Events had no right to be born throughout his dominions, without a preparatory course of his obstetrical pedantry.

He could never learn that the earth would not rest on its axis, while he wrote a programme of the way it was to turn.

He was slow in deciding, slower in communicating his decisions.

He was prolix with his pen, not from affluence, but from paucity of ideas.

He took refuge in a cloud of words, sometimes to conceal his meaning, oftener to conceal the absence of any meaning, thus mystifying not only others but himself.