The
tang was in the family; while he was writing the journal for our
enjoyment in his comely house in Navy Gardens, no fewer than two of his
cousins were tramping the fens, kit under arm, to make music to the
country girls. But he himself, though he could play so many instruments,
and pass judgment in so many fields of art, remained an amateur. It is
not given to any one so keenly to enjoy, without some greater power to
understand. That he did not like Shakespeare as an artist for the stage
may be a fault, but it is not without either parallel or excuse. He
certainly admired him as a poet; he was the first beyond mere actors on
the rolls of that innumerable army who have got "To be or not to be" by
heart. Nor was he content with that; it haunted his mind; he quoted it
to himself in the pages of the Diary, and, rushing in where angels fear
to tread, he set it to music. Nothing, indeed, is more notable than the
heroic quality of the verses that our little sensualist in a periwig
chose out to marry with his own mortal strains. Some gust from brave
Elizabethan times must have warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning his
sublime theorbo. "To be or not to be. Whether 'tis nobler"--"Beauty
retire, thou dost my pity move"--"It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, O
Rome";--open and dignified in the sound, various and majestic in the
sentiment, it was no inapt, as it was certainly no timid, spirit that
selected such a range of themes. Of "Gaze not on Swans," I know no more
than these four words; yet that also seems to promise well. It was,
however, on a probable suspicion, the work of his master, Mr.
Berkenshaw--as the drawings that figure at the breaking up of a young
ladies' seminary are the work of the professor attached to the
establishment. Mr. Berkenshaw was not altogether happy in his pupil. The
amateur cannot usually rise into the artist, some leaven of the world
still clogging him; and we find Pepys behaving like a pickthank to the
man who taught him composition. In relation to the stage, which he so
warmly loved and understood, he was not only more hearty but more
generous to others. Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, "a man," says
he, "who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him for
it." And again, when he and his wife had seen a most ridiculous insipid
piece, "Glad we were," he writes, "that Betterton had no part in it." It
is by such a zeal and loyalty to those who labour for his delight that
the amateur grows worthy of the artist. And it should be kept in mind
that, not only in art, but in morals, Pepys rejoiced to recognise his
betters. There was not one speck of envy in the whole human-hearted
egotist. RESPECTABILITY

When writers inveigh against respectability, in the present degraded
meaning of the word, they are usually suspected of a taste for clay
pipes and beer-cellars; and their performances are thought to hail from
the _Owl's Nest_ of the comedy. They have something more, however, in
their eye than the dulness of a round million dinner-parties that sit
down yearly in Old England. For to do anything because others do it, and
not because the thing is good, or kind, or honest in its own right, is
to resign all moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and go
post-haste to the devil with the greater number. We smile over the
ascendancy of priests; but I had rather follow a priest than what they
call the leaders of society. No life can better than that of Pepys
illustrate the dangers of this respectable theory of living. For what
can be more untoward than the occurrence, at a critical period, and
while the habits are still pliable, of such a sweeping transformation as
the return of Charles the Second? Round went the whole fleet of England
on the other tack; and while a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, still
sailed a lonely course by the stars and their own private compass, the
cock-boat, Pepys, must go about with the majority among "the stupid
starers and the loud huzzas." The respectable are not led so much by any desire of applause as by a
positive need for countenance. The weaker and the tamer the man, the
more will he require this support; and any positive quality relieves
him, by just so much, of this dependence. In a dozen ways, Pepys was
quite strong enough to please himself without regard for others; but his
positive qualities were not co-extensive with the field of conduct; and
in many parts of life he followed, with gleeful precision, in the
footprints of the contemporary Mrs. Grundy. In morals, particularly, he
lived by the countenance of others; felt a slight from another more
keenly than a meanness in himself; and then first repented when he was
found out. You could talk of religion or morality to such a man; and by
the artist side of him, by his lively sympathy and apprehension, he
could rise, as it were dramatically, to the significance of what you
said. All that matter in religion which has been nicknamed
other-worldliness was strictly in his gamut; but a rule of life that
should make a man rudely virtuous, following right in good report and
ill report, was foolishness and a stumbling-block to Pepys. He was much
thrown across the Friends; and nothing can be more instructive than his
attitude towards these most interesting people of that age. I have
mentioned how he conversed with one as he rode; when he saw some brought
from a meeting under arrest, "I would to God," said he, "they would
either conform, or be more wise and not be catched"; and to a Quaker in
his own office he extended a timid though effectual protection. Meanwhile there was growing up next door to him that beautiful nature,
William Pen. It is odd that Pepys condemned him for a fop; odd, though
natural enough when you see Pen's portrait, that Pepys was jealous of
him with his wife. But the cream of the story is when Pen publishes his
"Sandy Foundation Shaken," and Pepys has it read aloud by his wife. "I
find it," he says, "so well writ as, I think, it is too good for him
ever to have writ it; and it is a serious sort of book, and _not fit for
everybody to read_." Nothing is more galling to the merely respectable
than to be brought in contact with religious ardour. Pepys had his own
foundation, sandy enough, but dear to him from practical considerations,
and he would read the book with true uneasiness of spirit; for conceive
the blow if, by some plaguy accident, this Pen were to convert him! It
was a different kind of doctrine that he judged profitable for himself
and others. "A good sermon of Mr. Gifford's at our church, upon 'Seek ye
first the kingdom of heaven.' A very excellent and persuasive, good and
moral sermon. He showed, like a wise man, that righteousness is a surer
moral way of being rich than sin and villainy."