[707] Farrar, 282-83; 65 N.H. 624; 4 Wheaton, 599.
[708] Brown, i, 516.
[709] Ib. 516-17. This scene, the movement and color of which grew in dignity and vividness through the innumerable repetitions of it, caught the popular fancy. Speeches, poems, articles, were written about the incident. It became one of the chief sources from which the idolaters of Webster drew endless adulation of that great man.
[710] See Brown, i, 517; Curtis, i, 169-71.
Chauncey Allen Goodrich was in his twenty-eighth year when he heard Webster's argument. He was sixty-three when he gave Choate the description which the latter made famous in his "Eulogy of Webster."
[711] Compare their arguments with Webster's. See Farrar 28-70; 104-61; 238-84.
[712] "Your notes I found to contain the whole matter. They saved me great labor; but that was not the best part of their service; they put me in the right path.... The only new aspect of the argument was produced by going into cases to prove these ideas, which indeed lie at the very bottom of your argument." (Webster to Smith, March 14, 1818, Priv. Corres.: Webster, i, 276-77; and see Webster to Mason, March 22, 1818, ib. 278.)
A year later, after the case had been decided, when the question of publishing Farrar's Report of all the arguments and opinions in the Dartmouth College case was under consideration, Webster wrote Mason: "My own interest would be promoted by preventing the Book. I shall strut well enough in the Washington Report, & if the 'Book' should not be published, the world would not know where I borrowed my plumes—But I am still inclined to have the Book—One reason is, that you & Judge Smith may have the credit which belongs to you." (Webster to Mason, April 10, 1819, Van Tyne, 80.)
Farrar's Report was published in August, 1819. It contains the pleadings and special verdict, the arguments of counsel, opinions, and the judgments in the State and National courts, together with valuable appendices. The Farrar Report is indispensable to those who wish to understand this celebrated case from the purely legal point of view.
[713] Story to Mason, Oct. 6, 1819, Story, i, 323.