The Diary by Samuel Pepys (children's ebooks online TXT) 📕

Mr. Gauden’s present of plate, the two flaggons, which indeed are so noble that I hardly can think that they are yet mine. So blessing God for it, we down to dinner mighty pleasant, and so up after dinner for a while, and I then to Whitehall, walked thither, having at home met with a letter of Captain Cooke’s, with which he had sent a boy for me to see, whom he did intend to recommend to me. I therefore went and there met and spoke with him. He gives me great hopes of the boy, which pleases me, and at Chapel I there met Mr. Blagrave, who gives a report of the boy, and he showed me him, and I spoke to him, and the boy seems a good willing boy to come to me, and I hope will do well. I am to speak to Mr. Townsend to hasten his clothes for him, and then he is to come. So I walked homeward and met with Mr. Spong, and he with me as far as the Old Exchange talking of many ingenuous2238 things, musique, and at last of glasses, and I find him still the same ingenuous man that ever he was, and do among other fine things tell me that by his microscope of his owne making he do discover that the wings of a moth is made just as the feathers of the wing of a bird, and that most plainly and certainly. While we were talking came by several poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being at a conventicle. They go like lambs, without any resistance. I would to God they would either conform, or be more wise, and not be catched! Thence parted with him, mightily pleased with his company, and away homeward, calling at Dan Rawlinson, and supped there with my uncle Wight, and then home and eat again for form sake with her, and then to prayers and to bed.

8th. Up and abroad with Sir W. Batten, by coach to St. James’s, where by the way he did tell me how Sir J. Minnes would many times arrogate to himself the doing of that that all the Board have equal share in, and more that to himself which he hath had nothing to do in, and particularly the late paper given in by him to the Duke, the translation of a Dutch print concerning the quarrel between us and them, which he did give as his own when it was Sir Richard Ford’s wholly. Also he told me how Sir W. Penn (it falling in our discourse touching Mrs. Falconer) was at first very great for Mr. Coventry to bring him in guests, and that at high rates for places, and very open was he to me therein. After business done with the Duke, I home to the Coffeehouse, and so home to dinner, and after dinner to hang up my fine pictures in my dining room, which makes it very pretty, and so my wife and I abroad to the King’s playhouse, she giving me her time of the last month, she having not seen any then; so my vowe is not broke at all, it costing me no more money than it would have done upon her, had she gone both her times that were due to her. Here we saw Flora’s Figarys.2239 I never saw it before, and by the most ingenuous performance of the young jade Flora, it seemed as pretty a pleasant play as ever I saw in my life. So home to supper, and then to my office late, Mr. Andrews and I to talk about our victualling commission, and then he being gone I to set down my four days past journalls and expenses, and so home to bed.

9th. Up, and to my office, and there we sat all the morning, at noon home, and there by appointment Mr. Blagrave came and dined with me, and brought a friend of his of the Chapel with him. Very merry at dinner, and then up to my chamber and there we sung a Psalm or two of Lawes’s, then he and I a little talk by ourselves of his kinswoman that is to come to live with my wife, who is to come about ten days hence, and I hope will do well. They gone I to my office, and there my head being a little troubled with the little wine I drank, though mixed with beer, but it may be a little more than I used to do, and yet I cannot say so, I went home and spent the afternoon with my wife talking, and then in the evening a little to my office, and so home to supper and to bed. This day comes the news that the Emperour hath beat the Turke;2240 killed the Grand Vizier and several great Bassas, with an army of 80,000 men killed and routed; with some considerable loss of his own side, having lost three generals, and the French forces all cut off almost. Which is thought as good a service to the Emperour as beating the Turke almost, for had they conquered they would have been as troublesome to him.2241

10th. Up, and, being ready, abroad to do several small businesses, among others to find out one to engrave my tables upon my new sliding rule with silver plates, it being so small that Browne that made it cannot get one to do it. So I find out Cocker,2242 the famous writing-master, and get him to do it, and I set an hour by him to see him design it all; and strange it is to see him with his natural eyes to cut so small at his first designing it, and read it all over, without any missing, when for my life I could not, with my