Produced by David Widger
(Unabridged)
JANUARY 1664-1665
January 1st (Lord's day). Lay long in bed, having been busy late lastnight, then up and to my office, where upon ordering my accounts andpapers with respect to my understanding my last year's gains and expense,which I find very great, as I have already set down yesterday. Now thisday I am dividing my expense, to see what my clothes and every particularhath stood me in: I mean all the branches of my expense. At noon a goodvenison pasty and a turkey to ourselves without any body so much asinvited by us, a thing unusuall for so small a family of my condition: butwe did it and were very merry. After dinner to my office again, wherevery late alone upon my accounts, but have not brought them to order yet,and very intricate I find it, notwithstanding my care all the year to keepthings in as good method as any man can do. Past 11 o'clock home tosupper and to bed.
2nd. Up, and it being a most fine, hard frost I walked a good way towardWhite Hall, and then being overtaken with Sir W. Pen's coach, went intoit, and with him thither, and there did our usual business with the Duke.Thence, being forced to pay a great deale of money away in boxes (that is,basins at White Hall), I to my barber's, Gervas, and there had a littleopportunity of speaking with my Jane alone, and did give her something,and of herself she did tell me a place where I might come to her on Sundaynext, which I will not fail, but to see how modestly and harmlessly shebrought it out was very pretty. Thence to the Swan, and there did sport agood while with Herbert's young kinswoman without hurt, though they beingabroad, the old people. Then to the Hall, and there agreed with Mrs.Martin, and to her lodgings which she has now taken to lie in, in BowStreete, pitiful poor things, yet she thinks them pretty, and so they arefor her condition I believe good enough. Here I did 'ce que je voudraisavec' her most freely, and it having cost 2s. in wine and cake upon her, Iaway sick of her impudence, and by coach to my Lord Brunker's, byappointment, in the Piazza, in Covent-Guarding; where I occasioned muchmirth with a ballet I brought with me, made from the seamen at sea totheir ladies in town; saying Sir W. Pen, Sir G. Ascue, and Sir J. Lawsonmade them. Here a most noble French dinner and banquet, the best I haveseen this many a day and good discourse. Thence to my bookseller's and athis binder's saw Hooke's book of the Microscope,
["Micrographia: or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by Magnifying Glasses. London, 1665," a very remarkable work with elaborate plates, some of which have been used for lecture illustrations almost to our own day. On November 23rd, 1664, the President of the Royal Society was "desired to sign a licence for printing