But when the loan is resolved upon, he tells us, with delicious naivete, how he rushes in to begin the list, lest some of his fellows should head it with a larger sum, which he would have to equal if he came after them.  He hates gambling,—­it was perhaps the one vice which never tempted him,—­and he records, conscientiously and very frequently, the gradual growth of his estate from nothing at all to thousands of pounds, with constant thanks to God, and many very quaint little confessions and remarks.

He was on the one hand confessedly a coward, and on the other hand a man of the most hasty and violent temper.  Yet none of his readers can despise him very bitterly for either of these vices.  For he disarms all criticism by the incredibly ingenious frankness of his confessions; and the instances of these somewhat contemptible vices alternate with bits of real gallantry and fineness, told in the same perfectly natural and unconscious way.

His relations with his wife and other ladies would fill a volume in themselves.  It would not be a particularly edifying volume, but it certainly would be without parallel in the literature of this or any other country for sheer extremity of frankness.  Mrs. Pepys appears to have been a very beautiful and an extremely difficult lady, disagreeable enough to tempt him into many indiscretions, and yet so virtuous as to fill his heart with remorse for all his failings, and still more with vexation for her discoveries of them.  But below all this surface play of pretty disreputable outward conduct, there seems to have been a deep and genuine love for her in his heart.  He can say as coarse a thing about her as has probably ever been recorded, but he balances it with abundance of solicitous and often ineffective attempts to gratify her capricious and imperious little humours.

These curious mixtures of character, however, are but byplay compared with the phenomenal and central vanity, which alternately amazes and delights us.  After all the centuries there is a positive charm about this grown man who, after all, never seems to have grown up into manhood.  He is as delighted with himself as if he were new, and as interested in himself as if he had been born yesterday.  He prefers always to talk with persons of quality if he can find them.  “Mighty glad I was of the good fortune to visit him (Sir W. Coventry), for it keeps in my acquaintance with him, and the world sees it, and reckons my interest accordingly.”  His public life was distinguished by one great speech made in answer to the accusations of some who had attacked him and the Navy Board in the House of Commons.  That speech seems certainly to have been distinguished and extraordinarily able, but it certainly would have cost him his soul if he had not already lost that in other ways.  Every sentence of flattery, even to the point of being told that he is another Cicero, he not only takes seriously, but duly records.