3 FEBRUARY 1923, Page 24

SAMUEL PEPYS, ESQ., Administrator, Observer, Gossip.

By E. Hallam Moorhouse. (Leonard Parsons. 6s. net.) The publisher is to be congratulated on his charming and cheap reprint of Miss Hallam Moorhouse's complete but concise biography of Pepys, which was first published some fifteen years ago. The author's claim, however, that "the Diarist sinks into insignificance beside the official who did more than any other man to reform the administration of the Navy" is rather unnecessary special pleading. Navies, and even perhaps empires, with all their efficiency, will come and go, but Pepys' Diary is likely to survive all such political exigencies.