All the fatigue and irksomeness of the
journey to one so ailing and feeble, all the dangers of the road lined
and perhaps barred by hostile armies, vanished on the spot. Within
twelve days he had made his preparations and started on his journey.
He was forced to travel through Germany, and in his ignorance of the
language he required an interpreter; young de Severy, the son of his
deceased friend, joyfully, and out of mere affection for him,
undertook the office of courier. "His attachment to me," wrote Gibbon,
"is the sole motive which prompts him to undertake this troublesome
journey." It is clear that he had the art of making himself loved. He
travelled through Frankfort, Cologne, Brussels, Ostend, and was by his
friend's side in little more than a month after he had received the
fatal tidings. Well might Lord Sheffield say, "I must ever regard it
as the most enduring proof of his sensibility, and of his possessing
the true spirit of friendship, that, after having relinquished the
thought of his intended visit, he hastened to England, in spite of
increasing impediments, to soothe me by the most generous sympathy,
and to alleviate my domestic affliction; neither his great corpulency
nor his extraordinary bodily infirmities, nor any other consideration,
could prevent him a moment from resolving on an undertaking that might
have deterred the most active young man.
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