THE ZOOLOGIST
THIRD SERIES.
Vol. II.] OCTOBER, 1878. [No. 22. |
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN THE 17th CENTURY,
as exemplified in the diary of mr. samuel pepys, f.r.s.
By Claude Webster.
The readers of the 'Diary of Mr. Samuel Pepys, F.R.S.,' must include pretty well all those who have essayed to make any acquaintance with the ordinary literature of their country ; and great no doubt has been the amusement they have derived from their perusal of the confessions of the somewhat sensuous gentle- man, who, jotting down day by day the varied incidents of a not uneventful life, scarcely contemplated the ultimate revelation of his sayings and doings, concealed as they were in a caligraphic character so obscure as well nigh to preclude the expectation that they would ever come to light at all.
Samuel Pepys, born in 1632 and dying in 1703, filled several important offices in connection with the Navy, and eventually that of Secretary to the Admiralty, in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., being also a Member of Parliament during a portion of this period. The 'Diary,' commenced in 1659-60, extends down to the year 1669, and was kept throughout in shorthand. It finishes thus characteristically:—
"And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journall, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my baud ; and therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear. . . . And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave ; for which, and all the dis- comforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!"
