INTRODUCTION xiii 



for him the gratification of revising them for a second edition, 

 and it is indeed open to question if the Diary upon which his 

 undying fame rests was ever intended by him to be publish- 

 ed after his death. This is a point that is never likely to be 

 settled satisfactorily. The fact of its having been written in 

 cipher looks as if it had been compiled solely for private 

 amusement, and not with any intention of posthumous 

 publication ; and this view is greatly strengthened by the 

 unblushing and complete manner in which he lays aside the 

 mask of outward propriety and records his too frequent quaff- 

 ing of the wine-cup, his household bickerings, his impro- 

 prieties with fair women, and his graver conjugal infidelities. 

 The improprieties of other persons, and especially those of 

 higher social rank than himself, might very intelligibly have 

 been written in cipher intended to have been transcribed and 

 printed after his death ; but it would be at variance with 

 human nature to believe that he could so unreservedly have 

 reduced to writing all the faults and follies of his life had 

 even posthumous publication of his Diary been contemplated 

 by him at the time of writing it. For it is hardly capable 

 of argument that, next to the instincts of self-preservation 

 and of the maintenance of family ties, the desire to preserve 

 outward appearances is undoubtedly one of the strongest of 

 human feelings ; and this great natural law, often the last 

 remnant or the substitute of conscience, character, and self- 

 respect, is even more fully operative in a highly civilised 

 than in a savage or a semi-savage state of society. Of a 

 truth, every human being is more or less of a Pharisee with 

 regard to certain conventionalities of life. Complete dis- 

 regard for the maintenance of some sort of standard of 

 outward appearances is the absolute vanishing point of 

 self-respect. Till that has been reached by any individual 

 the hope of his reformation is not lost, though at the 

 same time successful dissimulation makes the prospect of 

 a turning point in a vicious career but remote. Still, 

 " it is a long lane that has no turning. " It is therefore 

 most probable that the leaving behind of the key to the 

 cipher was rather due to inadvertence than to intention and 

 design. And if this view be correct, then Pepys' charming 

 Diary was the purely natural outpouring of his mind without 



