Gastronomic appetite and reason have been compared to two buckets in a well; when one is at the top the other is at the bottom. Byron nearly starved himself to prevent growing gross and uninteresting in physical aspect. Addison was addicted to port and claret, and was accustomed, as already spoken of, while meditating a moral or political essay, to pace up and down the long gallery of Holland House.[86] When a humorous suggestion occurred to his fertile fancy, he solaced himself with claret; or fortified himself with a glass of port when a moral sentiment required to be enforced by an impressive close to a beautifully constructed sentence.[87] This was after his frigid marriage to the Dowager Countess of Warwick. On his death-bed he is reported to have said to her graceless son, "See how a Christian can die!" Probably the profligate youth, spying his father-in-law as he walked in the gallery, might have irreverently remarked: "See how a Christian can drink!" But the truth is that Addison, judged by the habits of his time, should be considered a moderate drinker. Poe's nerves were so shattered that a slight amount of wine would intoxicate him into a frenzy of dissipation; the same amount swallowed by a regular toper would hardly disturb his brain at all. While Pitt was quite a young man, he was so weakly that his physician ordered him to drink freely of port wine, and he thus contracted the habit of depending upon stimulants, and could not do without them. Lord Greville tells us he has seen him swallow a bottle of port wine by tumblerfuls before going to the House. This, together with the habit of late suppers, helped materially to shorten his life.[88] Goldsmith had a queer fancy for sassafras tea, from which he imagined he derived an excellent tonic effect. Such a relish had certainly one element to recommend it,--and that was its harmlessness. Dr. Shaw, the English naturalist, nearly killed himself by drinking green tea to excess. Haydn partook immoderately of strong coffee, and kept it brewing by his side while he composed. Burns lived on whiskey for weeks together, supplemented by tobacco, which caused Byron to say that he was "a strange compound of dirt and deity."