21st.  Up, and with Sir J. Minnes to White Hall by his coach, by the way talking of my brother John to get a spiritual promotion for him, which I am now to looke after, for as much as he is shortly to be Master in Arts, and writes me this weeke a Latin letter that he is to go into orders this Lent.  There to the Duke’s chamber, and find our fellows discoursing there on our business, so I was sorry to come late, but no hurte was done thereby.  Here the Duke, among other things, did bring out a book of great antiquity of some of the customs of the Navy, about 100 years since, which he did lend us to read and deliver him back again.  Thence I to the Exchequer, and there did strike my tallys for a quarter for Tangier and carried them home with me, and thence to Trinity-house, being invited to an Elder Brother’s feast; and there met and sat by Mr. Prin, and had good discourse about the privileges of Parliament, which, he says, are few to the Commons’ House, and those not examinable by them, but only by the House of Lords.  Thence with my Lord Bruncker to Gresham College, the first time after the sicknesse that I was there, and the second time any met.  And here a good lecture of Mr. Hooke’s about the trade of felt-making, very pretty.  And anon alone with me about the art of drawing pictures by Prince Rupert’s rule and machine, and another of Dr. Wren’s;

     [Afterwards the famous Sir Christopher Wren.  He was one of the
     mainstays of the Royal Society.]

but he says nothing do like squares, or, which is the best in the world, like a darke roome,—­[The camera obscura.]—­which pleased me mightily.  Thence with Povy home to my house, and there late settling accounts with him, which was very troublesome to me, and he gone, found Mr. Hill below, who sat with me till late talking, and so away, and we to bed.

22nd.  Up, and to the office, where sat all the morning.  At noon home to dinner and thence by coach with my wife for ayre principally for her.  I alone stopped at Hales’s and there mightily am pleased with my wife’s picture that is begun there, and with Mr. Hill’s, though I must [owne] I am not more pleased with it now the face is finished than I was when I saw it the second time of sitting.  Thence to my Lord Sandwich’s, but he not within, but goes to-morrow.  My wife to Mrs. Hunt’s, who is lately come to towne and grown mighty fat.  I called her there, and so home and late at the office, and so home to supper and to bed.  We are much troubled that the sicknesse in general (the town being so full of people) should be but three, and yet of the particular disease of the plague there should be ten encrease.