course, we to dancing, and very good
sport, and mightily pleased I was with the company. After our first bout
of dancing, Knipp and I to sing, and Mercer and Captain Downing (who
loves and understands musique) would by all means have my song of
"Beauty, retire." which Knipp had spread abroad; and he extols it above
any thing he ever heard, and, without flattery, I know it is good in its
kind. This being done and going to dance again, comes news that White
Hall was on fire; and presently more particulars, that the Horse-guard
was on fire;

["Nov. 9th. Between seven and eight at night, there happened a fire
in the Horse Guard House, in the Tilt Yard, over against Whitehall,
which at first arising, it is supposed, from some snuff of a candle
falling amongst the straw, broke out with so sudden a flame, that at
once it seized the north-west part of that building; but being so
close under His Majesty's own eye, it was, by the timely help His
Majesty and His Royal Highness caused to be applied, immediately
stopped, and by ten o'clock wholly mastered, with the loss only of
that part of the building it had at first seized."--The London
Gazette, No. 103.--B.]

and so we run up to the garret, and find it so; a horrid great fire; and
by and by we saw and heard part of it blown up with powder. The ladies
begun presently to be afeard: one fell into fits. The whole town in
an alarme. Drums beat and trumpets, and the guards every where
spread, running up and down in the street. And I begun to have mighty
apprehensions how things might be at home, and so was in mighty pain
to get home, and that that encreased all is that we are in expectation,
from common fame, this night, or to-morrow, to have a massacre, by the
having so many fires one after another, as that in the City, and at
same time begun in Westminster, by the Palace, but put out; and since
in Southwarke, to the burning down some houses; and now this do make all
people conclude there is something extraordinary in it; but nobody knows
what. By and by comes news that the fire has slackened; so then we were
a little cheered up again, and to supper, and pretty merry. But, above
all, there comes in the dumb boy that I knew in Oliver's time, who is
mightily acquainted here, and with Downing; and he made strange signs of
the fire, and how the King was abroad, and many things they understood,
but I could not, which I wondering at, and