Chapter VI (2)

Charles Fox is credited with saying that a good speech never reads well. This opinion, taken in the sense in which it was intended, that a carefully-prepared speech, which reads like an essay, lacks the freshness and glow that should characterize the oratory of debate, is undoubtedly correct. But it is equally true that when a speech which we know to have been good in delivery is equally good in print, a higher intellectual plane is reached and a higher level of excellence is attained than is possible to either the mere essay or to the effective retort or argument, which loses its flavor with the occasion which draws it forth. Mr. Webster's speeches on the tariff, on the bank, and on like subjects, able as they are, are necessarily dry, but his speeches on nobler themes are admirable reading. This is, of course, due to the variety and ease of treatment, to their power, and to the purity of the style. At the same time, the immediate effect of what he said was immense, greater, even, than the intrinsic merit of the speech itself. There has been much discussion as to the amount of preparation which Mr. Webster made. His occasional orations were, of course, carefully written out beforehand, a practice which was entirely proper; but in his great parliamentary speeches, and often in legal arguments as well, he made but slight preparation in the ordinary sense of the term. The notes for the two speeches on Foote's resolution were jotted down on a few sheets of note-paper. The delivery of the second one, his masterpiece, was practically extemporaneous, and yet it fills seventy octavo pages and occupied four hours. He is reported to have said that his whole life had been a preparation for the reply to Hayne. Whether he said it or not, the statement is perfectly true. The thoughts on the Union and on the grandeur of American nationality had been garnered up for years, and this in a greater or less degree was true of all his finest efforts. The preparation on paper was trifling, but the mental preparation extending over weeks or days, sometimes, perhaps, over years, was elaborate to the last point. When the moment came, a night's work would put all the stored-up thoughts in order, and on the next day they would pour forth with all the power of a strong mind thoroughly saturated with its subject, and yet with the vitality of unpremeditated expression, having the fresh glow of morning upon it, and with no trace of the lamp.

More than all this, however, in the immediate effect of Mr. Webster's speeches was the physical influence of the man himself. We can but half understand his eloquence and its influence if we do not carefully study his physical attributes, his temperament and disposition. In face, form, and voice, nature did her utmost for Daniel Webster. No envious fairy was present at his birth to mar these gifts by her malign influence. He seemed to every one to be a giant; that, at least, is the word we most commonly find applied to him, and there is no better proof of his enormous physical impressiveness than this well-known fact, for Mr. Webster was not a man of extraordinary stature. He was five feet ten inches in height, and, in health, weighed a little less than two hundred pounds. These are the proportions of a large man, but there is nothing remarkable about them. We must look elsewhere than to mere size to discover why men spoke of Webster as a giant. He had a swarthy complexion and straight black hair. His head was very large, the brain weighing, as is well known, more than any on record, except those of Cuvier and of the celebrated bricklayer. At the same time his head was of noble shape, with a broad and lofty brow, and his features were finely cut and full of massive strength. His eyes were extraordinary. They were very dark and deep-set, and, when he began to rouse himself to action, shone with the deep light of a forge-fire, getting ever more glowing as excitement rose. His voice was in harmony with his appearance. It was low and musical in conversation; in debate it was high but full, ringing out in moments of excitement like a clarion, and then sinking to deep notes with the solemn richness of organ-tones, while the words were accompanied by a manner in which grace and dignity mingled in complete accord. The impression which he produced upon the eye and ear it is difficult to express. There is no man in all history who came into the world so equipped physically for speech. In this direction nature could do no more. The mere look of the man and the sound of his voice made all who saw and heard him feel that he must be the embodiment of wisdom, dignity, and strength, divinely eloquent, even if he sat in dreamy silence or uttered nothing but heavy commonplaces.

It is commonly said that no one of the many pictures of Mr. Webster gives a true idea of what he was. We can readily believe this when we read the descriptions which have come down to us. That indefinable quality which we call personal magnetism, the power of impressing by one's personality every human being who comes near, was at its height in Mr. Webster. He never, for instance, punished his children, but when they did wrong he would send for them and look at them silently. The look, whether of anger or sorrow, was punishment and rebuke enough. It was the same with other children. The little daughter of Mr. Wirt once came into a room where Mr. Webster was sitting with his back toward her, and touched him on the arm. He turned suddenly, and the child started back with an affrighted cry at the sight of that dark, stern, melancholy face. But the cloud passed as swiftly as the shadows on a summer sea, and the next moment the look of affection and humor brought the frightened child into Mr. Webster's arms, and they were friends and playmates in an instant.

