"He was certainly a person of the greatest abilities of any of that Party. He had a great knowledge both in Scholarship and in the Law. He was of a concise and significant language, and the mildest, yet subtillest, speaker of any man in the House; and had a dexterity, when a question was going to be put, which agreed not with his sense, to draw it over to it, by adding some equivocall or sly word, which would enervate the meaning of it, as first put. He was very well read in history; and I remember the first time I ever saw that of D'Avila of the Civil Warrs of France, it was lent me under the title of Mr. Hambden's Vade mecum; and I beleive no copy was liker an originall, than that rebellion was like ours."