my wearing a gowne within doors comes all my tenderness
about my legs. There comes also Mr. Reeve, with a microscope and
scotoscope.

[An optical instrument used to enable objects to be seen in the
dark. The name is derived from the Greek.]

For the first I did give him L5 10s., a great price, but a most curious
bauble it is, and he says, as good, nay, the best he knows in England,
and he makes the best in the world. The other he gives me, and is of
value; and a curious curiosity it is to look objects in a darke room
with. Mightly pleased with this I to the office, where all the morning.
There offered by Sir W. Pen his coach to go to Epsum and carry my wife,
I stept out and bade my wife make her ready, but being not very well and
other things advising me to the contrary, I did forbear going, and so
Mr. Creed dining with me I got him to give my wife and me a play this
afternoon, lending him money to do it, which is a fallacy that I have
found now once, to avoyde my vowe with, but never to be more practised I
swear, and to the new play, at the Duke's house, of "Henry the Fifth;" a
most noble play, writ by my Lord Orrery; wherein Betterton, Harris, and
Ianthe's parts are most incomparably wrote and done, and the whole
play the most full of height and raptures of wit and sense, that ever
I heard; having but one incongruity, or what did, not please me in it,
that is, that King Harry promises to plead for Tudor to their Mistresse,
Princesse Katherine of France, more than when it comes to it he seems
to do; and Tudor refused by her with some kind of indignity, not with a
difficulty and honour that it ought to have been done in to him. Thence
home and to my office, wrote by the post, and then to read a little in
Dr. Power's book of discovery by the Microscope to enable me a little
how to use and what to expect from my glasse. So to supper and to bed.

14th (Lord's day). After long lying discoursing with my wife, I up,
and comes Mr. Holliard to see me, who concurs with me that my pain is
nothing but cold in my legs breeding wind, and got only by my using to
wear a gowne, and that I am not at all troubled with any ulcer, but my
thickness of water comes from my overheat in my back. He gone, comes Mr.
Herbert, Mr. Honiwood's man, and dined with me, a very honest, plain,
well-meaning man, I think him to be; and by his discourse and manner of
life, the true embleme of an old ordinary serving-man. After dinner up
to my ch