Evelyn's _Diary_, however, with all its desert, sinks into insignificance beside the _Diary_ of Samuel Pepys, but the same remark applies to almost every diary in the world. Pepys's _Diary_ has been frequently compared with Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, and with justice in so far as the charm of each arises from the inimitable _naïveté_ of the author's self-revelations. Boswell had a much greater character than his own to draw, but Pepys had to be his own Johnson. It is giving him no excessive praise to say that he makes himself as interesting as Johnson and Boswell together. There cannot be a stronger proof of the infinite interest and importance of humanity that when we for once get a fellow-creature to depict himself as he really is, the most trivial details become matters of serious concern. We sympathize with Pepys as we sympathize with Ulysses, and are for the time much more anxious about the liquidation of his tailor's bill, or the adjustment of his misunderstandings with his wife, than 'what the Swede intends or what the French.' The only drawback is that the Pepys in whom we are so deeply interested is, after all, not altogether the true Pepys; not the distinguished civil servant or the intelligent promoter of science; not the man as he appeared to his friends and contemporaries, but an incarnation of whatever was petty, or ludicrous, or self-seeking in a man of no inconsiderable official and intellectual distinction. 'A very worthy, industrious, and curious person,' says Evelyn, 'universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things, skilled in music, a very great cherisher of learned men, of whom he had the conversation.' All these traits are abundantly confirmed by passages in the _Diary_, and yet, so infinitely more vivid is the delineation of the writer's foibles, that one attempting to draw his character from the _Diary_ would hardly have noticed them.