With this depravity were oddly allied gifts of mind and graces of person, which, but for the handicap of vice, should have made Lord Lyttelton one of the most eminent and useful men of his time.  When he was at Eton Dr Barnard, the headmaster, predicted a great future for the boy, whose talents he declared were superior to those of young Fox.  In literature and art his natural endowment was such that he might easily have won a leading place in either profession; while his gifts of statemanship and his eloquent tongue might with equal ease have won fame and high position in the arena of politics.

Shortly after he succeeded to his Barony he married the widow of Joseph Peach, Governor of Calcutta, and for a time seems to have made an effort to reform his ways; but the vice in his blood was quick to reassert itself; he abandoned his wife under the spell of a barmaid’s eyes, and plunged again into the morass of depravity, in which alone he could find the pleasure he loved.

Such was Lord Lyttelton at the time this story opens, when, although still a young man (he was but thirty-five when he died), he was a nervous and physical wreck, draining the last dregs of the cup of pleasure.

And yet, how little he seems to have realised that he was near the end of his tether the following story proves.  One day in the last month of his life a cousin and boon companion, Mr Fortescue, called on him at his London home.

“He found,” to quote the words of his lordship’s stepmother, “Lord Lyttelton in bed, though not ill; and on his rallying him for it, Lord Lyttelton said:  ’Well, cousin, if you will wait in the next room a little while, I will get up and go out with you.’  He did so, and the two young men walked out into the streets.  In the course of their walk they crossed the churchyard of St James’s, Piccadilly.  Lord Lyttelton, pointing to the gravestones, said:  ’Now, look at these vulgar fellows; they die in their youth at five-and-thirty.  But you and I, who are gentlemen, shall live to a good old age!’”

How little could he have anticipated that within a few days he, too, would be lying among the “vulgar fellows” who die in their youth at five-and-thirty!

And, indeed, there seemed little evidence of such a tragic possibility; for the very next day he was charming the House of Lords with a speech of singular eloquence and statesmanlike grasp—­the speech of a man in the prime of his powers.  Such efforts as this, however, were but as the spasmodic flickerings of a candle that is burning to its end, and were followed by deeper plunges into the dissipations that were surely killing him.

It was towards the close of the month of November, in 1779, that Lord Lyttelton left London and its fatal allurements for a few days’ peaceful life at his country seat, Pit Place, at Epsom (in those days a fashionable health resort), where he had invited a house-party, including several ladies, to join him.  And, it should be said, no host could possibly be more charming and gracious; for, in spite of his depraved tastes, Lord Lyttelton was a man of remarkable fascination—­a wit, a born raconteur, and a courtier to his finger-tips.