Pepys: Samuel

No one knowsfor sure why Samuel Pepys wrote, his diary. Upon his death, he arranged for the six leather-bound volumes to be deposited at Cambridge, along with a key to his shorthand manuscript. Because of this and other events, some scholars say that Pepys wrote his diaries with the intention of becoming famousafter his death. However, my analysis of Samuel Pepys and his diaries suggests that he wrote for purely personal reasons. 

The diarist Samuel Pepys suffered chronic ague. Oliver Cromwell died of the ague in a cool September 1658. 

Charles II took much interest in Ic Febure s laboratory at St. James s Palace. In 1662 he took John Evelyn to see it and to meet, as Evelyn wrote in his Diary, Monsieur Lefevre, his chemist (and who had been my master in Paris), to see his accurate preparation for the composing Sir Walter Ralegh s rare cordial he made a learned discourse before his Majesty in French on each ingredient. Samuel Pepys also records in his famous Diary that he paid a visit in 1669 to the King s little elaboratory, under his closet [study], a pretty place and there saw a great many chemical glasses and things, but understood none of them. ... 

The apparatus in Figure 119b has a built-in efficiency of two collection vessels. This double alembic or distilling head can be made of iron if vegetables are distilled or steam-distilled. However, the distillation of oil of vitriol and other acidic substances (Figure 120) requires tin or tin-lined vessels. Distillation of mercury, Le Fevre notes, can never employ metallic vessels since amalgamation will occur. The diarist Samuel Pepys visited Le Fevre s laboratory on January 15,... 

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Selections, Harper Torch-books, TTie Academy Library, Harper Bros., N. Y., I960. 

Prince Rupert of Bavaria (1619-1682) was the grandson of James I of England and nephew of Charles II. He introduced his drops to England in the 1640s, where they became party pieces in the court of Charles II. The famous diarist Samuel Pepys wrote about them in his diary on January 13, 1662. 

Newton, I., 1687. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first ed. Royal Society (Samuel Pepys), London. 

Samuel Pepys Diary Home Page. 2002. http //www.pepys.info/fire.html. 

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