If they came to libraries, Windham ran into them with eagerness, and very strongly enjoyed all "the _feel_ that a library usually excites." He is constantly reproaching himself with a remissness, which was purely imaginary, in keeping up his mathematics, his Greek tragedies, his Latin historians.
There is no more curious example of the remorse of a book-man impeded by affairs.

"What progress might men make in the several parts of knowledge," he says very truly, in one of these moods, "if they could only pursue them with the same eagerness and assiduity as are exerted by lawyers in the conduct of a suit." But this distraction between the tastes of the book-man and the pursuits of public business, united with a certain quality of his constitution to produce one great defect in his character, and it was the worst defect that a statesman can have.

He became the most irresolute and vacillating of men.

He wastes the first half of a day in deciding which of two courses to take, and the second half in blaming himself for not having taken the other.

He is constantly late at entertainments, because he cannot make up his mind in proper time whether to go or to stay at home; hesitation whether he shall read in the red room or in the library, loses him three of the best hours of a morning; the difficulty of early rising he finds to consist less in rising early than in satisfying himself that the practice is wholesome; his mind is torn for a whole forenoon in an absurd contest with himself, whether he ought to indulge a strong wish to exercise his horse before dinner.