unnecessary that they frequently begun to laugh, and to hiss twenty times,
that, had it not been for the King's being there, they had certainly
hissed it off the stage. But I must confess that, as my Lord Barkeley
says behind me, the having of that long letter was a thing so absurd, that
he could not imagine how a man of his parts could possibly fall into it;
or, if he did, if he had but let any friend read it, the friend would have
told him of it; and, I must confess, it is one of the most remarkable
instances that ever I did or expect to meet with in my life of a wise
man's not being wise at all times, and in all things, for nothing could be
more ridiculous than this, though the letter of itself at another time
would be thought an excellent letter, and indeed an excellent Romance, but
at the end of the play, when every body was weary of sitting, and were
already possessed with the effect of the whole letter; to trouble them
with a letter a quarter of an hour long, was a most absurd thing. After
the play done, and nothing pleasing them from the time of the letter to
the end of the play, people being put into a bad humour of disliking
(which is another thing worth the noting), I home by coach, and could not
forbear laughing almost all the way home, and all the evening to my going
to bed, at the ridiculousness of the letter, and the more because my wife
was angry with me, and the world, for laughing, because the King was
there, though she cannot defend the length of the letter. So after having
done business at the office, I home to supper and to bed.

20th (Lord's day). Up, and put on my new tunique of velvett; which is
very plain, but good. This morning is brought to me an order for the
presenting the Committee of Parliament to-morrow with a list of the
commanders and ships' names of all the fleetes set out since the war, and
particularly of those ships which were divided from the fleete with Prince
Rupert;