Elizabeth had always enjoyed good health, thanks to her “exact temperance both as to wine and diet, which, she used to say, was the noblest part of physic,” and her active habits. In capacity for resisting bodily fatigue and freedom from nervous ailments, she was like a man. It was not till the beginning of 1602 that those about her noticed any signs of failing strength. She still went on hunting and dancing. In dancing she excelled, and she kept it up for exercise, as many an old man keeps up his skating or tennis without being exposed to ill-natured remarks. In December 1602 her godson Harington, an amusing person, whose company she enjoyed, found her “in most pitiable state,” both in body and mind. “She held in her hand a golden cup which she often put to her lips; but in sooth her heart seemeth too full to lack more filling.” He read her some verses he had written, “whereat she smiled once,” but said, “When thou dost feel creeping Time at thy gate, these fooleries will please thee less. I am past my relish for such matters. Thou seest my bodily meat doth not suit me well. I have eaten but one ill-tasted cake since yesternight.” Harington hastened to send a present to the King of Scots, with the inscription, “_Domine memento mei cum veneris in regnum_.” In the same month Robert Carey, son of her cousin Lord Hunsdon, visited her, and professed to think her looking well. “No, Robin,” she said, “I am not well,” and then “discoursed of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days, and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs.... Hereupon I wrote to the King of Scots.”[18] Her melancholy was not caused by any weakening of her mind. A long letter to James, dated January 5, 1603, though hardly legible, is very vigorous and characteristic.