[The columna rostrata erected in the Forum to C. Duilius, who obtained a triumph for the first naval victory over the Carthaginians, B.C. 261. Part of the column was discovered in the ruins of the Forum near the Arch of Septimius, and transferred to the Capitol.—B.]
which for the antiquity of the shape of ships, I buy and keepe. Thence to the Exchange, that is, the New Exchange, and looked over some play books and intend to get all the late new plays. So to Westminster, and there at the Swan got a bit of meat and dined alone; and so away toward King’s Street, and spying out of my coach Jane that lived heretofore at Jevons, my barber’s, I went a little further and stopped, and went on foot back, and overtook her, taking water at Westminster Bridge, and spoke to her, and she telling me whither she was going I over the water and met her at Lambeth, and there drank with her; she telling me how he that was so long her servant, did prove to be a married man, though her master told me (which she denies) that he had lain with her several times in his house. There left her ‘sans essayer alcune cose con elle’, and so away by boat to the ’Change, and took coach and to Mr. Hales, where he would have persuaded me to have had the landskipp stand in my picture, but I like it not and will have it otherwise, which I perceive he do not like so well, however is so civil as to say it shall be altered. Thence away to Mrs. Pierces, who was not at home, but gone to my house to visit me with Mrs. Knipp. I therefore took up the little girle Betty and my mayde Mary that now lives there and to my house, where they had been but were gone, so in our way back again met them coming back again to my house in Cornehill, and there stopped laughing at our pretty misfortunes, and so I carried them to Fish Streete, and there treated them with prawns and lobsters, and it beginning to grow darke we away, but the jest is our horses would not draw us up the Hill, but we were fain to ’light and stay till the coachman had made them draw down to the bottom of the Hill, thereby warming their legs, and then they came up cheerfully enough, and we got up and I carried them home, and coming home called at my paper ruler’s and there found black Nan, which pleases me mightily, and having saluted her again and again away home and to bed . . . . . In all my ridings in the coach and intervals my mind hath been full these three weeks of setting in musique “It is decreed, &c.”