The late Lord Braybrooke, to whom the world is indebted for the 'Diary,' has prefixed a sketch of Pepys' life, in which some stress is laid upon his literary attainments, which had raised him in 1684 to the high station of President of the Royal Society,* and which he held for two years ; and at the present lime the opinion prevails that Pepys was a much more considerable person than the ordinary reader of the ' Diary' might suppose him to he. How far he merited the character of a man of letters and science, the following extracts, perhaps, will not do much to show. His claims to so exalted a position must vest upon a basis altogether different to that disclosed in the ' Diary.' Be this as it may, it is the purpose of this article to exhibit Pepys as he wrote himself down; firstly, as a reporter of facts pertaining to Natural History and Science, imparted to him in conversations with his acquaintance; and next as a Fellow of the Royal Society, when that now deservedly famous corporation became an established fact. The quaintness, rising almost to simplicity, with which these details are recorded in no respect detracts from their amusing quality.
Commencing, then, with an entry under date September 11th, 1661, we read:—
"To Dr. Williams, who did show me how a clog that he hath do kill all the cats that come thither to kill his pigeons, and do afterwards bury them ; and do it with so much care that they shall be quite covered ; that if the tip of the tail hangs out, he will take up the cat again, and dig the hole deeper. Which is very strange ; and he tells me that he do believe that he hath killed above 100 cats." — Vol. i., p. 219.
Perhaps in the present day the matter-of-fact Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have had something to say to Dr. Williams.
On May 28rd, 1661:— "At table I had very good discourse with Mr. Ashmole, wherein he did assure me that frogs and many insects do often fall from the sky ready formed."— Vol. i., p. 202.
It is difficult to say whose credulity is here most to be admired, that of Samuel Pepys or Mr. Ashmole, who, better known as an antiquary and hereafter as founder of the Museum at Oxford bearing his name, had probably strayed away from the strict line of his usual studies.
Pepys became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1685, soon after it had received its charter from Charles II.
