In the course of that long and eager controversy, he had several passages of sharp personal collision with his opponents, particularly with Governor Randolph, whose vacillating course respecting the Constitution had left him exposed to the most galling comments, and who on one occasion, in his anguish, turned upon Patrick Henry with the exclamation: "I find myself attacked in the most illiberal manner by the honorable gentleman. I disdain his aspersions and his insinuations. His asperity is warranted by no principle of parliamentary decency, nor compatible with the least shadow of friendship; and if our friendship must fall, let it fall, like Lucifer, never to rise again."[391] Like all very eloquent men, he was taunted, of course, for having more eloquence than logic; for "his declamatory talents;" for his "vague discourses and mere sports of fancy;" for discarding "solid argument;" and for "throwing those bolts" which he had "so peculiar a dexterity at discharging."[392] On one occasion, old General Adam Stephen tried to burlesque the orator's manner of speech;[393] on another occasion, that same petulant warrior bluntly told Patrick that if he did "not like this government," he might "go and live among the Indians," and even offered to facilitate the orator's self-expatriation among the savages: "I know of several nations that live very happily; and I can furnish him with a vocabulary of their language."[394] Knowing, as he did, every passion and prejudice of his audience, he adopted, it appears, almost every conceivable method of appeal. "The variety of arguments," writes one witness, "which Mr. Henry generally presented in his speeches, addressed to the capacities, prejudices, and individual interests of his hearers, made his speeches very unequal. He rarely made in that convention a speech which Quintilian would have approved. If he soared at times, like the eagle, and seemed like the bird of Jove to be armed with thunder, he did not disdain to stoop like the hawk to seize his prey,--but the instant that he had done it, rose in pursuit of another quarry."[395]