This morning to Whitehall to the Privy Seal, and took Mr. Moore and myself and dined at my Lord’s with Mr. Sheply. While I was at dinner in come Sam. Hartlibb and his brother-in-law, now knighted by the King, to request my promise of a ship for them to Holland, which I had promised to get for them. After dinner to the Privy Seal all the afternoon. At night, meeting Sam. Hartlibb, he took me by coach to Kensington, to my Lord of Holland’s; I staid in the coach while he went in about his business. He staying long I left the coach and walked back again before on foot (a very pleasant walk) to Kensington, where I drank and staid very long waiting for him. At last he came, and after drinking at the inn we went towards Westminster.
Here I endeavoured to have looked out Jane that formerly lived at Dr. Williams’ at Cambridge, whom I had long thought to live at present here, but I found myself in an error, meeting one in the place where I expected to have found her, but she proved not she though very like her.
We went to the Bullhead, where he and I sat and drank till 11 at night, and so home on foot. Found my wife pretty well again, and so to bed.
This morning too was art,
a ship for a seal.
I walked back to where
I had long thought to live:
in error, like the bull
at home on foot.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 7 August 1660.