CHARACTER OF THE LIBRARY

THE Library here catalogued consists of nearly three thousand volumes collected by Samuel Pepys the Diarist (1632–1703), and now the property in perpetual trust of the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge. It is unique in several respects: it may be confidently stated that no other collection of books has remained so nearly in the condition in which it was left by its original owner. Save, perhaps, for a few volumes added or completed by his executor, after his death and by the instructions of his will, every volume was selected by Samuel Pepys. The great majority of the volumes are in a uniform binding; all bear some mark of his care; and the whole Library is stored in presses designed by him, on a system for which he alone was primarily responsible. With the greatest forethought for its future, he bequeathed it under conditions which prevent any additions, and have almost succeeded in preventing any losses.

In character it is, for a private Library, remarkably heterogeneous. Were the Diary non-existent, and were no other source of knowledge available, a judgement of Pepys's character formed upon a consideration of the contents of his Library would reveal him to have been a man of great breadth of interest and catholicity of taste, an inquisitive scholar conversant with more languages than his own, and a person in whom a a love of order and neatness in detail was paramount.