of his time. But that very fertility, that very acuteness, which
gave a singular charm to his conversation, to his oratory and to
his writings, unfitted him for the work of promptly deciding
practical questions. He was slow from very quickness. For he saw
so many arguments for and against every possible course that he
was longer in making up his mind than a dull man would have been.
Instead of acquiescing in his first thoughts, he replied on
himself, rejoined on himself, and surrejoined on himself. Those
who heard him talk owned that he talked like an angel: but too
often, when he had exhausted all that could be said, and came to
act, the time for action was over.

Meanwhile the two Secretaries of State were constantly labouring
to draw their master in diametrically opposite directions. Every
scheme, every person, recommended by one of them was reprobated
by the other. Nottingham was never weary of repeating that the
old Roundhead party, the party which had taken the life of
Charles the First and had plotted against the life of Charles the
Second, was in principle republican, and that the Tories were the
only true friends of monarchy. Shrewsbury replied that the Tories
might be friends of monarchy, but that they regarded James as
their monarch. Nottingham was always bringing to the closet
intelligence of the wild daydreams in which a few old eaters of
calf's head, the remains of the once formidable party of Bradshaw
and Ireton, still indulged at taverns in the city. Shrewsbury
produced ferocious lampoons which the Jacobites dropped every day
in the coffeehouses. "Every Whig," said the Tory Secretary, "is
an enemy of your Majesty's prerogative." "Every Tory," said the
Whig Secretary, "is an enemy of your Majesty's title."71