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 86 Prayers and Meditations.

days and months are without any trace x. My health has indeed been very much interrupted. My nights have been commonly not only restless but painful and fatiguing. My respiration was once so difficult, that an asthma was suspected 2. I could not walk but with great difficulty, from Stowhill to Greenhill 3. Some relaxation of my breast has been procured, I think, by opium, which, though it never gives me sleep, frees my breast from spasms 4.

I have written a little of the Lives of the poets, I think with all my usual vigour 5. I have made sermons, perhaps as readily as formerly 6. My memory is less faithful in retaining names, and, I am afraid, in retaining occurrences. Of this vacillation and vagrancy of mind I impute a great part to a fortuitous and un settled life, and therefore purpose to spend my time with more method.

This year, the a8th of March passed away without memorial. Poor Tetty, whatever were our faults and failings, we loved each other. I did not forget thee yesterday. Couldest thou have lived !

I am now, with the help of God, to begin a new life.

1 Macaulay recorded in his Jour- less Hawkins says that ' he had a nal in 1857: 'How the days steal strong propensity to the use of away and nothing done! I think opium, which increased as he ad- often of Johnson's lamentations re- vanced in years ... It was the means peated every Easter over his own of positive pleasure, and as such was idleness. But the cases differ. Often resorted to by him whenever any I have felt this morbid incapacity to depression of spirits made it neces- work ; but never so long and so sary.' Life of Johnson, p. 320. strong as of late ; the natural effect s He had a proof-sheet of his Life of age and ease.' Trevelyan's Ma- of Waller on Good Friday, though caulay, ed. 1877, ii. 447. It was much he would not look at it on that day. more the effect of ill-health. Life, iii. 313. He seems to have

2 In the last year of his life he finished first the Lives of Denham, suffered greatly from spasmodic Butler and Waller. Cowley he had asthma. Life, iv. 255. sent to the printer by the end of the

3 Two gentle eminences on the following July. Milton was not yet outskirts of Lichfield. Letters, i. begun by that time, though ' in Dry- 160, 363. den he was very far advanced.'

4 For his ' horror of opiates ' see Letters, ii. 68. Letters, ii. 367, 376, 383. Neverthe- 6 Life, v. 67.

Almighty

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