received the nomination. He had longed
for the office, sinfully as he afterwards fancied; it would exactly
have suited him and made him comfortable for life. But his mind had by
this time succumbed to his malady. His fancy conjured up visions of
opposition to the appointment in the House of Lords; of hostility in
the office where he had to study the Journals; of the terrors of an
examination to be undergone before the frowning peers. After
hopelessly poring over the Journals for some months he became quite
mad, and his madness took a suicidal form. He has told with unsparing
exactness the story of his attempts to kill himself. In his youth his
father had unwisely given him a treatise in favour of suicide to read,
and when he argued against it, had listened to his reasonings in a
silence which he construed as sympathy with the writer, though it seems
to have been only unwillingness to think too badly of the state of a
departed friend. This now recurred to his mind, and talk with casual
companions in taverns and chophouses was enough in his present
condition to confirm him in his belief that self-destruction was
lawful. Evidently he was perfectly insane, for he could not take up a
newspaper without reading in it a fancied libel on himself. First he
bought laudanum, and had gone out into the fields with the intention of
swallowing it, when the love of life suggested another way of escaping
the dreadful ordeal. He might sell all he had, fly to France, change
his religion, and bury himself in a monastery. He went home to pack
up; but while he was looking over his portmanteau, his mood changed,
and he again resolved on self-destruction. Taking a coach he ordered
the coachman to drive to the Tower Wharf, intending to throw himself
into the river. But the love of life once more interposed, under the
guise of a low tide and a porter seated on the quay. Again in the
coach, and afterwards in his chambers, he tried to swallow the
laudanum; but his hand was paralysed by "the convincing Spirit," aided
by seasonable interruptions from the presence of his laundress and her
husband, and at length he threw the laudanum away. On the night before
the day appointed for the examination before the Lords, he lay some
time with the point of his penknife pressed against his heart, but
without courage to drive it home. Lastly he tried to hang himself; and
on this occasion he seems to have been saved not by the love of life,
or by w