Page:Warren Hastings (Trotter).djvu/218

212 His diet was very plain; he ate sparingly; his favourite drink was water. He was fond of swimming, and rode almost daily on horseback till he was past eighty. Proud of his good horsemanship, he delighted in taming the most refractory brutes. Of his literary tastes not much is known except that he knew his Horace fairly, that he shared Pitt's fondness for Lucan's 'Pharsalia,' and read Young's 'Night Thoughts' again and again. At a later period he revelled in the poetry of Walter Scott.

Hastings had few, if any, extravagant tastes. But he had no natural turn for thrift, and in India all his time had been engrossed by official duties and pressing public needs. Then came the long agony of his impeachment; and the burthen of consequent debt grew heavier as the war with the French Republic went on. In 1804 the Court of Directors once more came to his rescue from impending bankruptcy by virtually remitting the balance of their previous loan. In the same year Hastings, always grateful for any mark of good-will, tried hard to dissuade Addington from resigning office in favour of Pitt. In spite of his majority in the Commons, the stop-gap Minister soon convinced his volunteer adviser that resignation was the wisest course for a ministry threatened by a strong coalition at home and an early renewal of war with France.

Two years later, when Pitt was dead, and the Grenville Ministry ruled in his place, Hastings privately urged his claim, if not to public office, at least