��Prayers and Meditations.
��183.
[The following passage in the Pembroke College MSS. has been scored out. It bears no date, but the paper on which it is written follows one dated Easter, 1770. It cannot however belong to that year; for on Easter Eve, 1770. Johnson dined at Mr. Thrale's (ante, p. 53) and not, as he records below, at
the Mitre.]
EASTER EVE.
I rose and breakfasted, eat little ; gave orders that Mr. * Stainesby the Clergyman who is to give dying Jenny the Sacrament, shall have $s. $d. Steevens was with me. Watson paid. Mrs. Otway. About Noon I grew faint by fasting, then dined on Fish and eggs at the Mitre.
I then came home, and read two of Rogers's Sermons. Be tween ten and eleven I was very weary, I think, by fasting, and a night rather unquiet. I was not much sleepy this day. O God for Jesus Christ's sake have mercy upon me. Amen.
- He came to Jenny very carefully.
��cometh, when no man can work.'" Life, ii. 57.
Sir Walter Scott put the same Greek inscription on the dial at Abbotsford. Near the close of his life, on a visit from home, hearing of the sudden death of a friend, who like himself had suffered from paralysis, he in sisted on returning at once. ' He
��would listen to no persuasions. " No William," he said, "this is a sad warning. I must home to work while it is called day ; for the night cometh when no man can work. I put that text many a year ago on my dial- stone ; but it often preached in vain." ' Lockhart's Scott, x. 88.
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