of whom, being so reputed a wit, all the world do expect great matters.  I having sat here awhile, and eat nothing to-day, did slip out, getting a boy to keep my place; and to the Rose Tavern, and there got half a breast of mutton, off of the spit, and dined all alone.  And so to the play again, where the King and Queen, by and by, come, and all the Court; and the house infinitely full.  But the play, when it come, though there was, here and there, a pretty saying, and that not very many neither, yet the whole of the play had nothing extraordinary in it, at all, neither of language nor design; insomuch that the King I did not see laugh, nor pleased the whole play from the beginning to the end, nor the company; insomuch that I have not been less pleased at a new play in my life, I think.  And which made it the worse was, that there never was worse musick played—­that is, worse things composed, which made me and Captain Rolt, who happened to sit near me, mad.  So away thence, very little satisfied with the play, but pleased with my company.  I carried them to Kensington, to the Grotto, and there we sang, to my great content, only vexed, in going in, to see a son of Sir Heneage Finch’s beating of a poor little dog to death, letting it lie in so much pain that made me mad to see it, till, by and by, the servants of the house chiding of their young master, one of them come with a thong, and killed the dog outright presently.  Thence to Westminster palace, and there took boat and to Fox Hall, where we walked, and eat, and drank, and sang, and very merry.  But I find Mrs. Horsfield one of the veriest citizen’s wives in the world, so full of little silly talk, and now and then a little sillily bawdy, that I believe if you had her sola a man might hazer all with her.  So back by water to Westminster Palace, and there got a coach which carried us as far as the Minorys, and there some thing of the traces broke, and we forced to ’light, and walked to Mrs. Horsfield’s house, it being a long and bad way, and dark, and having there put her in a doors, her husband being in bed, we left her and so back to our coach, where the coachman had put it in order, but could not find his whip in the dark a great while, which made us stay long.  At last getting a neighbour to hold a candle out of their window Mercer found it, and so away we home at almost 12 at night, and setting them both at their homes, I home and to bed.

19th.  Up, and called on Mr. Pierce, who tells me that after all this ado Ward is come to town, and hath appeared to the Commissioners of Accounts and given such answers as he thinks will do every body right, and let the world see that their great expectations and jealousies have been vain in this matter of the prizes.  The Commissioners were mighty inquisitive whether he was not instructed by letters or otherwise from hence from my Lord Sandwich’s friends what to say and do, and particularly from me, which he did wholly deny, as it was true, I not knowing the