'I put my hand into my pocket, meaning to give him his
fee; but he stopped me, saying, "Are you the young gentleman who gained
the prize for the essay at Oxford?" I said I was. "I will take no fee
from you." I often consulted him; but he would never take a fee.'
Twiss's _Eldon_, i. 104.
[709] How much he had physicked himself is shewn by a letter of May 8.
'I took on Thursday,' he writes, 'two brisk catharticks and a dose of
calomel. Little things do me no good. At night I was much better. Next
day cathartick again, and the third day opium for my cough. I lived
without flesh all the three days.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii.257. He had been
bled at least four times that year and had lost about fifty ounces of
blood. _Ante_, pp.142, 146. On Aug. 3, 1779, he wrote:--'Of the last
fifty days I have taken mercurial physick, I believe, forty.' _Notes and
Queries_, 6th S. v.461.
[710] An exact reprint of this letter is given by Professor Mayor in
_Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v.481. The omissions and the repetitions
'betray,' he says, 'the writer's agitation.' The postscript Boswell had
omitted.
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