SAMUEL, author of the well-known Diary which bears his name, was descended from the Pepyses of Cambridgeshire, and was born on the 23rd of February 1632. His family had some pretensions to gentility, but his father exercised the humble trade of a tailor in the city of London. Passing from St Paul's school in 1650, young Pepys became a sizar in Trinity College, Cambridge, but removed shortly after to Magdalen College. The only record we possess of his university career is contained in a memorandum of discipline entered in the Register-book of his college, where we read how Samuel and one Hind "were solemnly admonished for having been scandalously overserved with drink ye night before." The next notice we obtain of his progress is in October 1655, when we discover that he has married a girl of fifteen fresh from a convent. As this young lady had more of pedigree than portion, Pepys was glad to accept of an asylum in the family of his cousin, Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, a gentleman who proved his fast friend through life. He attended his patron on his expedition to the Sound in March 1653, and on his return received a clerkship connected with the Exchequer. It was about this time that Pepys began his interesting Diary, which he continued without interruption from 1st January 1659-60 for upwards of nine years, when defective vision compelled him to desist. His new appointment of Clerk of the Acts of the navy, in June 1660, brought his valuable business talents into notice, and he soon gained the confidence and esteem of the Duke of York, then Lord High Admiral. The intelligence and energy which Pepys brought to bear upon the reformation of the affairs of the navy, were attended with the best results during the critical times consequent upon the Dutch war. The plague visited the metropolis in 1665, but Pepys courageously stood by his post when every branch of the service was completely deserted. The fire of London followed; and no man did more to arrest the progress of that calamity than the Clerk of the Acts. On the resignation of the Duke of York in 1673, upon the passing of the Test Act, Pepys was appointed by his Majesty Charles II. to the important post of Secretary to the Admiralty. His close connection with the late Lord High Admiral was like to involve the new secretary in a share of the odium to which that nobleman was exposed. Pepys and Sir Anthony Deane were committed to the Tower on the 22nd of May 1679, on the charge of being secret enemies of the Protestant cause, and of maintaining a clandestine correspondence with the French government respecting the condition of the English navy. They had to find security in L30,000; but the foul depositions were shortly afterwards withdrawn, and the prisoners discharged. Charles having taken a fancy for again changing the constitution of the Admiralty, Pepys lost his post for a time as secretary. Meanwhile he accompanied Lord Dartmouth to Tangier, and employed his shorthand in preserving some records of the expedition. These notes were deciphered and published in 1841 from the MS. in the Bodleian Library. On his return, Pepys was re-installed in his secretaryship; a post for which no man in England was better qualified, and which he was allowed to occupy till the reign of James II. came to an end. He enjoyed much of the confidence of the latter monarch. We are told that on the arrival of the news that the Prince of Orange had landed, James was sitting to Kneller for his picture, which was intended as a present to the secretary of the Admiralty. That his "good friend might not be disappointed," the king commanded the painter to proceed, and complete the picture. Much of the credit frequently accorded to James II. for "renovating the navy" is unquestionably due entirely to Pepys. For the part borne by him in the naval history of the period the reader will find ample details in his Memoirs relating to the State of the Royal Navy of England, determined December 1688, 8vo, London, 1690.

The studious retirement which Pepys sought, on being deprived of his official employments at the succession of William and Mary, was devoted to the arrangement of his extensive materials for a general history of the Nautical of England. Death came, however, to cut the work short on the 26th of May 1703.

Judging from the great variety, both of his duties and amusements, Pepys must have been a man of singular versatility. Despite his burdensome duties in connection with the affairs of the navy, which must have absorbed no ordinary degree of strength and courage, there seems to have been positively no end to the play-going and amusement in which the author of the Diary indulged. He sat for many years, besides, in the House of Commons; he was a connoisseur in the fine arts; he practised music; he patronized letters; and, to crown all, he was president of the Royal Society for two successive years. Among the invaluable MSS. bequeathed by him to Magdalen College, Cambridge, is to be found a remarkable collection of English ballads, from which were taken a large portion of Percy's Reliques. A small anonymous book in the Pepysian Library is likewise ascribed to him by Watt (Bibliotheca Britannica), entitled A Relation of the Troubles in the Court of Portugal in 1667 and 1668, by S. P., Esq., 12mo, London, 1667. But the work on which the reputation of Pepys chiefly rests is the Diary already alluded to, which was exhumed from its stenographic obscurity by the skill of John Smith (then a young student at Cambridge, afterwards rector of Baldock, Herts), and published, with a selection from the author's private correspondence, by Lord Braybrooke, in 2 vols. 4to, London, 1825. A third edition appeared, by his lordship, in 1848, containing very extensive and interesting additions formerly left out, with a Life and Notes, extending in all to 5 vols. 8vo. There is perhaps no book, either in our own or any other language, which presents such lively and truthful delineations of the society and manners of a former age. The Diary of Pepys is invaluable as a history of the court and times of Charles II.; yet, from its endless diversity of quaint gossip and amusing detail, drawn from domestic life and personal experience, it is, at the same time, unquestionably the most interesting book of its kind in existence.