88 Prayers and Meditations.
myself less able to fast, than at former times ; and then con cluded the Epistle. Being much oppressed with drowsiness, I slept about an hour by the fire.
ii p.m.
I am now to review the last year, and find little but dismal vacuity, neither business nor pleasure ; much intended and little done. My health is much broken ; my nights afford me little rest. I have tried opium, but its help is counter balanced with great disturbance ; it prevents the spasms, but it hinders sleep I . O God, have mercy on me.
Last week I published the lives of the poets 2 , written I hope in such a manner as may tend to the promotion of Piety 3 .
In this last year I have made little acquisition, I have scarcely read any thing. I maintain Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter 4 , other good of myself I know not where to find, except a little Charity.
But I am now in my seventieth year ; what can be done ought not to be delayed.
130.
EASTER EVE, April 3, [1779], 11 p.m.
This is the time of my annual review, and annual resolution. The review is comfortless. Little done. Part of the life of Dryden and the Life of Milton have been written 5 ; but my mind has neither been improved nor enlarged. I have read little, almost nothing 6 . And I am not conscious that I have gained any good, or quitted any evil habits.
Of resolutions I have made so many with so little effect, that I am almost weary, but, by the Help of God, am not yet
1 Dr. Brocklesby noticed what of Dryden before the previous Easter. Johnson had told him, that ' an ' The Life of Milton was begun in opiate was never destructive of his January, 1779, and finished in six readiness in conversation.' Letters, weeks.' Gentleman's Magazine, 17%^ ii. 437. p. 9, . i.
2 The first four of the ten volumes. 6 For Johnson's use of the phrase The last six were published in 1781. almost nothing see Life, ii. 446,
3 Quoted in the Life, iv. 34. n. 3. Beattie reckoned it as a
4 Ib. iii. 222. Scotticism. Scotticisms, ed. 1787,
5 He had written most of the Life p. 9.
hopeless.
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