many and profitable rules for perfecting the
stage, as any wherewith the French can furnish us.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 100: From the "Essay on Dramatic Poetry."]

[Footnote 101: John Hales, "the ever-memorable" canon of Windsor and
author of "Golden Remains," born in 1584, died in 1656.]

SAMUEL PEPYS

Born in 1633, died in 1703; son of a London tailor, educated
at Cambridge; a clerk in the Admiralty in 1660, becoming
finally Secretary; conducted the entire administration
during the great plague, when he alone remained in London;
assisted in checking the great fire in 1666; elected to
Parliament in 1678; President of the Royal Society in
1684-86; gave his library of three thousand volumes to one
of the colleges at Cambridge; his "Diary," first published
in 1825, was written in cipher, without intent of
publication.

I

OF VARIOUS DOINGS OF MR. AND MRS. PEPYS[102]

_August 18, 1660._--Towards Westminster by water. I landed my wife at
Whitefriars with L5 to buy her a petticoat, and my father persuaded
her to buy a most fine cloth, of 26_s._ a yard, and a rich lace, that
the petticoat will come to L5; but she doing it very innocently, I
could not be angry. Captain Ferrers took me and Creed to the Cockpit
play, the first that I have had time to see since my coming from sea,
_The Loyall Subject_, where one Kinaston, a boy, acted the Duke's
sister, but made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life. After
the play done, we went to drink, and, by Captain Ferrers' means,
Kinaston, and another that acted Archas the General, came and drank
with us.

19. (Lord's Day.)--This morning Sir W. Batten, Pen, and myself, went
to church to the churchwardens, to demand a pew, which at present
could not be given us; but we are resolved to have one built. So we
staid, and heard Mr. Mills, a very good minister. Home to dinner,
where my wife had on her new petticoat that she bought yesterday,
which indeed is a very fine cloth and a line lace; but that being of a
light color, and the lace all silver, it makes no great show.

_March 2, 1667._--After dinner, with my wife, to the King's house to
see _The Maiden Queene_, a new play of Dryden's mightily commended for
the regularity of it, and the strain and wit; and, the truth is, there
is a comical part done by Nell Gwynne, which is Florimell, that I
never can hope ever to see the like done again, by man or woman. The