But does not every grade in society sensibly or insensibly take its cue from that _immediately_ above it? And what were those who should have set a virtuous example doing? How much have such men to answer for, as Byron, Porson, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Smart, Lamb, and Churchill! Of the first named, it has been observed that when he was not impairing a naturally delicate constitution with drastic medicines and protracted fasts, he would sometimes eat and drink excessively. And this was especially the case in fits of mortification. Everyone will remember the circumstance of the _Edinburgh Review_ proscribing Byron’s early production, _Hours of Idleness_. Though he affected indifference, and spoke of the critique as a paper bullet of the brain, yet he afterwards acknowledged that he tried to drown his irritation on the day he read it with three bottles of claret after dinner. His excesses of all kinds, in his continental life, are matters of history. They are usually considered to have contributed to terminate his fever fatally. This recalls his clever lines:-- _On a Carrier who died of Drunkenness._ John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell: A _carrier_ who _carried_ his can to his mouth well; He _carried_ so much, and he _carried_ so fast, He could _carry_ no more, so was _carried_ at last; For the liquor he drank being too much for one, He could not _carry_ off, so he’s now _carrion_. Charles Churchill, the author of the _Rosciad_, was a sad drunkard. The caricature drawn of him by Hogarth will be remembered. A number of them had met as usual at their whist club in the _Bedford Arms_ parlour. There it was that Churchill insulted Hogarth, called him a ‘very shallow fellow,’ and afterwards in writing derided the man, his productions, and his belongings. Hogarth revenged the sneer. He converted an old copper-plate into a palimpsest, on which he drew a caricature of Churchill as a growling bear with the ragged canonicals of a parson (for such the poet had been), a pot of porter by his side, and a ragged staff in his paw, each knot inscribed ‘lye.’ Theodore Hook was a highly convivial man. In a memoir of this once popular man, it is stated that the disorder under which he long laboured arose from a diseased state of the liver and stomach, brought on partly by anxiety, but chiefly, it is to be feared, by that habit of over indulgence at table, the curse of colonial life. (At the instance of the Prince Regent he had obtained a Government appointment in the Mauritius.) A stanza of his own composition reveals in brief the man:-- Then now I’m resolved at all sorrows to blink-- Since winking’s the tippy I’ll tip ‘em the wink, I’ll never get drunk when I cannot get drink, Nor ever let misery bore me. I sneer at the Fates, and I laugh at their spite, I sit down contented to sit up all night, And when my time comes, from the world take my flight, For--my father did so before me.[226]