to mend.  Here I had a noble and costly dinner for them, dressed by a man-cooke, as that the other day was, and pretty merry we were, as I could be with this company and so great a charge.  We sat long, and after much talk of the plenty of her country in fish, but in nothing also that is pleasing, we broke up with great kindness, and when it begun to be dark we parted, they in one coach home, and I in another to Westminster Hall, where by appointment Mrs. Burroughs and I were to meet, but did not after I had spent the whole evening there.  Only I did go drink at the Swan, and there did meet with Sarah, who is now newly married, and there I did lay the beginnings of a future ‘amour con elle’. . . . .  Thence it being late away called at Mrs. Burroughs’ mother’s door, and she come out to me, and I did hazer whatever I would . . . . and then parted, and home, and after some playing at cards with my wife, we to supper and to bed.

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     Amending of bad blood by borrowing from a better body
     And for his beef, says he, “Look how fat it is”
     First their apes, that they may be afterwards their slaves
     For a land-tax and against a general excise
     I had six noble dishes for them, dressed by a man-cook
     In opposition to France, had made us throw off their fashion
     Magnifying the graces of the nobility and prelates
     Origin in the use of a plane against the grain of the wood
     Play on the harpsicon, till she tired everybody
     Reading to my wife and brother something in Chaucer
     Said that there hath been a design to poison the King
     Tax the same man in three or four several capacities
     There I did lay the beginnings of a future ‘amour con elle’
     Too much ill newes true, to afflict ourselves with uncertain
     What I had writ foule in short hand

THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS M.A.  F.R.S.

CLERK OF THE ACTS AND SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY

Transcribed from the shorthand manuscript in the PEPYSIAN library
Magdalene college Cambridge by the Rev.  Mynors bright M.A.  Late fellow
and President of the college

(Unabridged)

WITH LORD BRAYBROOKE’S NOTES

Editedwith additions by

Henry B. Wheatley F.S.A.

Diary of Samuel Pepys. 
December
1666

December 1st.  Up, and to the office, where we sat all the morning.  At home to dinner, and then abroad walking to the Old Swan, and in my way I did see a cellar in Tower Streete in a very fresh fire, the late great winds having blown it up.

[The fire continued burning in some cellars of the ruins of the city
for four months, though it rained in the month of October ten days
without ceasing (Rugge’s “Diurnal").—­B.]