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LINES WRITTEN AFTER READING PEPYS'S DIARY

Delightful, quaint old diarist, Most ruthless self-anatomist! He guessed not how those pages Wherein he bared his inmost soul, So egotistic, naïve, and droll, Would render up so rich a toll Of spoil to after ages.
Unto his artless pen we owe What ne'er another one doth show, (Save as by farthing candle,) A living picture of the ways, (Vivid as 'neath electric rays,) Of life in Charles the Second's days, That time of riant scandal.
Clearly his world before us looms, Though covered with the heavy glooms Two centuries cast o'er it: We see him at his work and play, Dancing and singing, grave and gay, Kissing his maids—a fie-fie trait! We must, of course, deplore it.

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