"Mr. Burke is no longer entitled to the praise—the most consummate
orator of modern times."
"What can I say of what regards myself? To my humble name,
Exegisti monumentum aere perennius."
Many persons consider the Plymouth oration to be the finest of all Mr. Webster's efforts in this field. It is certainly one of the very best of his productions, but he showed on the next great occasion a distinct improvement, which he long maintained. Five years after the oration at Plymouth, he delivered the address on the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill monument. The superiority to the first oration was not in essentials, but in details, the fruit of a ripening and expanding mind. At Bunker Hill, as at Plymouth, he displayed the massiveness of thought, the dignity and grandeur of expression, and the range of vision which are all so characteristic of his intellect and which were so much enhanced by his wonderful physical attributes. But in the later oration there is a greater finish and smoothness. We appreciate the fact that the Plymouth oration is a succession of eloquent fragments; the same is true of the Bunker Hill address, but we no longer realize it. The continuity is, in appearance, unbroken, and the whole work is rounded and polished. The style, too, is now perfected. It is at once plain, direct, massive, and vivid. The sentences are generally short and always clear, but never monotonous. The preference for Anglo-Saxon words and the exclusion of Latin derivatives are extremely marked, and we find here in rare perfection that highest attribute of style, the union of simplicity, picturesqueness, and force.
In the first Bunker Hill oration Mr. Webster touched his highest point in the difficult task of commemorative oratory. In that field he not only stands unrivalled, but no one has approached him. The innumerable productions of this class by other men, many of a high degree of excellence, are forgotten, while those of Webster form part of the education of every American school-boy, are widely read, and have entered into the literature and thought of the country. The orations of Plymouth and Bunker Hill are grouped in Webster's works with a number of other speeches professedly of the same kind. But only a very few of these are strictly occasional; the great majority are chiefly, if not wholly, political speeches, containing merely passages here and there in the same vein as his great commemorative addresses. Before finally leaving the subject, however, it will be well to glance for a moment at the few orations which properly belong to the same class as the first two which we have been considering.
The Bunker Hill oration, after the lapse of only a year, was followed by the celebrated eulogy upon Adams and Jefferson. This usually and with justice is ranked in merit with its two immediate predecessors. As a whole it is not, perhaps, quite so much admired, but it contains the famous imaginary speech of John Adams, which is the best known and most hackneyed passage in any of these orations. The opening lines, "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote," since Mr. Webster first pronounced them in Faneuil Hall, have risen even to the dignity of a familiar quotation. The passage, indeed, is perhaps the best example we have of the power of Mr. Webster's historical imagination. He had some fragmentary sentences, the character of the man, the nature of the debate, and the circumstances of the time to build upon, and from these materials he constructed a speech which was absolutely startling in its lifelike force. The revolutionary Congress, on the verge of the tremendous step which was to separate them from England, rises before us as we read the burning words which the imagination of the speaker put into the mouth of John Adams. They are not only instinct with life, but with the life of impending revolution, and they glow with the warmth and strength of feeling so characteristic of their supposed author. It is well known that the general belief at the time was that the passage was an extract from a speech actually delivered by John Adams. Mr. Webster, as well as Mr. Adams's son and grandson, received numerous letters of inquiry on this point, and it is possible that many people still persist in this belief as to the origin of the passage. Such an effect was not produced by mere clever imitation, for there was nothing to imitate, but by the force of a powerful historic imagination and a strong artistic sense in its management.
In 1828 Mr. Webster delivered an address before the Mechanics' Institute in Boston, on "Science in connection with the Mechanic Arts," a subject which was outside of his usual lines of thought, and offered no especial attractions to him. This oration is graceful and strong, and possesses sufficient and appropriate eloquence. It is chiefly interesting, however, from the reserve and self-control, dictated by a nice sense of fitness, which it exhibited. Omniscience was not Mr. Webster's foible. He never was guilty of Lord Brougham's weakness of seeking to prove himself master of universal knowledge. In delivering an address on science and invention, there was a strong temptation to an orator like Mr. Webster to substitute glittering rhetoric for real knowledge; but the address at the Mechanics' Institute is simply the speech of a very eloquent and a liberally educated man upon a subject with which he had only the most general acquaintance. The other orations of this class were those on "The Character of Washington," the second Bunker Hill address, "The Landing at Plymouth," delivered in New York at the dinner of the Pilgrim Society, the remarks on the death of Judge Story and of Mr. Mason, and finally the speech on laying the corner-stone for the addition to the Capitol, in 1851. These were all comparatively brief speeches, with the exception of that at Bunker Hill, which, although very fine, was perceptibly inferior to his first effort when the corner-stone of the monument was laid. The address on the character of Washington, to an American the most dangerous of great and well-worn topics, is of a high order of eloquence. The theme appealed to Mr. Webster strongly and brought out his best powers, which were peculiarly fitted to do justice to the noble, massive, and dignified character of the subject. The last of these addresses, that on the addition to the Capitol, was in a prophetic vein, and, while it shows but little diminution of strength, has a sadness even in its splendid anticipations of the future, which makes it one of the most impressive of its class. All those which have been mentioned, however, show the hand of the master and are worthy to be preserved in the volumes which contain the noble series that began in the early flush of genius with the brilliant oration in the Plymouth church, and closed with the words uttered at Washington, under the shadow of the Capitol, when the light of life was fading and the end of all things was at hand.
CHAPTER V.
RETURN TO CONGRESS.
The thorough knowledge of the principles of government and legislation, the practical statesmanship, and the capacity for debate shown in the State convention, combined with the splendid oration at Plymouth to make Mr. Webster the most conspicuous man in New England, with the single exception of John Quincy Adams. There was, therefore, a strong and general desire that he should return to public life. He accepted with some reluctance the nomination to Congress from the Boston district in 1822, and in December, 1823, took his seat.
The six years which had elapsed since Mr. Webster left Washington had been a period of political quiet. The old parties had ceased to represent any distinctive principles, and the Federalists scarcely existed as an organization. Mr. Webster, during this interval, had remained almost wholly quiescent in regard to public affairs. He had urged the visit of Mr. Monroe to the North, which had done so much to hasten the inevitable dissolution of parties. He had received Mr. Calhoun when that gentleman visited Boston, and their friendship and apparent intimacy were such that the South Carolinian was thought to be his host's candidate for the presidency. Except for this and the part which he took in the Boston opposition to the Missouri compromise and to the tariff, matters to be noticed in connection with later events, Mr. Webster had held aloof from political conflict.