“I found,” he writes, “my dear wife as ill, or rather worse than I apprehended. The consuming hectic fever had preyed upon her incessantly during the winter and spring, and she was miserably emaciated and weak. The physician and surgeon-apothecary, whom she allows occasionally, though rarely, to visit her, told me fairly, as to a man able to support with firmness what they announced, that they had no hopes of her recovery, though she might linger they could not say how long.... No man ever had a higher esteem or a warmer love for a wife than I have for her. You will recollect, my Temple, how our marriage was the result of an attachment truly romantic; yet how painful is it to me to recollect a thousand instances of inconsistent conduct! I can justify,” he adds, “my removing to the great sphere of England upon a principle of laudable ambition, but the frequent scenes of what I must call dissolute conduct are inexcusable; and often and often, when she was very ill in London, have I been indulging in festivity with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Courtenay, Malone, &c., and have come home late and disturbed her repose.” In these expressions of affection Boswell was sincere, but he would have better indicated regret for past inattention to his suffering helpmate if his conduct during her last illness had been more suited to her condition. During the five weeks he remained at Auchinleck, he was, according to his own acknowledgment, “repeatedly from home,” and both “on these occasions, and when neighbours visited him, drank too much wine.” Returning from a neighbour’s house in a state of inebriety, he experienced an accident, the particulars of which he thus related to Mr. Temple:— “On Saturday last, dining at a gentleman’s house where I was visiting for the first time, and was eager to obtain political influence; I drank so freely that, riding home in the dark without a servant, I fell from my horse and bruised my shoulder severely. Next morning I had it examined by a surgeon, who found no fracture or dislocation, but blooded me largely to prevent inflammation.” The presence in Auchinleck House of one whose habits were so irregular, and who had narrowly escaped death in a fit of drunkenness, was not likely to soothe the dying gentlewoman. Some days after the occurrence of his accident, Boswell was invited by a friend of Lord Lonsdale to accompany his lordship in an early journey to London. Though still a sufferer and in bed on account of his fall, he resolved to obey the summons, and Mrs. Boswell “animated him to set out.” With his arm in a sling he posted to Carlisle. Reaching Lowther Castle, he found Lord Lonsdale “in no hurry to proceed on the London journey.” Meanwhile his shoulder became more uneasy, the pain extending to the breast and over the entire arm, so that he was unable to put on his clothes without help.[87] * * * * *