, he after dinner gets me a cap, gowne, and hood, and carries me to the Schools, where Mr. Pepper, my brother's tutor, and this day chosen Proctor, did appoint a M. A. to lead me into the Regent House, where I sat with them, and did vote by subscribing papers thus, Ego SAMUEL PEPYS eligo Magistrum Bernardum Skelton alterum e Taxatoribus hujus Academiæ, in annum sequentem." Our Cambridge readers | Though Mr. Pepys's father was a tailor by trade, yet he was connected by descent with the Earl of Sandwich; and in the house of this relative our hero found refuge and occupation, when an early marriage had rendered both these advantages unusually desirable. In 1658 he attended his patron, then Sir Edward Montague, upon his expedition to the Sound; and was appointed on his return to a subordinate clerkship in the Exchequer. Two years afterward he was made clerk of the Acts of the Navy-a place which he filled with great credit during the whole of the period embraced in the Diary. Nor was this the end of his promotion in the state; but as his subsequent career is less materially connected with the volume before us, we need not enter into its particulars. This brings us at length to his famous Journal. The dates of its commencement and termination (Jan., 1660-May, 1669) have been already specified, and these would of themselves suffice to apprise the reader of the general Historical information to be expected from its contents. Its essential character, however, depends in a very slight degree on such matters as these. Without making any exception in favor either of the published memoirs of Fletcher, Lord Byron's valet, or of any other production of ancient or modern diarists, we unhesitatingly characterize this Journal as the most remarkable production of its kind which has ever been given to the world. It is difficult to add much, beyond example, in the way of illustration. We can hardly yet satisfy ourselves of the description properly due to such a development of human nature. Of one point, however, we entertain little doubt;—that its contents were never compiled with the remotest view to publication. No eyes but those of Samuel Pepys could have ever been intended to scan the entries of his journal. Nor do we think, upon a general retrospect, that these daily records were made with any idea of subsequently reducing them to any publishable form-for their substance has certainly little reference to the political, and but incidentally to the social, history of the country. It is true that Mr. Pepys undoubtedly contemplated, inter alia, a connectedhistory of matters relating to that department of the administration in which he spent so many years of his life; but for this purpose we know that he made an entirely separate collection of materials. Indeed, the internal evidence of the volumes themselves is hardly reconcilable with any other supposition than that they were written from a mechanical habit acquired by the author of committing daily to paper, under the protection of a cipher, his every action, motive, and thought; and with the sole view, apparently, of recurring to them in after times, for his own amusement and information. In this respect nothing that has ever been compiled in the shape of autobiography makes any perceptible approach to the fullness and genuineness of Mr. Pepys's Diary. Rousseau's Confessions will bear no kind of comparison; nor will any of the French essays by which that seductive tale has been followed. Perhaps the reflections of Silvio Pellico in his prison supply a somewhat nearer match; |