64 Prayers and Meditations.
seldom withheld from the work but by my own unwillingness. Of my Nights I have no distinct remembrance but believe that as in many foregoing years they were painful and restless.
A little before Christmas I had caught cold, of which at first, as is my custom, I took little notice, but which harrassed me as it grew more violent, with a cough almost incessant, both night and day. I was let blood three times, and after about ten weeks, with the help of warm weather I recovered. From this time I have been much less troubled with nocturnal flatulencies, and have had some nights of that quiet and continual sleep, which I had wanted till I had almost forgotten it.
O God, grant that I may not mispend or lose the time which thou shalt yet allow me. For Jesus Christs sake have mercy upon me.
My purpose is to attain in the remaining part of the year as much knowledge as can easily be had of the Gospels and Pentateuch. Concerning the Hebrew I am in doubt. I hope likewise to enlarge my knowledge of Divinity, by reading at least once a week some sermon or small theological tract, or some portion of a larger work.
To this important and extensive study, my purpose is to appropriate (libere) part of every Sunday, Holyday, Wednesday, and Friday, and to begin with the Gospels. Perhaps I may not be able to study the Pentateuch before next year.
My general resolution to which I humbly implore the help of God is to methodise my life ; to resist sloth. I hope from this time to keep a Journal \
i. 191. On Feb. 24, 1773, he wrote often better, as worse, than I ex-
to Boswell : 'A new edition of my pected.' Life, ii. 205.
great Dictionary is printed, from x ' On his thirty-eighth birthday,
a copy which I was persuaded to being February 18, 1597, Casaubon
revise ; but having made no pre- resolved, as many literary men have
paration, I was able to do very little, resolved, to keep a diary. But he
Some superfluities I have expunged, continued to keep it with the same
and some faults I have corrected, perseverance which he carried into
and here and there have scattered everything, daily, till within a fort-
a remark; but the main fabrick of night of his death in 1614. It is
the work remains as it was. I had literally " nulla dies sine linea" I
looked very little into it since I wrote recollect but one other example of
it, and, I think, I found it full as such regularity, that of Joseph
N. B.
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