seems seriously to have questioned.  He vows he will drink no wine till Christmas, but is delighted to find that hippocras, being a mixture of two wines, is not necessarily included in his vow.  He vows he will not go to the play until Christmas, but then he borrows money from another man and goes with the borrowed money; or goes to a new playhouse which was not open when the vow was made.  He buys books which no decent man would own to having bought, but then he excuses himself on the plea that he has only read them and has not put them in his library.  Thus, along the whole course of his life, he cheats himself continually.  He prefers the way of honour if it be consistent with a sufficient number of other preferences, and yet practises a multitude of curiously ingenious methods of being excusably dishonourable.  On the whole, in regard to public business and matters of which society takes note, he keeps his conduct surprisingly correct, but all the time he is remembering, not without gusto, what he might be doing if he were a knave.  It is a curious question what idea of God can be entertained by a man who plays tricks with himself in this fashion.  Of Pepys certainly it cannot be said that God “is not in all his thoughts,” for the name and the remembrance are constantly recurring.  Yet God seems to occupy a quite hermetically sealed compartment of the universe; for His servant in London shamelessly goes on with the game he is playing, and appears to take a pride in the very conscience he systematically hoodwinks.

It is peculiarly interesting to remember that Samuel Pepys and John Bunyan were contemporaries.  There is, as we said, much in common between them, and still more in violent contrast.  He had never heard of the Tinker or his Allegory so far as his Diary tells us, nor is it likely that he would greatly have appreciated the Pilgrim’s Progress if it had come into his hands.  Even Hudibras he bought because it was the proper thing to do, and because he had met its author, Butler; but he never could see what it was that made that book so popular.  Bunyan and Pepys were two absolutely sincere men.  They were sincere in opposite ways and in diametrically opposite camps, but it was their sincerity, the frank and natural statement of what they had to say, that gave its chief value to the work of each of them.  It is interesting to remember that Pepys was sent to prison just when Bunyan came out of it, in the year 1678.  The charge against the diarist was indeed a false one, and his imprisonment cast no slur upon his public record:  while Bunyan’s charge was so true that he neither denied it nor would give any promise not to repeat the offence.  Pepys, had he known of Bunyan, would probably have approved of him, for he enthusiastically admired people who were living for conscience’ sake, like Dr. Johnson’s friend, Dr. Campbell, of whom it was said he never entered a church, but always took off his hat when he passed one.  On the whole Pepys’ references to the Fanatiques, as he calls them, are not only fair but favourable.  He is greatly interested in their zeal, and impatient with the stupidity and brutality of their persecutors.