There is an immense amount of snobbery, blatant and unashamed.  A certain Captain Cooke turns out to be a man who had been very great in former days.  Pepys had carried clothes to him when he was a little insignificant boy serving in his father’s workshop.  Now Captain Cooke’s fortunes are reversed, and Pepys tells us of his many and careful attempts to avoid him, and laments his failure in such attempts.  He hates being seen on the shady side of any street of life, and is particularly sensitive to such company as might seem ridiculous or beneath his dignity.  His brother faints one day while walking with him in the street, on which his remark is, “turned my head, and he was fallen down all along upon the ground dead, which did put me into a great fright; and, to see my brotherly love!  I did presently lift him up from the ground.”  This last sentence is so delightful that, were it not for the rest of the Diary, it would be quite incredible in any human being past the age of short frocks.  All this side of his character culminates in the immense amount of information which we have concerning his coach.  He has great searching of heart as to whether it would be good policy or bad to purchase it.  All that is within him longs to have a coach of his own, but, on the other hand, he fears the jealousy of his rivals and the increased demands upon his generosity which such a luxury may be expected to bring.  At last he can resist no longer, and the coach is purchased.  No sooner does he get inside it than he assumes the air of a gentleman whose ancestors have ridden in coaches since the beginning of time.  “The Park full of coaches, but dusty, and windy, and cold, and now and then a little dribbling of rain; and what made it worse, there were so many hackney coaches as spoiled the sight of the gentlemen’s.”

A somewhat amazing fact in this strange and contradictory character is the constant element of subtlety which blends with so much frankness.  He wants to do wrong in many different ways but he wants still more to do it with propriety, and to have some sort of plausible excuse which will explain it in a respectable light.  Nor is it only other people whom he is bent on deceiving.  Were that all, we should have a very simple type of hypocritical scoundrel, which would be as different as possible from the extraordinary Pepys.  There is a sense of propriety in him, and a conscience of obeying the letter of the law and keeping up appearances even in his own eyes.  If he can persuade himself that he has done that, all things are open to him.  He will receive a bribe, but it must be given in such a way that he can satisfy his conscience with ingenious words.  The envelope has coins in it, but then he opens it behind his back and the coins fall out upon the floor.  He has only picked them up when he found them there, and can defy the world to accuse him of having received any coins in the envelope.  That was the sort of conscience which he had, and whose verdicts he never