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

MEN AND BOOKS
He has no idea of truth except for the Diary. He
has no care that a thing shall be, if it but appear ;
gives out that he has inherited a good estate, when
he has seemingly got nothing but a lawsuit ; and is
pleased to be thought liberal when he knows he has
been mean. He is conscientiously ostentatious. I
say conscientiously, with reason. He could never
have been taken for a fop, hke Pen, but arrayed
himself in a manner nicely suitable to his position.
For long he hesitated to assume the famous periwig;
for a public man should travel gravely with the
fashions, not foppishly before, nor dowdily behind,
the central movement of his age. For long he durst
not keep a carriage ; that, in his circumstances, would
have been improper ; but a time comes, with the
growth of his fortune, when the impropriety has
shifted to the other side, and he is ' ashamed to be
seen in a hackney.' Pepys talked about being *a
Quaker or some very melancholy thing;' for my part, I
can imagine nothing so melancholy, because nothing
half so silly, as to be concerned about such problems.
But so respectability and the duties of society haunt
and burden their poor devotees ; and what seems at
first the very primrose path of life, proves difficult
and thorny like the rest. And the time comes to
Pepys, as to all the merely respectable, when he
must not only order his pleasures, but even clip his
virtuous movements, to the pubhc pattern of the age.
There was some juggling among officials to avoid
direct taxation ; and Pepys, with a noble impulse,
growing ashamed of this dishonesty, designed to
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