Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)

On May 26, 1703, Samuel Pepys's friend John Evelyn wrote in his diary, "This day died Mr. Pepys, a very worthy, industrious and curious per­son, none in England exceeding him in knowledge of the navy. . . . He was universally beloved, hospi­table, generous, learned in many things, skilled in music, a very great cherisher of learned men of whom he had conversation." What Evelyn did not know was that Pepys too had kept a diary, from which, long afterward, he would win a second and unexpected kind of reputation.

Pepys (pronounced "Peeps"), son of a prosperous tailor, was helped by an influential relative to at­tend Cambridge and to achieve public office. He worked hard and was able to pile up a small for­tune, and rose to the rank of Secretary of the Admi­ralty, in which capacity he ran the British navy and made it a model of economy and efficiency. His ca­reer had its setbacks, including imprisonment on false charges of political intrigue, but he rose above them triumphantly. At the fall of King James II in 1688, however, Pepys's public life was over, and he retired to a comfortable leisure, writing letters and arranging an impressive library, which he bequeathed to one of the colleges at Cambridge.

Included in this library were six mysterious vol­umes of manuscript written in what appeared to be a secret code (Pepys had used the new and little-known shorthand). It was not until 1818 that someone took the trouble to break the code, and in 1825, after years of labor, Pepys's diary was fully deciphered and published. The world was delighted to discover the many-sided private man hidden behind the man of affairs, and also the fascinating narrative of life in the exciting 1660's (the diary stopped in 1669 when Pepys's eyesight began to fail). Along with remarkably candid pictures of his personal life, Pepys presents great public scenes: the splendid coronation of Charles II, a gruesome execution, the Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of 1666.

Clearly Pepys concealed his diary from living eyes, but his bequest of the volumes to Cambridge University suggests that he may have hoped pos­terity would read it. Most people's diaries are of small interest to anyone but themselves. Pepys's achievement is the vivid re-creation of daily life, conveyed in clear and vigorous prose. He was a man of wide interests —he loved music and books and plays; he followed the progress of science and corresponded with Isaac Newton. Although he gives a lively sense of his own cheerful and prac­tical personality, his attention is usually directed beyond himself to the teeming variety of his world. By reading Pepys we can imagine ourselves living as his contemporaries.

Lecture 9

The Restoration and Eighteenth Century

Plan:

1. Daniel Defoe

2. Jonathan Swift

3. Alexander Pope

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

Born Daniel Foe, a merchant's son in London, Defoe adopted the aristocratic-sounding "De" in later life. After schooling that was intended to prepare him for the Presbyterian ministry, he em­barked instead on as varied a career as any great English writer has ever had. He suffered two disas­trous bankruptcies while trading in everything from diving bells to civet cats. Increasingly he sup­ported himself as a writer, turning out immense numbers of essays and pamphlets on economic and religious themes.

No life demonstrates more dramatically than Defoe's both the peril and the power of the pen, especially the pen dipped in irony. Defoe's The Shortest Way with Dissenters reduced to absurdity the rabid intolerance prevalent in his time. Al­though an ardent Dissenter himself, he pretended to advocate an off-with-their-heads policy toward all those who dared to dissent from the tenets of the Church of England. The authorities at first took him literally and many unwary church of­ficials endorsed his position, but, when they dis­covered that they had been deceived by his tone, they were not amused. Defoe was arrested, tried, and sentenced to prison and three successive ap­pearances in the pillory. The pillory sentence, which was meant to degrade him publicly, turned to triumph when, instead of the expected jeering, a group of his friends sang a Satiric song Defoe had composed for the occasion and pelted him with flowers rather than rocks and rotten eggs.

Much of Defoe's life remains mysterious, since he served the government for many years as a secret agent, operating under a series of assumed names. In his publications Defoe similarly made use of assumed names, preferring to give weight to his arguments by putting them in the mouth of some wise and trustworthy speaker. In the end he found himself writing pure fiction instead of fic­tionalized fact. In 1719, when he was nearly sixty, he published The Life and Strange Surprising Ad­ventures of Robinson Crusoe, and discovered that almost by accident he had invented the English novel. In the next five years he brought out a series of further novels, each presented as autobiography and claiming to teach moral lessons about human life. Defoe's favorite form was the life story of a reformed criminal; Moll Flanders is his most famous novel of this sort. A Journal of the Plague Year was published in 1722. During 1721 there was much worry in England about a new outbreak on the Continent of bubonic plague, a disease that had ravaged England in 1665. In addi­tion to several nonfiction works discussing how best to deal with the plague if it should come (which it did not), Defoe had the inspiration of writing a first-person account (ascribed to a trades­man called "H.F.") of the 1665 disaster. He hoped thereby to alert his readers to the dangers of plague and possible means of controlling it, but he also en­joyed the chance to create a convincing picture of human behavior in a time of great stress. In prepa­ration for the work, Defoe interviewed survivors and made a close study of historical records. He himself had been a child of five at the time of the plague and could not have remembered many de­tails, but undoubtedly the terror of that time remained vivid in his memory.