ho come to me and kissed me, and told me that he had often heretofore
kissed my hands, but now he would kiss my lips: protesting that I
was another Cicero, and said, all the world said the same of me. Mr.
Ashburnham, and every creature I met there of the Parliament, or that
knew anything of the Parliament's actings, did salute me with this
honour:--Mr. Godolphin;--Mr. Sands, who swore he would go twenty mile,
at any time, to hear the like again, and that he never saw so many sit
four hours together to hear any man in his life, as there did to hear
me; Mr. Chichly,--Sir John Duncomb,--and everybody do say that the
kingdom will ring of my abilities, and that I have done myself right for
my whole life: and so Captain Cocke, and others of my friends, say that
no man had ever such an opportunity of making his abilities known; and,
that I may cite all at once, Mr. Lieutenant of the Tower did tell me
that Mr. Vaughan did protest to him, and that, in his hearing it, said
so to the Duke of Albemarle, and afterwards to W. Coventry, that he had
sat twenty-six years in Parliament and never heard such a speech there
before: for which the Lord God make me thankful! and that I may make use
of it not to pride and vain-glory, but that, now I have this esteem, I
may do nothing that may lessen it! I spent the morning thus walking in
the Hall, being complimented by everybody with admiration: and at noon
stepped into the Legg with Sir William Warren, who was in the Hall, and
there talked about a little of his business, and thence into the Hall a
little more, and so with him by coach as far as the Temple almost, and
there 'light, to follow my Lord Brouncker's coach, which I spied, and so
to Madam Williams's, where I overtook him, and agreed upon meeting this
afternoon, and so home to dinner, and after dinner with W. Pen, who
come to my house to call me, to White Hall, to wait on the Duke of York,
where he again and all the company magnified me, and several in the
Gallery: among others, my Lord Gerard, who never knew me before nor
spoke to me, desires his being better acquainted with me; and [said]
that, at table where he was, he never heard so much said of any man as
of me, in his whole life. We waited on the Duke of York, and thence into
the Gallery, where the House of Lords waited the King's coming out of
the Park, which he did by and by; and there, in the Vane-room, my Lord
Keeper delivered a message to the King, the Lords being about him,