Part 68 (1/2)
Gladstone was the last of a school of oratory, and the last of our time--I hope not for all time--of a school of statesmen.
When he entered upon a discussion in Parliament, or on the hustings, he elevated it to the highest possible plane. The discussion became alike one of the highest moral principles and the profoundest political philosophy. He seemed to be speaking as our statesmen of the Revolutionary time, and the time of framing our Const.i.tution. He used to speak to all generations alike. What he had to say would have been true and apt and fit to be uttered in the earlier days of Athens and Rome, and true and apt and fit to be uttered for thousands of years to come. He had, in a large measure, a failing which all Englishmen have, and always had; the notion that what is good for England is good for humanity at large. Still it was a lofty morality and a lofty ideal statesmans.h.i.+p. It was sincere. What he said, that he believed. It came straight from his heart, and he kindled in the bosoms of his listeners the ardor of his own heart. He was not afraid of his ideals.
I heard Dr. Guthrie in Edinburgh in 1860. It was a hot day.
My companion was just getting well from a dangerous attack of bleeding at the lungs. We made our way with difficulty into the crowded church. The people were, almost all of them, standing. We were obliged, by my friend's condition, to get out again before the sermon. I remember, however, the old man's att.i.tude, and his prayer in the racy, broad Scotch, the most tender, pathetic and expressive language on earth for the deeper emotions as well as for humor. I wonder if my readers have ever seen the version of the Psalms--
”Frae Hebrew Intil Scottis,” by P. Hately Waddell, LL.D., Minister, Edinburgh, 1891.
If not, and they will get it, a new delight is in store for them, and they will know something of the diction of Dr.
Guthrie.
He once began a prayer, ”O Lord, it is a braw thing to loe ye. But it is a better (bitter) thing to hate ye.”
The beauty of this dialect is that while it is capable alike of such tenderness, and such lofty eloquence, and such exquisite and delicate humor, it is, like our Saxon, incapable of falsetto, or of little pomposities.
I heard Lyman Beecher, then a very old man, before a meeting of the members of the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature in 1852, when the measure known as the Maine Liquor Law was pending. He bore unmistakable marks of advanced age. But there were one or two pa.s.sages that showed the power of the orator, one especially in which he described the beauty and delight of our homes, and intemperance threatening them with its waves like a great sea of fire.
I saw Henry Ward Beecher several times in private, and had pleasant talks with him. But I am sorry to say I never heard him speak, so far as I can now remember, on any occasion when he put forth his power. But if half that is told of his speeches, during the Civil War, some of them to hostile and angry audiences, be true, he was a consummate master. One story is told of him which I suppose is true, and, if it be true, ranks him as one of the greatest masters of his art that ever lived.
It is said that he was speaking to a great crowd in Birmingham, or perhaps Liverpool, which constantly goaded him with hostile interruptions, so that he had great difficulty in getting on. At last one fellow provoked the cheers and applause of the audience by crying out--”Why didn't you put down the Rebellion in sixty days as you said you would?” Beecher paused a moment until they became still, in their eagerness to hear his reply, and then hurled back--”We should if they had been Englishmen.”
The fierce, untamed animal hesitated a moment between anger and admiration, and then the English love of fair play and pluck prevailed, and the crowd cheered him and let him go on.
But any man who reads Beecher's delightful ”Letters from the White Mountains,” or some of his sermons, and imagines his great frame, and far-sounding voice, will get a conception of his power to play on the feelings or men, of his humor, and pathos, and intense conviction, and rapidity in pa.s.sing from one emotion to another, and will understand him.
I heard Rufus Choate a great many times. I heard nearly all the speeches given in Brown's Life; and I heard him a great many times at the Bar, both before juries and the full Court. He is the only advocate I ever heard who had the imperial power which would subdue an unwilling and hostile jury. His power over them seemed like the fascination of a bird by a snake. Of course, he couldn't do this with able Judges, although all Judges who listened to him would, I think, agree that he was as persuasive a reasoner as ever lived.
