hortly sold there,
that he might buy at the candle and pay for the goods out of bills, and
all would [not] do any thing, but that money must go all another way,
while the King's service is undone, and those that trust him perish.
These things grieve me to the heart. The Prince, I hear, is every day
better and better. So away by water home, stopping at Michell's, where
Mrs. Martin was, and I there drank with them and whispered with Betty, who
tells me all is well, but was prevented in something she would have said,
her 'marido venant' just then, a news which did trouble me, and so drank
and parted and home, and there took up my wife by coach, and to Mrs.
Pierce's, there to take her up, and with them to Dr. Clerke's, by
invitation, where we have not been a great while, nor had any mind to go
now, but that the Dr., whom I love, would have us choose a day. Here was
his wife, painted, and her sister Worshipp, a widow now and mighty pretty
in her mourning. Here was also Mr. Pierce and Mr. Floyd, Secretary to the
Lords Commissioners of Prizes, and Captain Cooke, to dinner, an ill and
little mean one, with foul cloth and dishes, and everything poor.
Discoursed most about plays and the Opera, where, among other vanities,
Captain Cooke had the arrogance to say that he was fain to direct Sir W.
Davenant in the breaking of his verses into such and such lengths,
according as would be fit for musick, and how he used to swear at
Davenant, and command him that way, when W. Davenant would be angry, and
find fault with this or that note--but a vain coxcomb I perceive he is,
though he sings and composes so well. But what I wondered at, Dr. Clerke
did say that Sir W. Davenant is no good judge of a dramatick poem, finding
fault with his choice of Henry the 5th, and others, for the stage, when I
do think, and he confesses, "The Siege of Rhodes" as good as ever was
writ. After dinner Captain Cooke and two of his boys to sing, but it was
indeed both in performance and composition most plainly below what I heard
last night, which I could not have believed. Besides overlooking the
words which he sung, I find them not at all humoured as they ought to be,
and as I believed he had done all he had sett. Though he himself do
indeed sing in a manner as to voice and manner the best I ever heard yet,
and a strange mastery he hath in making of extraordinary surprising
closes, that are mighty pretty, but his bragging that he do understand
tones and