_Chronicle_, the _Morning Post_, and the _Courier_, held me up to public
execration, and even pointed me out for destruction. The editor of the
_Times_, who was then the notorious Dr. Slop, alias Dr. Stoddart,
the present proprietor of the _New Times_, urged my assassination
over and over again. As, however, no one would kill me in reality, he
determined at least to kill me in print. Accordingly along article was
inserted in the paper, announcing, in the gravest manner, the death of
Hunt. It stated that I bad got drunk, at Mr. Thompson's gin-shop on
Holborn-hill, and had fallen into one of the areas of the new buildings
at Waterloo-place, opposite Carlton-House, where I was found dead. A few
days afterwards, it was declared that they were misinformed as to my
death, but that I was taken in a melancholy state of insanity to Bedlam;
and the writer gave an account of the incoherent conversation which I
had held with Major Cartwright, Mr. Cobbett, and Sir Francis Burdett,
who had been to visit me. These accounts were given in such a serious
manner, the details were so minute, and they had altogether so much
the appearance of truth, that many of my friends and relations in the
country were exceedingly alarmed, not having any idea that the editor
of a respectable newspaper would have the impudence to put forth such
barefaced falsehoods. There was also generally one scoundrel or other
who gratified his malignity by writing to my family some dreadful
story of my death, or of some serious injury which I had received.

On the Saturday previous to the 2d of December I drove again to London,
and as I was sitting, in the evening of that day, in the room at the
Black Lion, Water Lane, Dr. Watson and Mr. Thistlewood called to consult
me upon what I meant to propose on the following Monday. I declined,
however, to have any conversation with them upon the subject. I should,
I told them, be there at the time appointed (one o'clock), on the
ensuing Monday; but that I was going out of town on the next morning,