SAMUEL PEPYS AND SPAIN

I claim that Samuel Pepys was a man of letters as well as an actor in and a recorder of English history. Though he was a poor boy he had a good education at the Huntingdon Grammar School and St Paul's School in London, completed at Cambridge at Magdalene College, from which he took his B.A. degree in 1654. I make my claim chiefly on the merit of his English prose, which must be the product of his schooling; it is equally pungent if less formal in the pages of his diary as in the letters of his old age. He was interested in all that surrounded him, he observed it well, and he also possessed considerable insight into his fellows. A few extracts both from the Diary and from the letters may serve to illustrate my enthusiasm. After his brother Tom's death Pepys went from the house to the church to see about the grave on 15 June, 1664: