Up and to the office, where we sat all the afternoon. At noon to dinner at home, and then abroad with my wife, left her at the New Exchange and I to Westminster, where I hear Mrs. Martin is brought to bed of a boy and christened Charles, which I am very glad of, for I was fearful of being called to be a godfather to it. But it seems it was to be done suddenly, and so I escaped. It is strange to see how a liberty and going abroad without purpose of doing anything do lead a man to what is bad, for I was just upon going to her, where I must of necessity [have] broken my oath or made a forfeit. But I did not, company being (I heard by my porter) with her, and so I home again, taking up my wife, and was set down by her at Paule’s Schoole, where I visited Mr. Crumlum at his house; and, Lord! to see how ridiculous a conceited pedagogue he is, though a learned man, he being so dogmaticall in all he do and says. But among other discourse, we fell to the old discourse of Paule’s Schoole; and he did, upon my declaring my value of it, give me one of Lilly’s grammars of a very old impression, as it was in the Catholique times, which I shall much set by. And so, after some small discourse, away and called upon my wife at a linen draper’s shop buying linen, and so home, and to my office, where late, and home to supper and to bed. This night my wife had a new suit of flowered ash-coloured silke, very noble.
the road is godfather
to a strange liberty
going without purpose
of doing anything
just going
I broke down
how dogmatic the old grammar
of time and ash
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 9 March 1665.