ike to come out of all the Poll Bill for the use
of this office for buying of goods. I did herein some few courtesies for
particular friends I wished well to, and for the King's service also, and
was therefore well pleased with what was done. Sir W. Pen this day did
bring an order from the Duke of York for our receiving from him a small
vessel for a fireship, and taking away a better of the King's for it, it
being expressed for his great service to the King. This I am glad of, not
for his sake, but that it will give me a better ground, I believe, to ask
something for myself of this kind, which I was fearful to begin. This do
make Sir W. Pen the most kind to me that can be. I suppose it is this,
lest it should find any opposition from me, but I will not oppose, but
promote it. After dinner, with my wife, to the King's house to see "The
Mayden Queene," a new play of Dryden's, mightily commended for the
regularity of it, and the strain and wit; and, the truth is, there is a
comical part done by Nell,

["Her skill increasing with her years, other poets sought to obtain
recommendations of her wit and beauty to the success of their
writings. I have said that Dryden was one of the principal
supporters of the King's house, and ere long in one of his new plays
a principal character was set apart for the popular comedian. The
drama was a tragi-comedy called 'Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen,'
and an additional interest was attached to its production from the
king having suggested the plot to its author, and calling it 'his
play.'"--Cunningham's Story of Nell Gwyn, ed: 1892, pp. 38,39.]

which is Florimell, that I never can hope ever to see the like done again,
by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so
great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world
before as Nell do this, both as a mad girle, then most and best of all
when she comes in like a young gallant; and hath the notions and carriage
of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess,
admire her. Thence home and to the office, where busy a while, and then
home to read the lives of Henry 5th and 6th, very fine, in Speede, and to
bed. This day I did pay a bill of L50 from my father, being so much out
of my own purse gone to pay my uncle Robert's legacy to my aunt Perkins's
child.

3rd (Lord's day). Lay long, merrily talking with my wife, and then