Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

SAMUEL PEPYS
I think we may infer that he had entertained, even
if he had not acquiesced in, the thought of a far-
distant pubUcity. The first is of capital importance :
the Diary was not destroyed. The second— that he
took unusual precautions to confound the cipher in
'rogueish' passages — proves, beyond question, that
he was thinking of some other reader besides himself
Perhaps while his friends were admiring the ' great-
ness of his behaviour ' at the approach of death, he
may have had a twinkhng hope of immortaUty.
Mens cujusque is est quisque, said his chosen motto ;
and, as he had stamped his mind with every crook
and foible in the pages of the Diary, he might
feel that what he left behind him was indeed
himself There is perhaps no other instance so
remarkable of the desire of man for publicity and an
enduring name. The greatness of his life was open,
yet he longed to communicate its smallness also;
and, while contemporaries bowed before him, he
must buttonhole posterity with the news that his
periwig was once aUve with nits. But this thought,
although I cannot doubt he had it, was neither his
first nor his deepest ; it did not colour one word that
he wrote ; and the Diary, for as long as he kept it,
remained what it was when he began, a private
pleasure for himself It was his bosom secret; it
added a zest to all his pleasures ; he lived in and for
it, and might well write these solemn words, when
he closed that confidant for ever : ' And so I betake
myself to that course which is almost as much as to
see myself go into the grave ; for which, and all the
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