Up, and at the office all the morning, and so at noon to dinner, and after dinner my wife and I to the Duke’s playhouse, where we saw the new play acted yesterday, “The Feign Innocence, or Sir Martin Marr-all;” a play made by my Lord Duke of Newcastle, but, as every body says, corrected by Dryden. It is the most entire piece of mirth, a complete farce from one end to the other, that certainly was ever writ. I never laughed so in all my life. I laughed till my head [ached] all the evening and night with the laughing; and at very good wit therein, not fooling. The house full, and in all things of mighty content to me. Thence to the New Exchange with my wife, where, at my bookseller’s, I saw “The History of the Royall Society,” which, I believe, is a fine book, and have bespoke one in quires. So home, and I to the office a little, and so to my chamber, and read the history of 88 in Speede, in order to my seeing the play thereof acted to-morrow at the King’s house. So to supper in some pain by the sudden change of the weather cold and my drinking of cold drink, which I must I fear begin to leave off, though I shall try it as long as I can without much pain. But I find myself to be full of wind, and my anus to be knit together as it is always with cold. Every body wonders that we have no news from Bredah of the ratification of the peace; and do suspect that there is some stop in it. So to bed.
we feign innocence
but I have read
the history of the weather
I fear to leave off
though I find myself
full of wind
the very wonders
that we ah at
do us in
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 16 August 1667.