["Her skill increasing with her years, other poets sought to obtain
recommendations of her wit and beauty to the success of their
writings. I have said that Dryden was one of the principal
supporters of the King's house, and ere long in one of his new plays
a principal character was set apart for the popular comedian. The
drama was a tragi-comedy called 'Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen,'
and an additional interest was attached to its production from the
king having suggested the plot to its author, and calling it 'his
play.'"--Cunningham's Story of Nell Gwyn, ed: 1892, pp. 38,39.]

which is Florimell, that I never can hope ever to see the like done again,
by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so
great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world
before as Nell do this, both as a mad girle, then most and best of all
when she comes in like a young gallant; and hath the notions and carriage
of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess,
admire her. Thence home and to the office, where busy a while, and then
home to read the lives of Henry 5th and 6th, very fine, in Speede, and to
bed. This day I did pay a bill of L50 from my father, being so much out
of my own purse gone to pay my uncle Robert's legacy to my aunt Perkins's
child.

3rd (Lord's day). Lay long, merrily talking with my wife, and then up and
to church, where a dull sermon of Mr. Mills touching Original Sin, and
then home, and there find little Michell and his wife, whom I love
mightily. Mightily contented I was in their company, for I love her much;
and so after dinner I left them and by water from the Old Swan to White
Hall, where, walking in the galleries, I in the first place met Mr.
Pierce, who tells me the story of Tom Woodall, the surgeon, killed in a