Of the time past since these resolutions were made I can give no very laudable account. Between Easter and Whitsuntide, having always considered that time as propitious to study[1], I attempted to learn the low Dutch Language[2], my application was very slight, and my memory very fallacious, though whether more than in my earlier years, I am not very certain. My progress was interrupted by a fever, which, by the imprudent use of a small print, left an inflammation in my useful eye[3], which was not removed but by two copious bleedings, and the daily use of catharticks for a long time. The effect yet remains.
My memory has been for a long time very much confused. Names, and Persons, and Events, slide away strangely from me. But I grow easier.
The other day looking over old papers, I perceived a resolution to rise early always occurring. I think I was ashamed, or grieved, to find how long and how often I had resolved, what yet except for about one half year I have never done[4]. My Nights are now such as give me no quiet rest, whether I have not lived resolving till the possibility of performance is past, I know not. God help me, I will yet try.
104.
On last Saturday was my sixty fourth birthday. I might perhaps have forgotten it had not Boswel told me of it, and, what pleased me less, told the family at Dunvegan[6].
- ↑ For the influence that weather and seasons have on study, see Life, i. 332.
- ↑ Quoted in Life, ii. 263. He seems to have twice taken up the study of Dutch. Ib. iv. 21, n. 3.
- ↑ Letters, i. 57, n. 5, 220.
- ↑ Ante, p. 37.
- ↑ Life, v. 250-6; Letters, i. 268; Footsteps of Dr. Johnson in Scotland, pp. 206-11.
- ↑ On Sept. 21 Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Boswell, with some of his troublesome kindness, has informed this family and reminded me that the 18th of September is my birth-day. The return of my birth-day, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape. I can now look back upon threescore and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been enjoyed; a life diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent or importunate distress. But perhaps I am better than I should have been
preceding Meditations on Good Friday and Easter Sunday are written. Note by G. Strahan.
The
