The Sun.
London, England, 1849-10-18 00:00:00

SUN,

LONDON,

with th Earl of Sandwich),"was born either in Lon-
don, or at Brampton in Huntingdonshire. On the
26th of May, 1703, being then in the seventy•second
year of his age, he died bNiueathing to Magdalene
College, Cambridge, a store t)f inestimable literary
treasures. Of his library, and especially of its most
interesting contents, the manuscript memoirs in short-
hand, the Edinburgh critic speaks as follows:
" This library, thus perfected by thirty years' rectifi-
cation and refinement, Mr. Pepys at length bequeathed
to Magdalene College, Cambridge; on conditions which
included its preservation for ages to come in the self-
same plight in which he had left it. The presses' were
to remain unmutilated and undefaced, and were to be
kept in an apartment exclusively devoted to themselves.
'Their contents were neither to be increased nor dimi-

nished by a single volume, but were to remain exactly in
their original state and form. As he willed, so it has
been. In a certain room of what was once called the
new building' of Magdalene College, and on the exterior
wall of which may still be deciphered the inscription
Bibliotheca Pepysiana,' was this collection for many
years deposited; until, at a recent period, it was removed
to an apartment in the new lodge lately erected for the
master of the college. There it now remains—the
presses' and their contents being just as they were left,
the former in all the glory of black mahogany and glac d
doors, the latter in their original bindings, and, probably
enough, in their original order.

" But the most precious specimen of this treasury was
that with which we are now concerned. Amongst the
books in the presses were six large volumes filled with
writing in short-hand, which remainedundeciphered, if
not unnoticed, for a century and a quarter. At length,
some twenty or thirty years ago, they attracted
the attention of persons competent to estimate
their value, and the cipher was soon after submitted to
a gentleman of St. John's College for interpretation.
The problem proved not very difficult of solution; the
cipher employed being but slightly varied from one com-
monly in use in those times, and even regularly taught
in certain schools, for the purpose of enabling students to
write rapidly from dictation. The contents of the mys-
terious volumes were, accordingly, soon translated into
the vulgar tongue; and they were found to be nothing
less than a faithful and particular Diary of Mr. Pepys's
life and conversation from the Ist of January, 1660, to
the 31st of May, 1669. This Diary, or rather, a large
selection from it, was first published by Lord Bray-
brocke in 1825; and the speedy sale of two large edi-
tions proved how accurately its interest had been esti-
mated by its noble editor. For reasons, however, to be
hereafter noticed, it was not then thought proper to publish
the journal in full—its records being subjected to an ex-
purgatorial process, which is now shown to have been
conducted with rather excessive severity. When, there-
fore, a third edition of the Diary was determined upon,
it became a question of some interest to decide whether
the original scheme should or should not be aban-
doned, for a more unreserved communication of the
author's thoughts."

" Fortunately," continues the reviewer, " the question
was answered in the affirmative, and hence the five
volumes just published under the editorship of Lord
Braybrooke." Who that has ever read them can
forget such passages as those in the Diary relating to
the gold-washing in the garden and the summer-
house—to Captain Grove's " consideration"—to the
coquettry in the pew of St. Dunstan's—to the story
of the red-hot tongs—and to other incidents of an
equally quaint and personal character ? Altogether
the critical contributions in the Edinburgh for this
quarter are felicitous.