Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-07-26

MIR. CHoATE's STYLE OF ORAToRY.-lt is, |
perhaps, by his discourses on academical and
popular occasions that he is most extensively
known in the community, as it is these which
were listened to with delighted admiration by
the largest audiences. He loved to treat
purely literary theme and he knew how to
throw magic freshness-like the cool morn
ing dew on cluster of purple grapes-over the
most familiar topics at a patriotic Celebration.
Some of these occasional performances will
ever be held among the brightest gems OF our
literature. The eulogy on Daniel Webster at
Dartmouth College, in which he mingled at
once all the light Of his genius and all the
warmth of his heart, has, within my knowl-
edge, never been equaled among the perform
ances of its class in this country for sympa-
thetic appreciation of a great man, discriminate
ing analysis of character, fertility OF illuStra-
ton, weight of sentiment, and a style at once
chaste, nervous, and brilliant. The long sem
fences which have been criticised in this as
in his other performances, are like those which
Dr. Claiming admired and commended in Mil
toms prose-well compacted, full Of meaning,
fit vehicles for great thought.
But he does not deal exclusively in those
ponderous sentences. There is nothing OF the
artificial Johnsonian balance in his style. 1t
is as often marked by a pregnant brcvity as
by sonorous amplitude. He is sometimes
satisfied, in concise epigrammatic clauses, to
sllirmish with his light troops and drive i'll the
enemy's outposts. 1t is only on fitting occa-
sions, when great principles are to be vindi-
Gated and solemn truths told when some
moral or political Waterloo or Solferino is to
be fought, that he puts on the entire panoply
of his gorgeous rhetoric. 1t is then that his
majestic sentences swell to the dimensions of
his thought; that you hear atar off the awful
roar of his rihed ordnance; and when he has
stormed the heights, and broken the centre,
and trampled the squares, and turned the
staggering wings OF the adversary, that he
sounds his imperial clarion along the whole
line of battle and moves forward with all his
hosts, in one overwhelming charge
Everett
Mr.. Garrison does not agree with tbs good
opinion of Mr.. Choate's style. He says in the
Liberator:
GAS public speaker, we have seldom lis
tened to enc of any reputation for eloquence
with less satisfaction. Whether at the bar or
on the platform, he was a professional Zouave.
His iesticuations were combination of TRACE
DIV. comedy and farce his speeches distin-
gushed for labyrinthian verbosity, beyond all
power of eXtrication. A more vicious style
is not to be found in English history-inflated,
dsjointed, fleshy, sophomorlcal, double-and-
twisted. helterskelter, and whatever character
ICES the "spread-eagle" school. In this res
pect, the difference between himself and MIR.
Webster was almost infinite. How clear, fore
ible tense, was every sentence uttered or re-
corded by the latter How like will-o'-the'
wisp was the former, whether with pen or
tongue! Granted that he was remarkable for
his Literary, scholastic and legal attainments-
for his copiousness Of speech, exuberance OF
imagination, and power of persuasion-there
is nothing to quote, nothing to remember, in
nf
circumlocution and metaphysical cloudiness y