Mr. Pepys : an introduction to the Diary together with a sketch of his later life / by J.R. Tanner.

  • Joseph Robson Tanner
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mr. Pepys : an introduction to the Diary together with a sketch of his later life / by J.R. Tanner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    owner of Audley End the Mastership of Mag¬ dalene lay ; and he issued a second edition in 1828. In these editions the original Diary was abridged 1 and heavily expurgated,2 and the editor found himself charged in consequence with having “ used the pruning-knife with too much freedom ” and excluded “ the most entertaining passages.” The result of this criticism was that in the preface to the third edition, published in 1848-9 under a new title, Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Depys, F.R.S. . . . , many of the omitted passages were inserted, “ with the exception only of such entries as were devoid of the slightest interest, and many others of so indelicate a character that no one with a well-regulated mind will regret their loss ; nor could they have been tolerated, even in the licentious days to which they relate.” The editor had paid a tribute to the labours of the decipherer which, for a generation that was in¬ clined to be effusive in its prefaces, appears singu¬ larly frigid : “ In justice to the Reverend John Smith3 (with whom I am not personally ac¬ quainted) it may be added that he appears to have 1 In the original edition of 1825 scarcely half the MS. was printed. 2 M. Lucas-Dubreton speaks of Lord Braybrooke as “ auteur de notes estimable mais d’une pruderie exigeante ” (La petite vie de Samuel Pepys Londonien, 1923, p. 17). 3 John Smith had been ordained in 1824, and from 1832 was Rector of Baldock, Herts.
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