Absorbed in his great duties, and confined too much by the training of a profession which too often makes its follower slave where he is not master, he forgot sometimes that championship which shone so brightly when he first entered the Senate. Ill-health came with its disturbing influence, and, without any of the nature of Hamlet, his conduct at times suggested those words by which Hamlet pictures the short-comings of life. Too often, in his case, “the native hue of resolution was sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought”; and perhaps I might follow the words of Shakespeare further, and picture “enterprises of great pith and moment,” which, “with this regard, their currents turned awry and lost the name of action.”
Men are tempted by the talent which they possess; and he could not resist the impulse to employ, sometimes out of place, those extraordinary powers which he commanded so easily. More penetrating than grasping, he easily pierced the argument of his opponent, and, once engaged, he yielded to the excitement of the moment and the joy of conflict. His words warmed, as the Olympic wheel caught fire in the swiftness of the race. If on these occasions there were sparkles which fell where they should not have fallen, they cannot be remembered now. Were he still among us, face to face, it were better to say, in the words of that earliest recorded reconciliation,—
“Let us no more contend nor blame
Each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of love how we may lighten
Each other’s burden in our share of woe.”[187]
Error and frailty checker the life of man. If this were not so, earth would be heaven; for what could add to the happiness of life free from error and frailty? The Senator we mourn was human; but the error and frailty which belonged to him often took their color from virtue itself. On these he needs no silence, even if the grave which is now closing over him did not refuse its echoes except to what is good.