The power of a look and of changing expression, so magical with a child, was hardly less so with men. There have been very few instances in history where there is such constant reference to merely physical attributes as in the case of Mr. Webster. His general appearance and his eyes are the first and last things alluded to in every contemporary description. Every one is familiar with the story of the English navvy who pointed at Mr. Webster in the streets of Liverpool and said, "There goes a king." Sidney Smith exclaimed when he saw him, "Good heavens, he is a small cathedral by himself." Carlyle, no lover of America, wrote to Emerson:--

"Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the notablest of all your
notabilities, Daniel Webster. He is a magnificent specimen. You
might say to all the world, 'This is our Yankee Englishman; such
limbs we make in Yankee land!' As a logic fencer, or parliamentary
Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against all
the extant world. The tanned complexion; that amorphous crag-like
face; the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows, like dull
anthracite furnaces needing only to be _blown_; the mastiff mouth
accurately closed; I have not traced so much of _silent Berserkir
rage_ that I remember of in any man. 'I guess I should not like to
be your nigger!' Webster is not loquacious, but he is pertinent,
conclusive; a dignified, perfectly bred man, though not English in
breeding; a man worthy of the best reception among us, and meeting
such I understand."

Such was the effect produced by Mr. Webster when in England, and it was a universal impression. Wherever he went men felt in the depths of their being the amazing force of his personal presence. He could control an audience by a look, and could extort applause from hostile listeners by a mere glance. On one occasion, after the 7th of March speech, there is a story that a noted abolitionist leader was present in the crowd gathered to hear Mr. Webster, and this bitter opponent is reported to have said afterwards, "When Webster, speaking of secession, asked 'what is to become of me,' I was thrilled with a sense of some awful impending calamity." The story may be apocryphal, but there can be no doubt of its essential truth so far as the effect of Mr. Webster's personal presence goes. People looked at him, and that was enough. Mr. Parton in his essay speaks of seeing Webster at a public dinner, sitting at the head of the table with a bottle of Madeira under his yellow waistcoat, and looking like Jove. When he presided at the Cooper memorial meeting in New York he uttered only a few stately platitudes, and yet every one went away with the firm conviction that they had heard him speak words of the profoundest wisdom and grandest eloquence.

The temptation to rely on his marvellous physical gifts grew on him as he became older, which was to be expected with a man of his temperament. Even in his early days, when he was not in action, he had an impassible and slumberous look; and when he sat listening to the invective of Hayne, no emotion could be traced on his cold, dark, melancholy face, or in the cavernous eyes shining with a dull light. This all vanished when he began to speak, and, as he poured forth his strong, weighty sentences, there was no lack of expression or of movement. But Mr. Webster, despite his capacity for work, and his protracted and often intense labor, was constitutionally indolent, and this sluggishness of temperament increased very much as he grew older. It extended from the periods of repose to those of action until, in his later years, a direct stimulus was needed to make him exert himself. Even to the last the mighty power was still there in undiminished strength, but it was not willingly put forth. Sometimes the outside impulse would not come; sometimes the most trivial incident would suffice, and like a spark on the train of gunpowder would bring a sudden burst of eloquence, electrifying all who listened. On one occasion he was arguing a case to the jury. He was talking in his heaviest and most ponderous fashion, and with half-closed eyes. The court and the jurymen were nearly asleep as Mr. Webster argued on, stating the law quite wrongly to his nodding listeners. The counsel on the other side interrupted him and called the attention of the court to Mr. Webster's presentation of the law. The judge, thus awakened, explained to the jury that the law was not as Mr. Webster stated it. While this colloquy was in progress Mr. Webster roused up, pushed back his thick hair, shook himself, and glanced about him with the look of a caged lion. When the judge paused, he turned again to the jury, his eyes no longer half shut but wide open and glowing with excitement. Raising his voice, he said, in tones which made every one start: "If my client could recover under the law as I stated it, how much more is he entitled to recover under the law as laid down by the court;" and then, the jury now being thoroughly awake, he poured forth a flood of eloquent argument and won his case. In his latter days Mr. Webster made many careless and dull speeches and carried them through by the power of his look and manner, but the time never came when, if fairly aroused, he failed to sway the hearts and understandings of men by a grand and splendid eloquence. The lion slept very often, but it never became safe to rouse him from his slumber.

