His health was seriously impaired, and he was often laid up for months with the gout.

His neglect of exercise had produced its effect, and he had become a prodigy of unwieldy corpulency.

Unfortunately his digestion seems to have continued only too good, and neither his own observation nor the medical science of that day sufficed to warn him against certain errors of regimen which were really fatal.

All this time, while the gout was constantly torturing him, he drank Madeira freely.

There is frequent question of a pipe of that sweet wine in his correspondence with Lord Sheffield.