Smyrna times., 1865-11-15
The Sons of Great Men.

There is, in the last number of the Round
Table, vivid and fine sketch of Fletcher Web
ster, the second son of Daniel Webster, who,
after various diplomatic employments, died
leading his regiment into battle at Bull Run,
August 80, 1862.
1t appears that he was one of those spirits
kept back from greatness by the overshadow-
ing influence of his father remembered emf
neRce. With the sons of men of genius the
ancient command to honor their father is some
times carried to excess There needs new
commandment for such-"Thou shalt not
idolize thy father" Hartley Coleridge is al
most the only true poet who ever was the son
of a real poet, and the son of Daniel Webster
might have become, it is thought, really elo-
quent and distinguished had not the thought
OF his father S speeches, as the perfection of
| thought and language, prevented him from ad-
venturing where he was conscious he should
fall below the standard of the family. Arouch
farmer once said to Fletcher Webster, "Your
father never did his best, and the son was
ever afraid to put forth all his strength, and
never did has best. The reason why madmen
are so much stronger then other men, and take
several to hold to them, is that they have nc
fear in putting forth all their strength.
So also is it with true poetry. Till a man
gets beyond all conscious imitation and fear
and the shadows Of the great masters, into the
clear air and boundless regions of the eternal
and the true, he may be vcrsifer, but not a
true poet. COleridge's son Hartley, was, for
tunately, not brought up by his father, but in
his uncles family, where his father faults
and weakness were more considered than his
strength and greatness. Himself mis-shap-
en- being, with q huge head and large, awk-
ward limbs, on the body Of dwarf, he never
went into general society. Inheriting many OF
his fathers wonderful mental powers, and
some also of his weaknesses, he was elected to
a college fellowship: forfeiting it, however, as
soon as obtained, by fit of intoxication, A
complete recluse from society, living in a small
cottage on the shore of the same beautiful lake
where Professor Wilson and SOuthey lived, he
gave those remarks of originality and genius
that might have made him greater because
a more carefully and thoroughly educated) man
than his father, with all his profound thoughts
and learning, ever was, but that his dissipation
ruined him.
He is, perhaps, the only instance of one,
himself genius and the son of a man of ge-
MUS, in literature, who knew how to reverence,
without idolizing, his fathers powers. But il
would seem to be the general law that as the
acOrns that drop beneath the shadow of an out
spreading oak rot and die, and do not rise tC
be oaks, but only those which are waited to a
distance so the children of great men are al
ways in danger Of being Overshadowed by the
conception af greatness to which they des
pair of ever attaining, nor can nor will they
ever do their best except where thrown into
ne,o circumstances or acting themselves out in
new line. Sir Walter Scott's family is near
ly all gone Wilberforce S sons by deviatine
from the original train of their father thought
and life, have become distinguished. But
scarcely any of the great geniuses of the last
age have left sons to maintain their reputa
householder.