After all, Pepys the tailor was allied to good blood before, in spite of the self-denying modesty of the son. Sir Edward Montague, afterwards Lord Sandwich, was the cousin of Samuel, and a kinsman worth having; for he lifted young Pepys from his father’s shop-board to the Board of Admiralty. In our own days it would be difficult to find an Earl at the West End who had for his cousin a tailor, or tailor’s son, in the East; and if such relationship did now exist, the occidental noble would show scant alacrity in benefiting his oriental and hard-working kinsman,—unless indeed the latter were an illegitimate son: then the illicit relative would be sure of a post in a public office. It is wonderful how legitimately in some of those offices the interests of England are now served by illegitimate gentlemen,—gentlemen who owe nothing to their scampish sires but the disgrace of their birth, and the good luck of a very desirable appointment. The career of the old tailor’s son was a remarkable one. He left a yet quiet home, and a not yet jealous wife, to attend Sir Edward Montague upon his expedition to the Sound, in March, 1658. On his return from this expedition he became a clerk in the Army Pay Office, and commenced keeping his incomparable Diary,—the record of his profitable toil, his immoderate vanity, and his little rogueries. As secretary to the two “generals” of the fleet, he was on board the flag-ship which brought back Charles II., and which bestowed on England a gift for which the Church is annually thankful. In 1660 he was promoted to the office of Clerk of the Acts of the Navy; and if to the scenes of his labour, like Charles Lamb at the South Sea Office, he repaired very late in the morning, but compensated for _that_ by retiring very early in the afternoon, it must be also confessed that he accomplished much useful work in a short time, and achieved objects for which his superiors got all the honour. In the time of a disastrous war, this tailor’s son continued to exercise hope and energy when all around him was despair. Samuel Pepys then stood amid desponding officials, like the great Guise amid the sullen French officers in Italy ere victory had consented to sit upon their helms. In the time of the Plague too, the little man (he was as tall as Epaminondas) ungrudgingly took his turn of the pestilence as others had done of the sword; and when nine-tenths of the healthy but craven people had fled from town, he remained at his office and daily stood face to face with grimmest death.