["Musicae Compendium.”  By Rene Des Cartes, Amsterdam, 1617; rendered into English, London, 1653, 4to.  The translator, whose name did not appear on the title, was William, Viscount Brouncker, Pepys’s colleague, who proved his knowledge of music by the performance.]

—­the latter of which I understand not, nor think he did well that writ it, though a most learned man.  Then, after supper, I made the boy play upon his lute, which I have not done twice before since he come to me; and so, my mind in mighty content, we to bed.

26th.  Lay long with pleasure, prating with my wife, and then up, and I a little to the Office, and my head busy setting some papers and accounts to rights, which being long neglected because of my eyes will take me up much time and care to do, but it must be done.  So home at noon to dinner, and then abroad with my wife to a play, at the Duke of York’s house, the house full of ordinary citizens.  The play was “Women Pleased,” which we had never seen before; and, though but indifferent, yet there is a good design for a good play.  So home, and there to talk, and my wife to read to me, and so to bed.

27th (Lord’s day).  Walked to White Hall and there saw the King at chapel; but staid not to hear anything, but went to walk in the Park, with W. Hewer, who was with me; and there, among others, met with Sir G. Downing, and walked with him an hour, talking of business, and how the late war was managed, there being nobody to take care of it, and telling how, when he was in Holland, what he offered the King to do, if he might have power, and they would give him power, and then, upon the least word, perhaps of a woman, to the King, he was contradicted again, and particularly to the loss of all that we lost in Guinny.  He told me that he had so good spies, that he hath had the keys taken out of De Witt’s

[The celebrated John de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland, who, a few years afterwards, was massacred, with his brother Cornelius, by the Dutch mob, enraged at their opposition to the elevation of William of Orange to the Stadtholdership, when the States were overrun by the French army, and the Dutch fleets beaten at sea by the English.  The murder of the De Witts forms one of the main incidents of Alexandre Dumas’s “Black Tulip.”]

pocket when he was a-bed, and his closet opened, and papers brought to him, and left in his hands for an hour, and carried back and laid in the place again, and keys put into his pocket again.  He says that he hath always had their most private debates, that have been but between two or three of the chief of them, brought to him in an hour after, and an hour after that, hath sent word thereof to the King, but nobody here regarded them.  But he tells me the sad news, that he is out of all expectations that ever the debts of the Navy will be paid, if the Parliament do not enable the King to do it by money; all they