will pull the house down on Tuesday next. I sent word of
this to Court, but nothing will helpe it but money and a rope. Late at
night to Mr. Glanville's there to lie for a night or two, and to bed.

5th (Lord's day). Up, and after being trimmed, by boat to the Cockpitt,
where I heard the Duke of Albemarle's chaplin make a simple sermon:
among other things, reproaching the imperfection of humane learning,
he cried: "All our physicians cannot tell what an ague is, and all our
arithmetique is not able to number the days of a man;" which, God knows,
is not the fault of arithmetique, but that our understandings reach not
the thing. To dinner, where a great deale of silly discourse, but the
worst is I hear that the plague increases much at Lambeth, St. Martin's
and Westminster, and fear it will all over the city. Thence I to the
Swan, thinking to have seen Sarah but she was at church, and so I by
water to Deptford, and there made a visit to Mr. Evelyn, who, among
other things, showed me most excellent painting in little; in distemper,
Indian incke, water colours: graveing; and, above all, the whole secret
of mezzo-tinto, and the manner of it, which is very pretty, and good
things done with it. He read to me very much also of his discourse, he
hath been many years and now is about, about Guardenage; which will be
a most noble and pleasant piece. He read me part of a play or two of
his making, very good, but not as he conceits them, I think, to be.
He showed me his Hortus Hyemalis; leaves laid up in a book of several
plants kept dry, which preserve colour, however, and look very finely,
better than any Herball. In fine, a most excellent person he is, and
must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well be
so, being a man so much above others. He read me, though with too much
gusto, some little poems of his own, that were not transcendant, yet
one or two very pretty epigrams; among others, of a lady looking in at a
grate, and being pecked at by an eagle that was there. Here comes in, in
the middle of our discourse Captain Cocke, as drunk as a dogg, but could
stand, and talk and laugh. He did so joy himself in a brave woman that
he had been with all the afternoon, and who should it be but my Lady
Robinson, but very troublesome he is with his noise and talke,
and laughing, though very pleasant. With him in his coach to Mr.
Glanville's, where he sat with Mrs. Penington and myself a good while
talking of this fin