There was hardly any book which was
analogous to it. … . If one were asked what were the reasons
for liking Pepys, it would be found that they were as numerous as
the days upon which he made an entry in his Diary, and surely that
was sufficient argument in his favour. There was no book, Mr.
Lowell said, that he knew of, or that occurred to his memory, with
which Pepys’s Diary could fairly be compared, except the journal of
L’Estoile, who had the same anxious curiosity and the same
commonness, not to say vulgarity of interest, and the book was
certainly unique in one respect, and that was the absolute sincerity
of the author with himself. Montaigne is conscious that we are
looking over his shoulder, and Rousseau secretive in comparison with
him. The very fact of that sincerity of the author with himself
argued a certain greatness of character. Dr. Hickes, who attended
Pepys at his deathbed, spoke of him as ‘this great man,’ and said he
knew no one who died so greatly. And yet there was something almost
of the ridiculous in the statement when the ‘greatness’ was compared
with the garrulous frankness which Pepys showed towards himself.
There was no parallel to the character of Pepys, he believed, in
respect of ‘naivete’, unless it were found in that of Falstaff, and
Pepys showed himself, too, like Falstaff, on terms of unbuttoned
familiarity with himself. Falstaff had just the same ‘naivete’, but
in Falstaff it was the ‘naivete’ of conscious humour. In Pepys it
was quite different, for Pepys’s ‘naivete’ was the inoffensive
vanity of a man 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
cookmaid, 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 death-bed, 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:
1. Pepis (1273); 2. Pepy (1439); 3. Pypys (1511); 4. Pipes (1511); 5. Peppis (1518); 6. Peppes (1519); 7. Pepes (1520); 8. Peppys (1552); 9. Peaps (1636); 10. Pippis (1639); 11. Peapys (1653); 12. Peps (1655); 13. Pypes (1656); 14. Peypes (1656); 15. Peeps (1679); 16. Peepes (1683); 17. 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 ‘Pips’ or ‘Papes’; 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