WHEN William Weller Pepys was an undergraduate at Oxford he
was known by his contemporaries as the "Old Gentleman." Ingenuity could not have found a more suitable name. An old gentleman in his youth, he never grew younger, and a good-natured, intelligent, and highly moral.old gentle- man he remained until his death. That be and the illustrious Samuel should have had a common ancestor is astonishing, for no two men could be more unlike. The Secretary of the Admiralty would have been grievously .bored had he been able to meet his kinsman, while the Master in Chancery could only have regarded the amusements of the pleasure-loving Samuel with disgust.
However, Sir William Pepys was undoubtedly a man of parts. A friend of all the Blue-stockings, he was a zealous member of the circle, whereof Mrs. Montagu was the brilliant centre. He connived at all the plans of the learned ladies who, in imitation of the yet more learned ladies of France, disdained frivolity, or thought they did, and set themselves up as arbiters of taste. The company was a strange mixture of fashion and erudition. The Blue-stockings could not endure that learning should be the exclusive privilege of men, and they determined to rescue society from the domination of the card- table. Gambling, in fact, had killed conversation, and Mrs. Chapone and her friends did their best to improve the taste of the town. How well they succeeded may be seen in many volumes of memoirs, and the reason of their success is not far to seek. They held out to either side that which it most prized. The ladies who frequented Mrs. Montagu's saloon -were permitted to listen to the wise words which fell from the lips of many a learned man, while the learned men had more than their reward when they basked, over a cup of tea, in the smiles of beauty. Mrs. Hannah More described the scene vividly enough in her poem "The Bas Bleu":— "There sober Duchesses are seen,
Chaste Wits, and Critics void of spleen; Physicians fraught with real science, And Whigs and Tories in alliance ; And Poets fulfilling Christian duties, Just Lawyers, reasonable Beauties ; Bishops who preach, and Peers who pay, And Countesses who seldom play."
Thus wrote Hannah More, with much more to a like purpose ; and though the same society may be found in every generation, the Blue-stockings were singular, in that they were despotically governed by that "rigid Cato," Samuel Johnson, "bold censor of a thoughtless age." When Johnson was present it was idle for any other to intervene. The ladies stood five deep about him, listening in a stricken awe to his sallies, and reproving the rest if they dared to inter- rupt the tirades of the great man. Such was the society of which Sir William Pepys formed part, and though he was easily eclipsed by Johnson, be held his own in learning and address against all the others. Even the implacable Doctor, who did not like him, owned that he was a scholar, and that is the impression which his correspondence gives us. If he is not humorous, he is amiably bookish, and, although he is never
• A Later Bemis the Corcespondeace of Sir William Irate; Pepys, Bart., Master ia Chaticeey,175S-IS25. E.Lited, with au Introduction aud Notes, by Alice C. C. Gaussen. 2 vols. Londul : John Lam. P2s. set.1 brilliant, he seldom fails to display a meritorious interest in polite letters. His ideal of all that was noble in mankind was George, Lord Lyttelton, whom he loved living, and loyally defended, even against Johnson himself, after his death. But loyalty was always the virtue of Sir William Pepys. He had warm friends, and he kept them. His correspondence with Hannah More covers:a period of more than forty years, and death seems to have been the only end -of his many friendships. But we are not sure that his letters were worth reprinting. At any rate, we have found these two volumes, packed with noble thoughts and blameless sentiments, a trifle difficult to read.
In some ways Sir William was the true child of his age. He admired precisely what a cultivated person in the late eighteenth century was expected to admire. In his eyes, Locke's System was a "clear and steady light before which the mist of sophistry would vanish as clouds before the rising sun." In a series of letters, designed to form the intellect of William Franks, he explains his views on this and kindred subjec,ts. Being a sound Whig, he declares that Rousseau is "certainly the greatest genius of our age," and he urges his friend to study Tully de Officiis, which Contains "the most admirable system of ethics now extant." And as we read these letters we cannot absolve this later Pepys from the charge of priggishness. He tells young Franks to put a small Virgil in his pocket as regularly as his handkerchief; and to mark the striking passages with a pencil; he deplores that Gray and Shenstone " want'd the regular return of Stat'd calls to employ themselves "; he would have every hour busily" filled, quoting 'Lord Lyttelton's words : "I dare not trust' myself to roam at large even among my books " ; and he did not perceive that Gray and Shenstone did imperishable work for the very reason that they would rather brave the terrors of ennui than fritter away their time in " stat'd calls." But he numbered among his correspondents several remarkable persons. The friend of his youth was Sir James Macdonald, the "Mai-callus of Scotland," who but for an early death would, no doubt, have had a most distinguished career: He died at twenty-four after a life of ill-health, and Lord Lyttelton in a lapidary inscription, wherein he was not on oath, declared that Rome paid such honours to Sir James Macdonald when he died "as had never graced the memory of any other British subject since the death of Sir Philip Sidney." It is, indeed, as the friend of Sir James Macdonald that Sir William Pepys has been generally remembered, and the letters here printed do but increase our respect for the ill- fated and noble-hearted chieftain. They are bookish, of course,' but they are a pleasant contrast to those of Pepys, and even though they all record the miseries of sickness, they are never peevish nor discouraged. As he says himself, he "kept up his' spirits and jogged soberly along in hopes of better days." Of all Sir William Pepys's correspondents, then, Macdonald is the most interesting, and his few letters compensate for many pages of dulness.
What, for instance, shall we say . of Mrs. Chapone's effusions? They are agreeable and literary, but the Blue- stocking overpowers the woman, and the author plays a part even to her friends. Mrs. Hannah More is far more staid and sincere, and Pepys writes to her with all his accustomed, gravity. Moreover, this correspondence has the added interest of carrying us front one generation to another. It shows us the friend of the Blue-stockings and the acquaintance of Johnson taking an interest in Sir Walter Scott and the Life of Goethe. Now he tells Hannah More how much entertained he has been with Miss Ferrier's Inheritance; now he praises Southey's History of the Peninsular War; and it is impossible not to recognise the happiness of this devoted friend and sound scholar, who at eighty-five has lost neither his amiability nor his passion for literature. But excellent and fortunate and wise as Sir William Pepys shows himself, he had a vast talent for the commonplace, and he writes with a style and accent .which belong rather to his age than to himself. SO that we are not sure that his letters deserved the patient and skilful editing which Miss Gaussen has given them, and we may say with perfect confidence that in the family of Pepys, Samuel's supremacy is still unchallenged.
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