Lord Chatham himself either was not, or would not be, in a condition to strike any great stroke. Though he still continued to take the air publicly, his spirits and nerves were said to be in the lowest and most shattered condition. Added to the phrenzy of his conduct, a new circumstance raised general suspicion of there being more of madness in his case, than mere caprice and impracticable haughtiness: he had put himself into the hands of Dr. Addington--a regular physician, it is true, but originally a mad doctor, innovating enough in his practice to be justly deemed a quack. The physician, it was supposed, was selected as proper to the disease; whereas, if all was not a farce, I should think that the physician rather caused the disease, Addington having kept off the gout, and possibly dispersed it through his nerves, or even driven it up to his head. So long did Lord Chatham remain without a fit of the gout, and so childish and agitated was his whole frame, if a word of business was mentioned to him, tears and trembling immediately succeeded to cheerful, indifferent conversation. Some passages, too, which I shall specify hereafter, indicated a fond kind of dotage; yet do I very much doubt whether the whole scene was not imposition, and the dictates of disappointment, inability, and pride, rather than the fruits of a brain extraordinarily distempered. A slave to his passions, a master dissembler, and no profound statesman, his conduct was more likely to be extravagant by design than from the loss of his senses. As he reappeared in the world, and yet governed his domestic affairs with the same wild wantonness and prodigality, it is probable that there was not more folly in his secession from business, than could be accounted for in so eccentric a composition. If it was nothing but singularity and passion, Lord Chatham was certainly the first man who ever retired from business into the post of Prime Minister.