for the stage, when I do think,
and he confesses, "The Siege of Rhodes" as good as ever was writ. After
dinner Captain Cooke and two of his boys to sing, but it was indeed
both in performance and composition most plainly below what I heard last
night, which I could not have believed. Besides overlooking the words
which he sung, I find them not at all humoured as they ought to be, and
as I believed he had done all he had sett. Though he himself do indeed
sing in a manner as to voice and manner the best I ever heard yet, and
a strange mastery he hath in making of extraordinary surprising closes,
that are mighty pretty, but his bragging that he do understand tones and
sounds as well as any man in the world, and better than Sir W. Davenant
or any body else, I do not like by no means, but was sick of it and of
him for it. He gone, Dr. Clerke fell to reading a new play, newly writ,
of a friend's of his; but, by his discourse and confession afterwards,
it was his own. Some things, but very few, moderately good; but
infinitely far from the conceit, wit, design, and language of very many
plays that I know; so that, but for compliment, I was quite tired with
hearing it. It being done, and commending the play, but against my
judgment, only the prologue magnifying the happiness of our former poets
when such sorry things did please the world as was then acted, was very
good. So set Mrs. Pierce at home, and away ourselves home, and there
to my office, and then my chamber till my eyes were sore at writing and
making ready my letter and accounts for the Commissioners of Tangier
to-morrow, which being done, to bed, hearing that there was a very great
disorder this day at the Ticket Office, to the beating and bruising of
the face of Carcasse very much. A foul evening this was to-night, and
I mightily troubled to get a coach home; and, which is now my common
practice, going over the ruins in the night, I rid with my sword drawn
in the coach.

14th. Up and to the office, where Carcasse comes with his plaistered
face, and called himself Sir W. Batten's martyr, which made W. Batten
mad almost, and mighty quarrelling there was. We spent the morning
almost wholly upon considering some way of keeping the peace at the
Ticket Office; but it is plain that the care of that office is nobody's
work, and that is it that makes it stand in the ill condition it do. At
noon home to dinner, and after dinner by coach to my Lord Chancellor's,
and there a mee