Chapter Penelophon to Pepys's Diary of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

People I have Met, sketches by N. P. Willis (1850). (See Pencillings by the Way.)

Pepin (William), a White friar and most famous preacher at the beginning of the sixteenth century. His sermons, in eight volumes quarto, formed the grand repertory of the preachers of those times.

Qui nescit Pepinare, nescit prædicare.—Proverb.

Pepper Gate, a gate on the east side of the city of Chester. It is said that the daughter of the mayor eloped, and the mayor ordered the gate to be closed. Hence the proverb, When your daughter is stolen, close Pepper Gate; or, in other words, Lock the stable door when the steed is stolen.—Albert Smith: Christopher Tadpole, i.

Pepperpot (Sir Peter), a West Indian epicure, immensely rich, conceited, and irritable.—Foote: The Patron (1764).

Peppers. (See White Horse of the Peppers.)

Peps (Dr. Parker), a court physician who attended the first Mrs. Dombey on her death-bed. Dr. Peps always gave his patients (by mistake, of course) a title, to impress them with the idea that his practice was exclusively confined to the upper ten thousand.—Dickens: Dombey and Son (1846).

Pepys’s Diary. Pepys died in 1703, but his Diary was not published till 1825. It is in shorthand, and is a record of his personal doings and sayings from January, 1600, to May, 1669.

Lord Jeffrey says: He [Pepys] finds time to go to every play, to every execution, to every procession, fire, concert, riot, trial, review, city feast, and picture gallery, that he can hear of. Nay, there seems scarcely to have been a school examination, a wedding, christening, charity sermon, bull-baiting, philosophical meeting, or private merry-making in his neighbourhood, at which he is not sure to make his appearance. … He is the first to hear all the court scandal and all the public news, to observe the changes of fashion and the downfall of parties,—to pick up funny gossip and to detail philosophical intelligence,—to criticize every new house and carriage that is built,—every new book or new beauty that appears,—every measure the king adopts, and every mistress he discards.