The Diary by Samuel Pepys (children's ebooks online TXT) 📕

who loved to see himself in the glass. Falstaff had a sense, too, of inadvertent humour, but it was questionable whether Pepys could have had any sense of humour at all, and yet permitted himself to be so delightful. There was probably, however, more involuntary humour in Pepys’s Diary than there was in any other book extant. When he told his readers of the landing of Charles II at Dover, for instance, it would be remembered how Pepys chronicled the fact that the Mayor of Dover presented the Prince with a Bible, for which he returned his thanks and said it was the ‘most precious Book to him in the world.’ Then, again, it would be remembered how, when he received a letter addressed ‘Samuel Pepys, Esq.,’ he confesses in the Diary that this pleased him mightily. When, too, he kicked his cook-maid, he admits that he was not sorry for it, but was sorry that the footboy of a worthy knight with whom he was acquainted saw him do it. And the last instance he would mention of poor Pepys’s naivete was when he said in the Diary that he could not help having a certain pleasant and satisfied feeling when Barlow died. Barlow, it must be remembered, received during his life the yearly sum from Pepys of £100. The value of Pepys’s book was simply priceless, and while there was nothing in it approaching that single page in St. Simon where he described that thunder of courtierly red heels passing from one wing of the Palace to another as the Prince was lying on his deathbed, and favour was to flow from another source, still Pepys’s Diary was unequalled in its peculiar quality of amusement. The lightest part of the Diary was of value, historically, for it enabled one to see London of 200 years ago, and, what was more, to see it with the eager eyes of Pepys. It was not Pepys the official who had brought that large gathering together that day in honour of his memory: it was Pepys the Diarist.”

In concluding this account of the chief particulars of Pepys’s life it may be well to add a few words upon the pronunciation of his name. Various attempts appear to have been made to represent this phonetically. Lord Braybrooke, in quoting the entry of death from St. Olave’s Registers, where the spelling is “Peyps,” wrote, “This is decisive as to the proper pronunciation of the name.” This spelling may show that the name was pronounced as a monosyllable, but it is scarcely conclusive as to anything else, and Lord Braybrooke does not say what he supposes the sound of the vowels to have been. At present there are three pronunciations in use⁠—Peps, which is the most usual; Peeps, which is the received one at Magdalene College, and Peppis, which I learn from Mr. Walter C. Pepys is the one used by other branches of the family. Mr. Pepys has paid particular attention to this point, and in his valuable Genealogy of the Pepys Family (1887) he has collected seventeen varieties of spelling of the name, which are as follows, the dates of the documents in which the form appears being attached:

Pepis (1273);

Pepy (1439);

Pypys (1511);

Pipes (1511);

Peppis (1518);

Peppes (1519);

Pepes (1520);

Peppys (1552);

Peaps (1636);

Pippis (1639);

Peapys (1653);

Peps (1655);

Pypes (1656);

Peypes (1656);

Peeps (1679);

Peepes (1683);

Peyps (1703).

Mr. Walter Pepys adds:⁠—

“The accepted spelling of the name ‘Pepys’ was adopted generally about the end of the seventeenth century, though it occurs many years before that time. There have been numerous ways of pronouncing the name, as ‘Peps,’ ‘Peeps,’ and ‘Peppis.’ The Diarist undoubtedly pronounced it ‘Peeps,’ and the lineal descendants of his sister Paulina, the family of ‘Pepys Cockerell’ pronounce it so to this day. The other branches of the family all pronounce it as ‘Peppis,’ and I am led to be satisfied that the latter pronunciation is correct by the two facts that in the earliest known writing it is spelt ‘Pepis,’ and that the French form of the name is ‘Pepy.’ ”

The most probable explanation is that the name in the seventeenth century was either pronounced Pĕps or Pāpes; for both the forms ea and ey would represent the latter pronunciation. The general change in the pronunciation of the spelling ea from ai to ee took place in a large number of words at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth-century, and three words at least (yea, break, and great) keep this old pronunciation still. The present Irish pronunciation of English is really the same as the English pronunciation of the seventeenth century, when the most extensive settlement of Englishmen in Ireland took place, and the Irish always pronounce ea like ai (as, He gave him a nate bating = neat beating). Again, the ey of Peyps would rhyme with they and obey. English literature is full of illustrations of the old pronunciation of ea, as in Hudibras:

“Doubtless the pleasure is as great
In being cheated as to cheat,”

which was then a perfect rhyme. In the Rape of the Lock tea (tay) rhymes with obey, and in Cowper’s verses on Alexander Selkirk sea rhymes with survey.46 It is not likely that the pronunciation of the name was fixed, but there is every reason to suppose that the spellings of Peyps and Peaps were intended to represent the sound Pāpes rather than Peeps.

In spite of all the research which has brought to light so many incidents of interest in the life of Samuel Pepys, we cannot but feel how dry these facts are when placed by the side of the living details of the Diary. It is in its pages that the true man is displayed, and it has therefore not been thought necessary here to do more than set down in chronological order such facts as are known of the life outside the Diary. A fuller “appreciation” of the man must be