It was soon after the reply to Hayne that Mr. Webster made his great argument for the government in the White murder case. One other address to a jury in the Goodridge case, and the defence of Judge Prescott before the Massachusetts Senate, which is of similar character, have been preserved to us. The speech for Prescott is a strong, dignified appeal to the sober, and yet sympathetic, judgment of his hearers, but wholly free from any attempt to confuse or mislead, or to sway the decision by unwholesome pathos. Under the circumstances, which were very adverse to his client, the argument was a model of its kind, and contains some very fine passages full of the solemn force so characteristic of its author. The Goodridge speech is chiefly remarkable for the ease with which Mr. Webster unravelled a complicated set of facts, demonstrated that the accuser was in reality the guilty party, and carried irresistible conviction to the minds of the jurors. It was connected with a remarkable exhibition of his power of cross-examination, which was not only acute and penetrating, but extremely terrifying to a recalcitrant witness. The argument in the White case, as a specimen of eloquence, stands on far higher ground than either of the other two, and, apart from the nature of the subject, ranks with the very best of Mr. Webster's oratorical triumphs. The opening of the speech, comprising the account of the murder and the analysis of the workings of a mind seared with the remembrance of a horrid crime, must be placed among the very finest masterpieces of modern oratory. The description of the feelings of the murderer has a touch of the creative power, but, taken in conjunction with the wonderful picture of the deed itself, the whole exhibits the highest imaginative excellence, and displays the possession of an extraordinary dramatic force such as Mr. Webster rarely exerted. It has the same power of exciting a kind of horror and of making us shudder with a creeping, nameless terror as the scene after the murder of Duncan, when Macbeth rushes out from the chamber of death, crying, "I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?" I have studied this famous exordium with extreme care, and I have sought diligently in the works of all the great modern orators, and of some of the ancient as well, for similar passages of higher merit. My quest has been in vain. Mr. Webster's description of the White murder, and of the ghastly haunting sense of guilt which pursued the assassin, has never been surpassed in dramatic force by any speaker, whether in debate or before a jury. Perhaps the most celebrated descriptive passage in the literature of modern eloquence is the picture drawn by Burke of the descent of Hyder Ali upon the plains of the Carnatic, but even that certainly falls short of the opening of Webster's speech in simple force as well as in dramatic power. Burke depicted with all the ardor of his nature and with a wealth of color a great invasion which swept thousands to destruction. Webster's theme was a cold-blooded murder in a quiet New England town. Comparison between such topics, when one is so infinitely larger than the other, seems at first sight almost impossible. But Mr. Webster also dealt with the workings of the human heart under the influence of the most terrible passions, and those have furnished sufficient material for the genius of Shakespeare. The test of excellence is in the treatment, and in this instance Mr. Webster has never been excelled. The effect of that exordium, delivered as he alone could have delivered it, must have been appalling. He was accused of having been brought into the case to hurry the jury beyond the law and evidence, and his whole speech was certainly calculated to drive any body of men, terror-stricken by his eloquence, wherever he wished them to go. Mr. Webster did not have that versatility and variety of eloquence which we associate with the speakers who have produced the most startling effect upon that complex thing called a jury. He never showed that rapid alternation of wit, humor, pathos, invective, sublimity, and ingenuity which have been characteristic of the greatest advocates. Before a jury as everywhere else he was direct and simple. He awed and terrified jurymen; he convinced their reason; but he commanded rather than persuaded, and carried them with him by sheer force of eloquence and argument, and by his overpowering personality.

The extravagant admiration which Mr. Webster excited among his followers has undoubtedly exaggerated his greatness in many respects; but, high as the praise bestowed upon him as an orator has been, in that direction at least he has certainly not been overestimated. The reverse rather is true. Mr. Webster was, of course, the greatest orator this country has ever produced. Patrick Henry's fame rests wholly on tradition. The same is true of Hamilton, who, moreover, never had an opportunity adequate to his talents, which were unquestionably of the first order. Fisher Ames's reputation was due to a single speech which is distinctly inferior to many of Webster's. Clay's oratory has not stood the test of time; his speeches, which were so wonderfully effective when he uttered them, seem dead and cold and rather thin as we read them to-day. Calhoun was a great debater, but was too dry and hard for the highest eloquence. John Quincy Adams, despite his physical limitations, carried the eloquence of combat and bitter retort to the highest point in the splendid battles of his congressional career, but his learning, readiness, power of expression, argument, and scathing sarcasm were not rounded into a perfect whole by the more graceful attributes which also form an essential part of oratory.

