That he was no
"budge doctor of the Stoic fur,
Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence,"
is plain enough from his correspondence. "The wretchedness of human life,"
he wrote in 1817, "is only to be encountered upon the basis of meat and
wine"; but he had a curiously keen sense of the evils induced by "the sweet
poyson."[172] As early as 1814 he urged Lord Holland to "leave off wine
entirely," for, though never guilty of excess, Holland showed a
"respectable and dangerous plenitude." After a visit to London in the same
year, Sydney wrote:--
"I liked London better than ever I liked it before, and simply, I
believe, from water-drinking. Without this, London is stupefaction and
inflammation. It is not the love of wine, but thoughtlessness and
unconscious imitation: other men poke out their hands for the
revolving wine, and one does the same, without thinking of it. All
people above the condition of labourers are ruined by excess of
stimulus and nourishment, clergy included. I never yet saw any
gentleman who ate and drank as little as was reasonable."
In 1828 he wrote to Lady Holland (of Holland House):--
"I not only was never better, but never half so well: indeed I find I
have been very ill all my life, without knowing it. Let me state some
of the goods arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors.
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