In life, Samuel Pepys walked gravely in majestical robe with full-bottomed wig and with ceremonial lace flapping at his wrists.  Every step, if his portrait is to be believed, was a bit of pageantry.  Such was his fame, that if his sword but clacked a warning on the pavement, it must have brought the apprentices to the windows.  Tradesmen laid down their wares to get a look at him.  Fat men puffed and strained to gain the advantage of a sill.  Fashionable ladies peeped from brocaded curtains and ogled for his regard.  Or if he went by chair, the carriers held their noses up as though offended by the common air.  When he spoke before the Commons, the galleries were hushed.  He gave his days to the signing of stiff parchments—­Admiralty Orders or what not.  He checked the King himself at the council table.  In short, he was not only a great personage, but also he was quite well aware of the fact and held himself accordingly.

But now many years have passed, and Time, that has so long been at bowls with reputations, has acquired a moderate skill in knocking them down.  Let us see how it fares with Pepys!  Some men who have been roguish in their lives have been remembered by their higher accomplishments.  A string of sonnets or a novel or two, if it catches the fancy, has wiped out a tap-room record.  The winning of a battle has obliterated a meanly spent youth.  It is true that for a while an old housewife who once lived on the hero’s street will shake a dubious finger on his early pranks.  Stolen apples or cigarettes behind the barn cram her recollection.  But even a village reputation fades.  In time the sonnets and glorious battle have the upper place.  But things went the other way with Pepys.  Rather, his fate is like that of Zeus, who—­if legend is to be trusted—­was in his life a person of some importance whose nod stirred society on Olympus, but who is now remembered largely for his flirtations and his braggart conduct.  A not unlike evil has fallen on the magnificent Mr. Pepys.

This fate came to him because—­as the world knows—­it happened that for a period of ten years in comparative youth, he wrote an interesting and honest diary.  He began this diary in 1659, while he was still a poor clerk living with his wife in a garret, and ended it in 1669, when, although he had emerged from obscurity, his greater honors had not yet been set on him.  All the facts of his life during this period are put down, whether good or bad, small or large, generous or mean.  He writes of his mornings spent in work at his office, of his consultations with higher officials.  There is much running to and fro of business.  The Dutch war bulks to a proper length.  Parliament sits through a page at a stretch.  Pepys goes upon the streets in the days of the plague and writes the horror of it—­the houses marked with red crosses and with prayers scratched beneath—­the stench and the carrying of dead bodies.  He sees the great fire of London from his window on the night