INTELLECTUAL AND PHYSICAL LIFE 61 



seventy he was active and vigorous." He easily outwalked James 

 Hogg, who was much younger and who has been described as "hale 

 and hearty as a mountain breeze." So much for this " invalid." 



Lamb, who had " the appearance of an air-fed man and whose light 

 frame" with its "almost immaterial legs" "seemed as if a breath 

 would overthrow it," was spoken of as being " as wiry as an Arab," and 

 Proctor said he " could walk during all the day." 



In this list of worthies Carlyle and Doctor Johnson should have a 

 place. The great lexicographer "in his bodily strength and stature 

 has been compared to Polyphemus." Boswell speaks of his " herculean 

 strength " and of his " robust health," which was not in the least 

 affected by cold. His great appetite and his intemperance in tea have 

 gone into history, but he could fast for two days without difficulty, and 

 his frequent prayer was " that I may practice such temperance in Meat, 

 Drink, and Sleep, and all bodily enjoyments as may fit me for the 

 duties to which thou shalt call me." Notwithstanding his tendency 

 to melancholia and some attacks of gout he was anything but an invalid. 



The Seer of Chelsea was the descendant of a long line of " hardy 

 and healthy Scottish dalesmen." He grew to manhood, he tells us, 

 "healthy and hardy." It was not till after his twentieth year that 

 "he became aware that he was the miserable owner of a diabolical 

 arrangement called a stomach." From this time on he suffered from 

 dyspepsia, headache and sleeplessness. He gave vent to his irritability 

 by lamentations so grotesquely exaggerated as to make it difficult to 

 estimate the real extent of the evil. According to Froude he had a 

 Titanesque power of making mountains out of molehills. Notwith- 

 standing his complaints he lived a vigorous, combative life to a good 

 old age and even at eighty-two was able to walk over five miles a day. 



Among novelists, Sir Walter accuses himself of perhaps " setting 

 an undue value " on health and strength. For him " bodily health is 

 the mainspring of the microcosm. . . . What poor things does a fever 

 fit or an overflowing of bile make of the masters of creation ? " He 

 writes in his journal, " My early lameness considered, it was impossible 

 for a man to have been stronger or more active than I have been, and 

 that for twenty or thirty years. Seams will slit and elbows will out, 

 quoth the tailor; and as I was fifty-four in August last, my mortal 

 vestments are none of the newest." As a young man he was a des- 

 perate climber, a bold rider and a stout player at single-stick " and he 

 walked twenty or thirty miles without fatigue, notwithstanding his 

 limp." Attacks of rheumatism, renal colic and the awful burden of 

 debt under which he toiled so heroically, finally overcame a constitution 

 which, as he said, was " as strong as a team of horses." 



Victor Hugo " was born with a thoroughly sound constitution " 



