Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/225

 PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS

COMPOSED BY

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

Published from his Manuscripts by George Strahan, D.D. Prebendary of Rochester, and Vicar of Islington.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION IN 1785.

These posthumous devotions of Dr. Johnson will be, no doubt, welcomed by the public, with a distinction similar to that which has been already paid to his other works.

During many years of his life, he statedly observed certain days with a religious solemnity; on which, and other occasions, it was his custom to compose suitable prayers and meditations; committing them to writing for his own use, and, as he assured me, without any view to their publication. But being last summer on a visit at Oxford to the reverend Dr. Adams, and that gentleman urging him repeatedly to engage in some work of this kind, he then first conceived a design to revise these pious effusions, and bequeathed them, with enlargements, to the use and benefit of others.

Infirmities, however, now growing fast upon him, he at