LXIII.

DANIEL WEBSTER AS AN ORATOR.

BY ORESTES A. BROWNSON.'

We know not how Mr. Webster compares as an orator with the great orators of other times or other countries, for mere descriptions of oratory are rarely reliable; but he comes up more nearly to our ideal of the finished orator for the bar, the Senate, the popular assembly, or a s patriotic celebration, than any other to whom our country has given us an opportunity of listening. His elocution and diction harmonize admirably with his person and voice, and both strike you at once as fitted to each other. His majestic person, his strong, athletic frame, 10 and his deep, rich, sonorous voice, set off with double effect his massive thoughts, his weighty sentences, his chaste, dignified, and harmonious periods.

Whatever we may say of the elocution, the rhetoric is always equal to it. Mr. Webster is perhaps the best 15 rhetorician in the country. No man better appreciates the choice of words or the construction or collocation of sentences, so as to seize at once the understanding, soothe the passions, charm the imagination, and captivate the affections. He is always classical. His words are pure 20 English, and the proper words for the occasion, the best in the language; and his sentences are simply constructed, never involved, never violently inverted, but straightforward, honest, sincere, and free from all modern trickery. We know in the language no models better fitted » than his orations and speeches for the assiduous study

of the young literary aspirant who would become a perfect rhetorician, or master of a style at once free and natural, instructive and pleasing, pure and correct, graceful and elevated, dignified and noble. Mr. Webster's artistic skill is consummate, and evidently has been acquired s only by great labor and pains; but you must study his works long and carefully before you will detect it. Such writing as his comes not by nature, and no genius, however great, can match it without years of hard labor in preparatory discipline.

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The casual reader may be apt to underrate Mr. Webster's merits as a logician, and we recollect hearing a distinguished senator, who ought to have known him well, characterize him one day as "a magnificent declaimer, but no reasoner." He is not of a speculative 15 turn of mind, nor does he appear to have devoted much time to the study of the speculative sciences, though he evidently has not wholly neglected them-and he seldom reasons, as we say, in form; but he gives full evidence, after all, of possessing the logical element in as eminent 20 a degree as he does any other element of the human mind. His style of expression and habits of thought are strictly logical, and his conclusions always follow from his premises.

The only thing to be said is, that very often one of his premises is understood and not expressed, and sometimes rests on the prejudice of his countrymen, not on a true principle. Where his principles are sound, as in his law arguments, and in the greater part of his speeches in Congress, and in several of his diplomatic letters, his s logic is sound and invincible, although it is presented in a popular form, the most suitable for his purpose. Ordinarily he strikes us as comprehensive rather than acute, but he can be as acute, as nice in his analyses and dis

tinctions as need be, as we may know from his argument to the court and jury in the trial of the Knapps for the murder of Captain White of Salem, which, upon the whole, is one of the most finished of his performances.

Some readers, again, will regard Mr. Webster as chiefly remarkable for his pure intellectual power, and be disposed to deny him much power of imagination. But this would be in the highest degree unjust. He possesses an uncommonly strong and vivid imagination. Take up any one of his speeches on any subject, no mat-10 ter how dry and uninteresting in itself, and you will find that he at once informs it with life, elevates it, and invests it with a deep interest. This no man destitute of imagination can ever do. The test of imagination is not a florid style, abounding in tropes and figures. Such a style indicates fancy, not imagination, and, in fact, it is the general tendency of our countrymen, nay, of our age, to mistake fancy for imagination.

Irving and Hawthorne have imagination, though not of the highest order; Bancroft has fancy, a rich and 20 exuberant fancy, but very little imagination. To test the question whether a man has imagination or not, let him take up a dry and difficult subject, and if he can treat it so that without weariness, and even with interest, you can follow him through his discussion of it, although he uses always the language appropriate to it, and seems to employ only the pure intellect in developing it, you may be sure that he has a strong and fervid imagination, so strong and active as to impart life and motion to whatever he touches.

Mr. Webster has an exceedingly rich and active imagination, but he does not suffer it to predominate; he makes it subservient to his reason, and so blends it with the pure intellect that you feel its effect without being

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aware of its presence. No matter how apparently dry and technical the subject he has in hand, the moment he begins to unfold it, and to indicate its connections with other subjects, and through these its higher social or moral relations, his hearer's or reader's attention is arrested, fixed, and held till he closes. He no sooner speaks than the dry bones of his subject assume flesh, move, and stand up, living and breathing, in proper human shape, well formed and duly proportioned.

What we most admire in the style of Mr. Webster is 10 its simplicity, strength, and repose. The majority of our writers who study to be simple in their manner are plain, dry, or silly. They are simple in a sense in which simplicity is not a compliment. Those who wish to escape this charge become inflated, bombastic, and unable 15 to say anything in an easy and natural manner. They select high-sounding words, pile up adjective upon adjective, and send their fancy over all nature, and through all its departments, to cull flowers and collect images to adorn and illustrate some poor, commonplace thought, "0 or some puny conceit. Mr. Webster avoids both extremes, and speaks always in accordance with the genius of his native idiom, and in his natural key.

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Extracts from any of his speeches will serve to illustrate, not only the simplicity of his language, but the 25 strength of his expressions, and the repose of his man

ner.

The quiet majesty of his style in the more felicitous moments of the orator has seldom been surpassed. Burke is the English writer with whom we most naturally compare him. As an orator he is far superior to 30 Burke; as a profound and comprehensive thinker, perhaps, he falls below him; as a writer he is as classical in his style, as cultivated, and as refined in his tastes, and simpler and more vigorous in his expression.

In many respects Burke has been his model, and it is not difficult to detect in his pages traces of his intimate communion with the great English, or rather Irish statesman, who, perhaps, taken all in all, is the most eminent among the distinguished statesmen who have written or spoken in our language. We have no thought of placing Mr. Webster above him; but he surpasses him in his oratory (for Burke was an uninteresting speaker), and in the simple majesty and repose of his style and manner. Burke is full, but his fancy is some-10 times too exuberant for his imagination, and his periods are too gorgeous and too overloaded. Now and then he all but approaches the inflated, and is simply not bombastic. Our countryman appears to us to possess naturally a stronger and more vigorous mental constitution, 15 and to carry himself more quietly, and more at his natural ease.

The only modern writers, as far as our limited reading extends, who in this respect equal or surpass Mr. Webster, are the great Bossuet and the German Goethe. The simple natural majesty of Bossuet is perhaps unrivaled in any author, ancient or modern, and in his hands the French language loses its ordinary character, and in dignity, grandeur, and strength becomes able to compete successfully with any of the languages of mod-25 ern Europe. Goethe is the only German we have ever read who could write German prose with taste, grace, and elegance, and there is in his writings a quiet strength and a majestic repose which are surpassed only by the very best of Greek or Roman classics. Mr. Webster 30 may not surpass, in the respect named, either of these great writers, but he belongs to their order.

We have dwelt the longer on these features of Mr. Webster's style, because they are precisely those which