To that charge, at any rate, he did not long continue liable.

He left college a staunch and vehement Whig, eager to maintain against all comers, and at any moment, that none but Whig opinions had a leg to stand upon.
His cousin George Babington, a rising surgeon, with whom at one time he lived in the closest intimacy, was always ready to take up the Tory cudgels.

The two friends "would walk up and down the room, crossing each other for hours, shouting one another down with a continuous simultaneous storm of words, until George at length yielded to arguments and lungs combined.

Never, so far as I remember, was there any loss of temper.

It was a fair, good-humoured battle in not very mannerly lists." Even as a very young man nine people out of ten liked nothing better than to listen to him, which was fortunate; because in his early days he had scanty respect of persons, either as regarded the choice of his topics, or the quantity of his words.