sounds as well as any man in the world, and better than Sir W.
Davenant or any body else, I do not like by no means, but was sick of it
and of him for it. He gone, Dr. Clerke fell to reading a new play, newly
writ, of a friend's of his; but, by his discourse and confession
afterwards, it was his own. Some things, but very few, moderately good;
but infinitely far from the conceit, wit, design, and language of very
many plays that I know; so that, but for compliment, I was quite tired
with hearing it. It being done, and commending the play, but against my
judgment, only the prologue magnifying the happiness of our former poets
when such sorry things did please the world as was then acted, was very
good. So set Mrs. Pierce at home, and away ourselves home, and there to
my office, and then my chamber till my eyes were sore at writing and
making ready my letter and accounts for the Commissioners of Tangier
to-morrow, which being done, to bed, hearing that there was a very great
disorder this day at the Ticket Office, to the beating and bruising of the
face of Carcasse very much. A foul evening this was to-night, and I
mightily troubled to get a coach home; and, which is now my common
practice, going over the ruins in the night, I rid with my sword drawn in
the coach.

14th. Up and to the office, where Carcasse comes with his plaistered
face, and called himself Sir W. Batten's martyr, which made W. Batten mad
almost, and mighty quarrelling there was. We spent the morning almost
wholly upon considering some way of keeping the peace at the Ticket
Office; but it is plain that the care of that office is nobody's work, and
that is it that makes it stand in the ill condition it do. At noon home
to dinner, and after dinner by coach to my Lord Chancellor's, and there a
meeting: the Duke of York, Duke of Albemarle, and several other Lords of
the Commission of Tangier. And there I did present a state of my
accounts, and managed them well; and my Lord Chancellor did say, though he
was, in other things, in an ill humour, that no man in England was of more
method, nor made himself better understood than myself. But going, after
the business of money was over, to other businesses, of settling the
garrison, he did fling out, and so did the Duke of York, two or three
severe words touching my Lord Bellasses: that he would have no Governor
come away from thence in less than three years; no, though his lady were
with child. "And," says