Pepys’s Diary was unequalled in its peculiar quality of amusement.  The lightest part of the Diary was of value, historically, for it enabled one to see London of 200 years ago, and, what was more, to see it with the eager eyes of Pepys.  It was not Pepys the official who had brought that large gathering together that day in honour of his memory:  it was Pepys the Diarist.”

In concluding this account of the chief particulars of Pepys’s life it may be well to add a few words upon the pronunciation of his name.  Various attempts appear to have been made to represent this phonetically.  Lord Braybrooke, in quoting the entry of death from St. Olave’s Registers, where the spelling is “Peyps,” wrote, “This is decisive as to the proper pronunciation of the name.”  This spelling may show that the name was pronounced as a monosyllable, but it is scarcely conclusive as to anything else, and Lord Braybrooke does not say what he supposes the sound of the vowels to have been.  At present there are three pronunciations in use—­Peps, which is the most usual; Peeps, which is the received one at Magdalene College, and Peppis, which I learn from Mr. Walter C. Pepys is the one used by other branches of the family.  Mr. Pepys has paid particular attention to this point, and in his valuable “Genealogy of the Pepys Family” (1887) he has collected seventeen varieties of spelling of the name, which are as follows, the dates of the documents in which the form appears being attached: 

1.  Pepis (1273); 2.  Pepy (1439); 3.  Pypys (1511); 4.  Pipes (1511); 5.  Peppis (1518); 6.  Peppes (1519); 7.  Pepes (1520); 8.  Peppys (1552); 9.  Peaps (1636); 10.  Pippis (1639); 11.  Peapys (1653); 12.  Peps (1655); 13.  Pypes (1656); 14.  Peypes (1656); 15.  Peeps (1679); 16.  Peepes (1683); 17.  Peyps (1703).  Mr. Walter Pepys adds:—­

“The accepted spelling of the name ‘Pepys’ was adopted generally about the end of the seventeenth century, though it occurs many years before that time.  There have been numerous ways of pronouncing the name, as ‘Peps,’ ‘Peeps,’ and ’ Peppis.’  The Diarist undoubtedly pronounced it ‘Peeps,’ and the lineal descendants of his sister Paulina, the family of ‘Pepys Cockerell’ pronounce it so to this day.  The other branches of the family all pronounce it as ‘Peppis,’ and I am led to be satisfied that the latter pronunciation is correct by the two facts that in the earliest known writing it is spelt ‘Pepis,’ and that the French form of the name is ‘Pepy.’”

The most probable explanation is that the name in the seventeenth century was either pronounced ‘Pips’ or ‘Papes’; for both the forms ‘ea’ and ‘ey’ would represent the latter pronunciation.  The general change in the pronunciation of the spelling ‘ea’ from ‘ai’ to ‘ee’ took place in a large number of words at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth-century, and three words at least (yea, break, and great) keep this old pronunciation still.  The present Irish