had written one of the most delightful books that it was man’s privilege to read in the English language or in any other.  Whether Pepys intended this Diary to be afterwards read by the general public or not—­and this was a doubtful question when it was considered that he had left, possibly by inadvertence, a key to his cypher behind him—­it was certain that he had left with us a most delightful picture, or rather he had left the power in our hands of drawing for ourselves some, of the most delightful pictures, of the time in which he lived.  There was hardly any book which was analogous to it . .. . .  If one were asked what were the reasons for liking Pepys, it would be found that they were as numerous as the days upon which he made an entry in his Diary, and surely that was sufficient argument in his favour.  There was no book, Mr. Lowell said, that he knew of, or that occurred to his memory, with which Pepys’s Diary could fairly be compared, except the journal of L’Estoile, who had the same anxious curiosity and the same commonness, not to say vulgarity of interest, and the book was certainly unique in one respect, and that was the absolute sincerity of the author with himself.  Montaigne is conscious that we are looking over his shoulder, and Rousseau secretive in comparison with him.  The very fact of that sincerity of the author with himself argued a certain greatness of character.  Dr. Hickes, who attended Pepys at his deathbed, spoke of him as ‘this great man,’ and said he knew no one who died so greatly.  And yet there was something almost of the ridiculous in the statement when the ‘greatness’ was compared with the garrulous frankness which Pepys showed towards himself.  There was no parallel to the character of Pepys, he believed, in respect of ‘naivete’, unless it were found in that of Falstaff, and Pepys showed himself, too, like Falstaff, on terms of unbuttoned familiarity with himself.  Falstaff had just the same ‘naivete’, but in Falstaff it was the ‘naivete’ of conscious humour.  In Pepys it was quite different, for Pepys’s ‘naivete’ was the inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass.  Falstaff had a sense, too, of inadvertent humour, but it was questionable whether Pepys could have had any sense of humour at all, and yet permitted himself to be so delightful.  There was probably, however, more involuntary humour in Pepys’s Diary than there was in any other book extant.  When he told his readers of the landing of Charles ii. at Dover, for instance, it would be remembered how Pepys chronicled the fact that the Mayor of Dover presented the Prince with a Bible, for which he returned his thanks and said it was the ’most precious Book to him in the world.’  Then, again, it would be remembered how, when he received a letter addressed ‘Samuel Pepys, Esq.,’ he confesses in the Diary that this pleased him mightily.  When, too, he kicked his cookmaid, he admits that he was not sorry for it, but was sorry