CHAPTER X.
LAST ILLNESS.--DEATH.--CONCLUSION.
Gibbon had now only about six months to live. He did not seem to have
suffered by his rapid journey from Lausanne to London. During the
summer which he spent with his friend Lord Sheffield, he was much as
usual; only his friend noticed that his habitual dislike to motion
appeared to increase, and he was so incapable of exercise that he was
confined to the library and dining-room. "Then he joined Mr. F. North
in pleasant arguments against exercise in general. He ridiculed the
unsettled and restless disposition that summer, the most uncomfortable
of all seasons, as he said, generally gives to those who have the use
of their limbs." The true disciples of Epicurus are not always the
least stout and stoical in the presence of irreparable evils.
After spending three or four months at Sheffield Place, he went to
Bath to visit his step-mother, Mrs. Gibbon. His conduct to her through
life was highly honourable to him. It should be remembered that her
jointure, paid out of his father's decayed estate, was a great tax on
his small income. In his efforts to improve his position by selling
his landed property, Mrs.
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