thy
smile often, and many others of the parish, who, I perceive, have known
him, and were in mighty expectation of hearing him preach, but could not
forbear smiling, and she particularly upon me, and I on her. So home to
dinner: and before dinner to my Office, to set down my journal for this
week, and then home to dinner; and after dinner to get my wife and boy,
one after another, to read to me: and so spent the afternoon and the
evening, and so after supper to bed. And thus endeth this month, with
many different days of sadness and mirth, from differences between me
and my wife, from her remembrance of my late unkindness to her with
Willet, she not being able to forget it, but now and then hath her
passionate remembrance of it as often as prompted to it by any occasion;
but this night we are at present very kind. And so ends this month.

FEBRUARY 1668-1669

February 1st. Up, and by water from the Tower to White Hall, the first
time that I have gone to that end of the town by water, for two or three
months, I think, since I kept a coach, which God send propitious to me;
but it is a very great convenience. I went to a Committee of Tangier,
but it did not meet, and so I meeting Mr. Povy, he and I away to
Dancre's, to speak something touching the pictures I am getting him
to make for me. And thence he carried me to Mr. Streeter's, the famous
history-painter over the way, whom I have often heard of, but did
never see him before; and there I found him, and Dr. Wren, and several
Virtuosos, looking upon the paintings which he is making for the new
Theatre at Oxford: and, indeed, they look as if they would be very fine,
and the rest think better than those of Rubens in the Banqueting-house
at White Hall, but I do not so fully think so. But they will certainly
be very noble; and I am mightily pleased to have the fortune to see this
man and his work, which is very famous; and he a very civil little man,
and lame, but lives very handsomely. So thence to my Lord Bellassis,
and met him within: my business only to see a chimney-piece of Dancre's
doing, in distemper, with egg to keep off the glaring of the light,
which I must have done for my room: and indeed it is pretty, but, I
must confess, I do think it is not altogether so beautiful as the oyle
pictures; but I will have some of one, and some of another. Thence set
him down at Little Turnstile, and so I home, and there eat a little
dinner, and away with my wife by coach to