On Diaries

Johnson was always resolving to begin a diary, reproving himself for his laziness. Similarly I have intended beginning a diary for years, meaning by "diary" a record of events. A reading of Burbellion, however, changed all that. It were foolish for even a Johnson to desire to give us more of himself than a Boswell could; yet, so precarious is literary fame, that had the Great Cham not page 27 been so full of lethargy that he might have robbed Bozzy of much of his freshness, even though there were left to the biographer all the epigrams.

How far should a diary be a record of the inner workings of a man's mind? In Amiel and Evelyn, for instance, we have men who would never have committed to paper a thought of which they had been the slightest scrap ashamed, or one which they had felt it would not do for the world to see. In the case of Pepys (though Lord Braybrooke has made Pepys' as harmless as any old Tory's public life) we should certainly have lost everything had Pepys not learnt a system of shorthand. Even a natural confessor, such as Samuel, would have baulked at inscribing in cold longhand particulars of his disease or of his improper relations with young ladies. Burbellion, that latter-day Pepys in frankness, dreadfully stage-manages his confessions.

But can any man set down all about himself in a book for the world to read? I don't think he can, unless he is assured of absolute secrecy. Pepys, with his shorthand and his hybrid language, thought himself safe, and consequently his journal makes the most interesting reading in history. All diarists since have written with one eye on the publisher.