Prayers and Meditations.
��years, grant encrease of Grace. Let me live to repent what I have done amiss, and by thy help so to regulate my future life, that I may obtain mercy when I appear before thee, through the merits of Jesus Christ. Enable me, O Lord, to do my duty with a quiet mind ; and take not from me thy Holy Spirit, but protect and bless me, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
140.
Apr. 13, GOOD FRIDAY, 1781.
I forgot my Prayer and resolutions, till two days ago I found this paper.
Sometime in March I finished the lives of the Poets, which I wrote in my usual way, dilatorily and hastily, unwilling to work, and working with vigour and haste T .
On Wednesday n, was buried my dear Friend Thrale who died on Wednesday, 4; and with him were buried many of my hopes and pleasures. On Sunday ist his Physician warned him against full meals, on Monday I pressed him to observance of his rules, but without effect, and Tuesday I was absent, but his Wife pressed forbearance upon him, again unsuccessfully. At night I was called to him, and found him senseless in strong convulsions. I staid in the room, except that I visited Mrs. Thrale twice 2 . About five(, I think), on Wednesday morning he expired ; I felt almost the last flutter of his pulse, and looked for the last time upon the face that for fifteen years had never been turned upon me but with respect or benignity 3 . Farewel 4 . May God that delighteth in mercy, have had mercy on thee.
I had constantly prayed for him some time before his death.
��1 Macaulay recorded in his Journal in July, 1852 : ' I could write a queer Montaignish essay on my morbidities. I sometimes lose months, I do not know how ; accusing myself daily, and yet really incapable of vigorous exertion. I seem under a spell of laziness. Then I warm, and can go on working twelve hours at a stretch.' Trevelyan's Macaulay ', ed. 1 877, ii. 3 1 7.
2 ' His servants (he said) would have
��waited upon him in this awful period, and why not his friend ? ' Life, iv. 84, n. 4. The advice which Johnson gave to Thrale was given by Taylor to Johnson three and a half years later.
- He extremely resented it from me,'
wrote Taylor. Letters, ii. 426, n. 3.
3 Quoted in the Life, iv. 84.
4 Johnson, as I have shown in the Preface to his Letters (p. xv), often left out the second final consonant.
The
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