Note 3 — Pepys and His Diary

A curious circumstance in connection with the first reading of the Diary is worth mentioning. An indefatigable student, it is said, toiled at its decipherment from twelve to fourteen hours a day for the space of three or four years. All the while—such is the strange untowardness of earthly things—Pepys had left in his library a long-hand transcript of his short-hand account of Charles the Second’s escape, and this, had it been known at the time, would have served the purpose of the required key.