228 LIFE OF AfYTTON. 



moment doubt ; and a waggon-load of evidence could 

 be produced to prove that fact. But let us suppose 

 a commission of inquiry, a writ De Ljuiaiico inqui- 

 rciido to have been issued ! Why, the result would 

 have been this ; he would have kept himself sober for 

 two days, and, like Sophocles before the Areopagus, 

 would have dumfounded his opponents. I am, 

 however, quite certain, that from the time he arrived 

 first at Calais to the day of his death, bordering on 

 three years, he had not the slightest insight into his 

 own pecuniary affairs, nor did he know, to thousands, 

 how he stood in the world ; and moreover, if he had 

 had ten thousand pounds put into his hands any one 

 day, he would not have had a shilling of it left by 

 that day week ! I can bring a host of evidence to 

 back me in this assertion ; and it was in vain that his 

 friends asked him to call for something like a state- 

 ment of his cash account from those who received 

 his purchase-money for estates sold for upwards of 

 fifty thousand pounds, subsequently to his arrival in 

 Calais. 



Having now traced this extraordinary character, this 

 anomaly in human nature, this mixture of very right 

 and very wrong, this strange compound of contra- 

 dictory qualities, through the various stages of his 



