Samuel Pepys (February 23, 1633 - May 26, 1703) was a 17th century English civil servant, famous for his diary. (His surname was then pronounced "Peeps", although some modern relatives with the name pronounce theirs "Pep-iss".) The diary is a fascinating combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London.
In 1672 he was appointed Secretary to the Admiralty, an appointment he held with one interruption of four years at the end of Charles II's reign until the Glorious Revolution when he retired from public life and was later succeeded by his former clerk Josiah Burchett. As well as being one of the most important civil servants of his age, he was a widely cultivated man, taking a learned interest in books, music, the theatre and science. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1665 and later served as President. He died childless in 1703. His contemporary John Evelyn remembered him as "universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things". Pepys' character seems encapsulated in his Latin motto mens cujusque is est quisque, which can be translated as "The Mind is the Man".
His job required that he meet with many people to dispense monies and make contracts. He often laments over how he "lost his labour" having gone to some appointment at a coffee house or tavern, there to discover that the person he was seeking was not within. This was a constant frustration to Pepys.
Periodically he would resolve to cut down on drinking and womanizing and to devote more time to those endeavors where he thought his time should be spent. For example, this entry on New Year's Eve, 1661, "I have newly taken a solemn oath about abstaining from plays and wine..." The following months reveal his lapses to the reader as by February 17 "And here I drank wine upon necessity, being ill for the want of it."
The diary similarly gives a detailed account of Pepys' personal life. He liked wine and plays, and was a womanizer. He also spent a great deal of time evaluating his fortune and his place in the world. He was always curious and often acted on that curiosity, as he acted upon almost all his impulses.
In December 2003, his diary, which was at the time being serialised as a weblog run by Phil Gyford, won an award in The Guardian's Best of British Blogs, in the specialist-blog category.
The diary gives a detailed account of the pattern of Pepys' life. Reading it, one cannot help thinking how very much we must all be alike. His characteristic closing sentence was: "And so to bed."
