There was a literary and classical spirit abroad, and in spite of the furious preoccupations of faction, a certain ready disengagement of mind prevailed.

If Windham and Fox began to talk of horses, they seemed to fall naturally into what had been said about horses by the old writers.

Fox held that long ears were a merit, and Windham met him by the authority of Xenophon and Oppian in favour of short ones, and finally they went off into what it was that Virgil meant when he called a horse's head _argutum caput_.

Burke and Windham travelled in Scotland together in 1785, and their conversation fell as often on old books as on Hastings or on Pitt.

They discussed Virgil's similes; Johnson and L'Estrange, as the extremes of English style; what Stephens and A.Gellius had to say about Cicero's use of the word _gratiosus_.