and a roasted pullet for dinner, and I sent for a mince-pie abroad, my
wife not being well to make any herself yet. After dinner sat talking a
good while with her, her [pain] being become less, and then to see Sir
W. Pen a little, and so to my office, practising arithmetique alone and
making an end of last night's book with great content till eleven at
night, and so home to supper and to bed.

26th. Up, my wife to the making of Christmas pies all day, being now
pretty well again, and I abroad to several places about some businesses,
among others bought a bake-pan in Newgate Market, and sent it home,
it cost me 16s. So to Dr. Williams, but he is out of town, then to the
Wardrobe. Hither come Mr. Battersby; and we falling into a discourse of
a new book of drollery in verse called Hudebras,

[The first edition of Butler's "Hudibras" is dated 1663, and it
probably had only been published a few days when Pepys bought it and
sold it at a loss. He subsequently endeavoured to appreciate the
work, but was not successful. The edition in the Pepysian Library
is dated 1689.]

I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple: cost me 2s.
6d. But when I came to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the Presbyter
Knight going to the warrs, that I am ashamed of it; and by and by
meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d. Here we
dined with many tradesmen that belong to the Wardrobe, but I was weary
soon of their company, and broke up dinner as soon as I could, and away,
with the greatest reluctancy and dispute (two or three times my reason
stopping my sense and I would go back again) within myself, to the
Duke's house and saw "The Villaine," which I ought not to do without
my wife, but that my time is now out that I did undertake it for. But,
Lord! to consider how my natural desire is to pleasure, which God be
praised that he has given me the power by my late oaths to curb so well
as I have done, and will do again after two or three plays more. Here I
was better pleased with the play than I was at first, understanding
the design better than I did. Here I saw Gosnell and her sister at a
distance, and could have found it in my heart to have accosted them, but
thought not prudent. But I watched their going out and found that they
came, she, her sister and another woman, alone, without any man, and did
go over the fields a foot. I find that I have an inclination to have her
come