But with inferior magistrates and juries, however intelligent, however determined they were in a made-up opinion, however on their guard against the charmer, he was almost irresistible.
There are very few important cases recorded that Choate lost.
Non supplex, sed magister aut dominus videretur esse judic.u.m.
Choate's method was pure persuasion. He never appealed to base motives, nor tried to awake coa.r.s.e prejudices or stormy pa.s.sions. He indulged in no invective. His wit and sarcasm and ridicule amused the victim almost as much as it amused the bystander. He had the suaviloquentia which Cicero attributes to Cornelius. There was never a harsh note in his speech.
Latrantur enim jam quidam oratores, non loquuntur.
When he was confronted with some general rule, or some plain fact, he had a marvellous art of subtle distinction. He showed that his client, or witness, or proposition, belonged to a cla.s.s of itself. He invested it with a distinct and intense personality.He held up his fact or his principle before the mind of the Court and the jury. He described and pictured it. He brought out in clear relief what distinguished it from any other fact or proposition whatever. If necessary, he would almost have made a jury, before he was through, think the Siamese twins did not look alike, and possibly that they never could have been born of the same parents.
He had a voice without any gruff or any shrill tones. It was like a sweet, yet powerful flute. He never strained it or seemed to exert it to its fullest capacity. I do not know any other public speaker whose style resembled his in the least. Perhaps Jeremy Taylor was his model, if he had any model. The phraseology with which he clothed some commonplace or mean thought or fact, when he was compelled to use commonplace arguments, or to tell some common story, kept his auditors ever alert and expectant. An Irishman, who had killed his wife, threw away the axe with which Choate claimed the deed was done, when he heard somebody coming. This, in Choate's language, was ”the sudden and frantic e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of the axe.”
Indeed his speech was a perpetual surprise. Whether you liked him or disliked him, you gave him your ears, erect and intent.
He used ma.n.u.script a great deal, even in speaking to juries.
When a trial was on, lasting days or weeks, he kept pen, ink, and paper at hand in his bedroom, and would often get up in the middle of the night to write down thoughts that came to him as he lay in bed. He was always careful to keep warm.
It was said he prepared for a great jury argument by taking off eight great coats and drinking eight cups of green tea.
When I was a young lawyer in Worcester I had something to do before the Court sitting in the fourth story of the old stone court house in Boston. I finished my business and had just time to catch the train for home. As I came down the stairs I pa.s.sed the door of the court-room where the United States Court was sitting. The thick wooden door was open, and the opening was closed by a door of thin leather stretched on a wooden frame. I pulled it open enough to look in, and there, within three feet of me, was Choate, addressing a jury in a case of marine insurance, where the defence was the unseaworthiness of the vessel. I had just time to hear this sentence, and shut the door and hurry to my train: ”She went down the harbor, painted and perfidious--a coffin, but no s.h.i.+p.”
I hear now, as if still in the eager throng, his speech in Faneuil Hall during the Mexican War. He demanded that we should bring back our soldiers to the line we claimed as our rightful boundary, and let Mexico go. He said we had done enough for glory, and that we had humiliated her enough.
”The Mexican maiden, as she sits with her lover among the orange-groves, will sing to her guitar the story of these times--'Ah, woe is me, Alhama,' for a thousand years to come.”
Choate, like other good orators, and like some great poets, notably Wordsworth, created the taste which he satisfied.
His dramatic action, his marvellous and strange vocabulary, his oriental imagination, his dressing the common and mean things of life with a poetic charm and romance, did not at once strike favorably the taste of his Yankee audiences.
Webster and Everett seem to have appreciated him from the first. But he was, till he vindicated his t.i.tle to be a great lawyer, rather a thorn in the flesh of Chief Justice Shaw, of whose consternation and amazement, caused by the strange figure that appeared in his court-room, many queer stories used to be told. But the young men and the people liked him.