This year has passed with very little improvement perhaps with diminution of knowledge. Much time I have not left. Infirmities oppress me. But much remains to be done. I hope to rise at eight or sooner in the morning.
109.
Apr. 14, GOOD FRIDAY.
Boswel came in before I was up. We breakfasted, I only drank tea without milk or bread z . We went to Church, saw Dr. Wetherel 2 in the pew, and by his desire took him home with us. He did not go very soon, and Boswel staid. Dilly and Millar called 3 . Boswel and I went to Church, but came very late. We then took tea, by Boswel's desire, and I eat one bun, I think, that I might not seem to fast ostentatiously. Boswel sat with me till night ; we had some serious talk 4 . When he went I gave Francis 5 some directions for preparation to com municate. Thus has passed hitherto this awful day.
110.
10 30' p.m.
hen I look back upon resolutions of improvement and i-\ amendments, which have year after year been made and broken, Jeither by negligence, forgetfulness, vicious idleness, casual inter- / ruption, or morbid infirmity, when I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retro spection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously em ployed 6 , why do I yet try to resolve again? I try because
from mandatum, says, ' Spelman's Dean of Hereford. Ib. ii. 356.
guess is as false as it is readily be- 3 This passage is scored out in the
lieved.' original. Dilly and Millar were the
1 ' On Friday, April 14, being two publishers. Boswell mentions Good-Friday, I repaired to him in two gentlemen calling, one of whom the morning, according to my usual uttered a ' common-place complaint ' custom on that day, and breakfasted which Johnson ridiculed. Ib. ii-357. with him. I observed that he fasted 4 Ib.
so very strictly, that he did not even 5 His black servant. Ib. ii. 359. taste bread, and took no milk with 6 Grotius at the end of life ex-
his tea ; I suppose because it is a claimed : ' Heu ! vitam perdidi ;
kind of animal food.' Life, ii. 352. operose nihil agendo.' Chalmers's
2 Nathan Wetherell, D.D., Master Brit. Essayists, vol. xvi. p. lix. of University College, Oxford, and
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