Mr. Webster need not fear comparison with any of his countrymen, and he has no reason to shun it with the greatest masters of speech in England. He had much of the grandeur of Chatham, with whom it is impossible to compare him or indeed any one else, for the Great Commoner lives only in fragments of doubtful accuracy. Sheridan was universally considered to have made the most splendid speech of his day. Yet the speech on the Begums as given by Moore does not cast Webster's best work at all into the shade. Webster did not have Sheridan's brilliant wit, but on the other hand he was never forced, never involved, never guilty of ornament, which fastidious judges would now pronounce tawdry. Webster's best speeches read much better than anything of Sheridan, and, so far as we can tell from careful descriptions, his manner, look, and delivery were far more imposing. The "manly eloquence" of Fox seems to have resembled Webster's more closely than that of any other of his English rivals. Fox was more fertile, more brilliant, more surprising than Webster, and had more quickness and dash, and a greater ease and charm of manner. But he was often careless, and sometimes fell into repetitions, from which, of course, no great speaker can be wholly free any more than he can keep entirely clear of commonplaces. Webster gained upon him by superior finish and by greater weight of argument. Before a jury Webster fell behind Erskine as he did behind Choate, although neither of them ever produced anything at all comparable to the speech on the White murder; but in the Senate, and in the general field of oratory, he rises high above them both. The man with whom Webster is oftenest compared, and the last to be mentioned, is of course Burke. It may be conceded at once that in creative imagination, and in richness of imagery and language, Burke ranks above Webster. But no one would ever have said of Webster as Goldsmith did of Burke:--

"Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining,
And thought of convincing while they thought of dining."

Webster never sinned by over refinement or over ingenuity, for both were utterly foreign to his nature. Still less did he impair his power in the Senate as Burke did in the Commons by talking too often and too much. If he did not have the extreme beauty and grace of which Burke was capable, he was more forcible and struck harder and more weighty blows. He was greatly aided in this by his brief and measured periods, and his strength was never wasted in long and elaborate sentences. Webster, moreover, would never have degenerated into the ranting excitement which led Burke to draw a knife from his bosom and cast it on the floor of the House. This illustrates what was, perhaps, Mr. Webster's very strongest point,--his absolute good taste. He may have been ponderous at times in his later years. We know that he was occasionally heavy, pompous, and even dull, but he never violated the rules of the nicest taste. Other men have been more versatile, possessed of a richer imagination, and more gorgeous style, with a more brilliant wit and a keener sarcasm, but there is not one who is so absolutely free from faults of taste as Webster, or who is so uniformly simple and pure in thought and style, even to the point of severity.[1]

[Footnote 1: A volume might be written comparing Mr. Webster with other great orators. Only the briefest and most rudimentary treatment of the subject is possible here. A most excellent study of the comparative excellence of Webster's eloquence has been made by Judge Chamberlain, Librarian of the Boston Public Library, in a speech at the dinner of the Dartmouth Alumni, which has since been printed as a pamphlet.]

It is easy to compare Mr. Webster with this and the other great orator, and to select points of resemblance and of difference, and show where Mr. Webster was superior and where he fell behind. But the final verdict must be upon all his qualities taken together. He had the most extraordinary physical gifts of face, form, and voice, and employed them to the best advantage. Thus equipped, he delivered a long series of great speeches which can be read to-day with the deepest interest, instruction, and pleasure. He had dignity, grandeur, and force, a strong historic imagination, and great dramatic power when he chose to exert it. He possessed an unerring taste, a capacity for vigorous and telling sarcasm, a glow and fire none the less intense because they were subdued, perfect clearness of statement joined to the highest skill in argument, and he was master of a style which was as forcible as it was simple and pure. Take him for all in all, he was not only the greatest orator this country has ever known, but in the history of eloquence his name will stand with those of Demosthenes and Cicero, of Chatham and Burke.