SAMUEL PEPYS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 April 1938, Page 4

SAMUEL PEPYS

* ENTHUSIASM FOR MUSIC. Samuel Pepys could not grow up. He never learned the so-called expediency of curbing his childist enthusiasms, remarks a writer in the “Christian Science Monitor.” And his deepest enthusiasm was for all kinds of music—“musique ... I cannot

but give way to, whatever my business is.” He would sit up late and rise early, when his warm heart was moved with the longing to sing or fiddle or pipe. To him merry-making was almost inseparable from music; whether he was sitting, up with his wife and servants, or dining with old cronies, or even travelling by boat or coach with jovial strangers, he would spontaneously burst into song, or take out his lute, his flageolet or his “viallin.” Pepys was not merely an inquisitive' gossip who noted down scandal and all the superficialities of everyday life, with no sense of deeper issues, with no strong feelings, no appreciation of beauty. It is true that, with his great gusto, his childish, indiscriminate interest in all the life of a great city, he vzrites at equal length on matters of State, such as the Coronation, and on personal trivialities. But music laid bare a “high seriousness” in his nature, and inspired him to prose of a beauty undreamt of in a mere gossip-writer.