to the
office, and there very late, very busy, and so home to supper and to
bed.

19th (Lord's day). Up and to my chamber, and there began to draw out
fair and methodically my accounts of Tangier, in order to shew them to
the Lords. But by and by comes by agreement Mr. Reeves, and after him
Mr. Spong, and all day with them, both before and after dinner, till
ten o'clock at night, upon opticke enquiries, he bringing me a frame
he closes on, to see how the rays of light do cut one another, and in
a darke room with smoake, which is very pretty. He did also bring a
lanthorne with pictures in glasse, to make strange things appear on a
wall, very pretty. We did also at night see Jupiter and his girdle
and satellites, very fine, with my twelve-foote glasse, but could
not Saturne, he being very dark. Spong and I had also several fine
discourses upon the globes this afternoon, particularly why the fixed
stars do not rise and set at the same houre all the yeare long, which he
could not demonstrate, nor I neither, the reason of. So, it being late,
after supper they away home. But it vexed me to understand no more from
Reeves and his glasses touching the nature and reason of the several
refractions of the several figured glasses, he understanding the acting
part, but not one bit the theory, nor can make any body understand it,
which is a strange dullness, methinks. I did not hear anything yesterday
or at all to confirm either Sir Thos. Allen's news of the 10 or 12 ships
taken, nor of the disorder at Amsterdam upon the news of the burning of
the ships, that he [De Witt] should be fled to the Prince of Orange, it
being generally believed that he was gone to France before.

20th. Waked this morning, about six o'clock, with a violent knocking at
Sir J. Minnes's doore, to call up Mrs. Hammon, crying out that Sir J.
Minnes is a-dying. He come home ill of an ague on Friday night. I saw
him on Saturday, after his fit of the ague, and then was pretty lusty.
Which troubles me mightily, for he is a very good, harmless, honest
gentleman, though not fit for the business. But I much fear a worse
may come, that may be more uneasy to me. Up, and to Deptford by water,
reading "Othello, Moore of Venice," which I ever heretofore esteemed
a mighty good play, but having so lately read "The Adventures of Five
Houres," it seems a mean thing. Walked back, and so home, and then down
to the Old Swan and drank at Betty Michell's, and so to Westminster to