But words cost little, and Pitt did not disdain profusion in them any more than in what cost more. In a letter to Lyttelton written immediately after Pelham's death, when he recommended an attitude of armed and hostile vigilance towards the new powers, he says: 'Professions of personal regard cannot be made too strongly,' and this line of conduct explains his professions to Newcastle. For how could he fail under existing circumstances to be suspicious? Had Newcastle lifted a finger to procure him the succession to Bedford? Yet no one could compete in Parliamentary authority with Pitt; and, though Murray's claims to oratorical pre-eminence might vie with his, Murray's aspirations were confined to the law. At this time, Chesterfield, the best living judge of such matters, was writing to his son, and expressing therefore his real convictions: 'Mr. Pitt and Mr. Murray are beyond comparison ... the best orators. They alone can inflame or quiet the House; they alone are so attended to, in that numerous and noisy assembly, that you might hear a pin fall while either was speaking.'[211] It is true that Chesterfield depreciates Pitt's matter. But the fact remains that he mentions Pitt as one of the two supreme masters of the House of Commons, the other, indeed, not having much heart in politics. The ignoring, the slighting of this great power, could not be forgiven by so aspiring a nature as Pitt's. He brooded and watched. CHAPTER XIV. How did he pass these three years? It is not easy to say, for we have so little light on his private life. No prescient Boswell marked his words and habits, or indeed had much opportunity of doing so. Few men of the same eminence have lived in such retirement as he did; we only catch glimpses. In the first place, it may be said without extravagance that his principal occupation was the gout. His gout became part of the history of England. To him it was a cruel fact. It kept him constantly disabled, and constantly away from London, ever trying new waters, principally the historical springs of Bath. Bath, indeed, was his second home. He seems to be almost always there till his marriage, and very frequently afterwards. Half his letters seem to be dated thence. At last he definitely recognised it as a home by building a house there in the Circus, which cost him 1200_l._[212] This was in 1753. But in 1763 he disposed of this particular house, probably under some financial stress.[213] Whether he thus established himself from love of the place or from love of his friend Ralph Allen, who was Fielding's Squire Allworthy and Bath's Man of Ross, or whether he had already an ambition to represent the City in Parliament, we cannot tell. His cousin, Lord Stanhope soon joined him and bought the houses next to his.[214] As time went on, and Pitt's fame and seclusion increased, it became more and more a political centre. There men collected who were anxious to get a