20 NOVEMBER 1926, Page 45

SAMUEL PEPYS'S NAVAL MINUTES. Edited by J. R. Tanner. (Navy

Records Society. W. Clowes & Son. 25s. 6d.)--7 Dr. Tanner, our leading authority on Pepys, and the Navy Records Society are much to be commended for printing in full, for the first time, the notes which the zealous Secretary of the Admiralty made for that history of the Navy which he projected but never wrote. The notes are, indeed, fine confused feeding but include many interesting passages to reward a eareful reader, and especially the devoted Pepysian. The cynic in him appears in the comment- " Noah's Ark must needs be made of some extraordinary timber and plank that could remain good after having been an hundred years in building, whereas our thirty new ships are some of them rotten within less than five."