“No. He knew too much, or half-knew too much. Besides, he hated kings.... Those travels confirmed him in the habit of walking. He was too busy and enthusiastic ever to have become an eater, and he found that walking saved him still more from eating. He could start early in the morning and walk the forty-three miles into Bristol without any food on the way; and then, after walking about the town on business, and breaking his fast with bread and butter and tea, and sleeping in a friend’s chair, could walk back again with no more food; and, moreover, did so of choice, not from any beastly principle or necessity. He travelled thus with ‘more alacrity and comfort,’ than at other times when he had taken food more frequently. He always was indifferent to animal food and wine. Tea was his vice, tempered by sugar and plenty of milk and cream. Three or four distinct brews of an evening suited him. Once a lady assured him that she was handing him his sixteenth cup. He was not a teetotaller, though his verses for a society of journeymen masons ‘that met weekly to spend a cheerful hour at the moderate and restricted expense of fourpence,’ are no better than if he had been a teetotaller from his cradle: “‘Whilst Mirth and good ale our warm spirits recruit, We’ll drunk’ness avoid, that delight of a brute: Of matters of State we’ll have nothing to say, Wise Reason shall rule and keep Discord away. Whilst tuning our voices Jocundity sings, Good fellows we toast, and know nothing of kings: But to those who have brightened the gloom of our lives, Give the song and full bumper--our sweethearts and wives.’ At one time he made a fixed resolve not to _sit_ in the public room of an ale-house, because he feared the conviviality to which his talent for song-writing conduced. But it is a fact that a man who lives out of doors can eat and drink anything, everything, or almost nothing, and thrive beyond the understanding of quacks.