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 uncertainty of being happy after death, the certainty of death.

One can't read the later pages of this correspondence without recognizing that Boswell responds to the elementary moral appeals of life in a way to justify his declaration that, in spite of the romantic aspects of his career, he is "a very sensible, good sort of man." Yet to dull the edge of his misery and his anxiety, he drinks in these last years harder than ever—scarcely gets through a day without sinking into a drunken sleep. In these circumstances, in this half desperate mood between the death of his wife, in 1789, and 1791, in "a dissipated stupor and afraid to think," this Divine Madman, as he called himself, wrote out, polished and published the "Life of Johnson." It was all that held him up. It was enough.