after dinner with wife and Deb., carried them to Unthanke's, and I to
Westminster Hall expecting our being with the Committee this afternoon
about Victualling business, but once more waited in vain. So after a turn
or two with Lord Brouncker, I took my wife up and left her at the 'Change
while I to Gresham College, there to shew myself; and was there greeted by
Dr. Wilkins, Whistler, and others, as the patron of the Navy Office, and
one that got great fame by my late speech to the Parliament. Here I saw a
great trial of the goodness of a burning glass, made of a new figure, not
spherical (by one Smithys, I think, they call him), that did burn a glove
of my Lord Brouncker's from the heat of a very little fire, which a
burning glass of the old form, or much bigger, could not do, which was
mighty pretty. Here I heard Sir Robert Southwell give an account of some
things committed to him by the Society at his going to Portugall, which he
did deliver in a mighty handsome manner.

[At the meeting of the Royal Society on March 12th, 1668, "Mr.
Smethwick's glasses were tried again; and his telescope being
compared with another longer telescope, and the object-glasses
exchanged, was still found to exceed the other in goodness; and his
burning concave being compared with a spherical burning-glass of
almost twice the diameter, and held to the fire, it burnt gloves,
whereas the other spherical ones would not burn at all."--"Sir
Robert Southwell being lately returned from Portugal, where he had
been ambassador from the king, and being desired to acquaint the
society with what he had done with respect to the instructions,
which he had received from them before his departure from England,
related, that he had lodged the astronomical quadrant, which the
society had sent to Portugal to make observations with there, with a
body of men at Lisbon, who had applied themselves among other kinds
of literature to mathematics" (Birch's "History of the Royal