This proved a very debauched day; we drank a great deal both after dinner and supper; and when at last Wilkes had retired, Sir Thomas and some others (of whom I was not one) broke into his room and made him drink a bottle of claret in bed." December 17.

"We found old Captain Meard at Arlesford with the second division of the Fourteenth.

He and all his officers supped with us, which made the evening rather a drunken one." Gibbon might well say that the militia was unfit for and unworthy of him.
Yet it is quite astonishing to see, as recorded in his journal, how keen an interest he still managed to retain in literature in the midst of all this dissipation, and how fertile he was of schemes and projects of future historical works to be prosecuted under more favourable auspices.

Subject after subject occurred to him as eligible and attractive; he caresses the idea for a time, then lays it aside for good reasons.

First, he pitched upon the expedition of Charles VIII.