132 Extracts from
��a look of great contempt, and ridiculed the judging of his dis order by the pulse. He complained, that the sarcocele x had again made its appearance, and asked, if a puncture would not relieve him, as it had done the year before : the doctor an swered, that it might, but that his surgeon was the best judge of the effect of such an operation. Johnson, upon this, said, ' How many men in a year die through the timidity of those whom they consult for health ! I want length of life, and you fear giving me pain, which I care not for 2 .'
8th. I visited him with Mr. Langton, and found him dic tating to Mr. Strahan another will, the former being, as he had said at the time of making it, a temporary one. On our enter ing the room, he said, ' God bless you both.' I arrived just time enough to direct the execution, and also the attestation of it. After he had published it, he desired Mr. Strahan to say the Lord's prayer, which he did, all of us joining. Johnson, after it, uttered, extempore, a few pious ejaculations.
9th. I saw him in the evening, and found him dictating, to Mr. Strahan, a codicil to the will he had made the evening before. I assisted them in it, and received from the testator a direction, to insert a devise to his executors of the house at Lichfield, to be sold for the benefit of certain of his relations, a bequest of sundry pecuniary and specific legacies, a provision for the annuity of 7o/. for Francis, and, after all, a devise of all the rest, residue, and remainder of his estate and effects, to his executors, in trust for the said Francis Barber, his executors and administrators ; and, having dictated accordingly, Johnson exe cuted and published it as a codicil to his will 3 .
ticity of this paragraph, I am told, tents (Life, iv. 406 [ante, ii. 114]).
affirm it was, melius est poenituisse " God put it in thy mind to take it
quam nunquam peccdsse, it must be hence,
owned that it is enough to make That thou might'st win the more
anybody vain. I shall attempt a thy [Johnson's] love,
translation for the benefit of your Pleading so wisely in excuse of it."
joy over a sinner that repenteth than Gent. Mag. 1787, pp. 751-3, and
ever a just person that needeth no For son Tracts, p. 341.
repentance. And we know, from an x Life, iv. 239.
authority not to be disputed, that 2 Ib. iv. 399, n. 6 ; ante, i. 448.
Johnson was a great lover of peni- 3 Leigh Hunt, in a marginal note,
He
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