LIFE OF MYTTON. 33 



of his life, might have stood some chance of perform- 

 inof the errand Osbaldeston match over Newmarket, 

 from the ease with which he performed immense 

 distances on the road on his hacks. He would ride, 

 several times in the week, to covers nearly fifty miles 

 distant from Halston, and return thither to his 

 dinner. Neither could any man I ever met in the 

 field walk through the day with him at Ids pace. I 

 saw him, on his own moors in Merionethshire, 

 completely knock up two keepers (who accompanied 

 him alternately), being the whole day bareheaded 

 under a hot sun. (One of these keepers — whom I 

 procured for him in Cheshire — was rather a crack 

 walker, and a noted man with his fist.) He had 

 the stomach of an ostrich before it was debilitated 

 by wine, and even against that it stood nearly proof 

 to the last, but it appears he once met with his 

 match. Himself and a friend left London together 

 with eighteen pounds of filbert-nuts in his carriage, 

 and they devoured them all before they arrived at 

 Halston. To use his own words, they sat up to their 

 knees in nut shells. But it was often alarmino- to wit- 

 ness the quantity of dry nuts he would eat, with the 

 quantity of port wine which he would drink ; and 

 on my once telling him, at his own table, that the ill- 



