82 Prayers and Meditations.
gifts, and so to acknowledge thy goodness, as that every year and day which thou shalt yet grant me, may be employed in the amendment of my life, and in the diligent discharge of such duties, as thy Providence shall allot me. Grant me, by thy Grace, to know and to do what Thou requirest. Give me good desires, and remove those impediments which may hinder them from effect. Forgive me my sins, negligences, and ignorances, and when at last thou shalt call me to another life, receive me to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
123.
'77 Sept. 31, Concio pro Tayloro 1 .
124.
1778, Apr. 17, GOOD FRIDAY.
It has happened this week, as it never happened in Passion Week before, that I have never dined at home 2 , and I have therefore neither practised abstinence nor peculiar devotion.
This Morning before I went to bed I enlarged my prayers, by adding some collects with reference to the day. I rested moderately and rose about nine, which is more early than is
��2. p. 392. Bos- my expressing some surprise that
well, under date of Sunday, Sept. 21, the preachers of them should hazard
says : ' I have no doubt that a good such an imposition, he replied, " Nay,
many sermons were composed for Sir, there was no hazard, if they kept
Taylor by Johnson. At this time their own counsel; they might be
I found upon his table a part of one very sure I should not claim them ;
which he had newly begun to write.' indeed I had no right to them after
Life, iii. 181. See also Ib. vi ; Ad- I had been paid for them." He also
denda, p. 66. In an interleaved added that they were generally
copy of the first edition of the Life copied in his own study by those
in the possession of Mr. Horatio that employed him, and when
Symonds of Beaumont Street, Ox- finished he always destroyed the
ford, I have found the following note original in their presence.'
made (with many others) I have no 2 In Passion Week three years
doubt by the Rev. John Hussey, later he dined on Wednesday at one
- who had long been in habits of in- Bishop's, and on Thursday at an-
timacy with Johnson.' (Life, iii. other Bishop's. Boswell describes
369). * Johnson not only told me ' the admirable sophistry ' with which
that he had written, he believed, he defended his conduct. Life, iv.
forty sermons, but that several of 89. them had been published. Upon
usuai.
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