The diary is essentially a narrative of social accounting by a middling man on the make. The scope of the diary's accounting was far wider than keeping track of money or providing an end-of-the-month balance sheet of Pepys's material condition. Other texts served this narrower but fundamentally related function. We should recall the textual interrelationships traced earlier; the diary refers to working on financial accounts (both personal and fiscal) and journal at the same time. The processes of monetary and social accounting went hand in hand. Contrary to Matthews's claim that this accounting 'loses distinctiveness in the body of the diary' it comprises the text's fundamental logic and is reflected in the very idiom. For example, after Pepys had been too busy to meet a friend of his wife the diary relates: 'vexed at myself for not paying her the respect of seeing her. But I will...