The sketch of Mr. Tazewell is taken from a small volume of Mr. Gilmer's productions, published in Baltimore in 1828, page 35.
"I hardly know what apology to make to Littleton W. Tazewell, of Norfolk, for dragging his name from the obscurity which he seems to court, but is unable to win. He has shrunk from the great national amphitheatre, the Olympic games, where it is the glory of Mr. Pinkney to challenge and to conquer, to an obscure sea-port town. But, more confident in his powers than he is himself, I do not fear a comparison with this veteran of the bar of the Supreme Court. His person may be a little above the ordinary height, well-proportioned, and having the appearance of great capacity to endure fatigue. His complexion is swarthy, his muscles relaxed as from intense thought long continued. His features are all finely developed. His eyes are large, full, and of a dark blue color, shaded by thick black brows a little raised, as if looking on a vast expanse of distant prospect. A manner firm, manly, dignified, and free. Vox permanens verum subrauca; its tremulous and occasionally interrupted accents give unusual tenderness to its tones. But it is neither the Ciceronian person, nor the Chatham face, nor the voice of Antony, that we are to admire in Mr. Tazewell. It is the great and clear comprehension; the freshness and rapidity with which every thing luxuriates on the generous soil of his mind, which is further removed from even occasional sterility than in any one I have known. This soil has no succession of seasons; the sun which warms it is never for a moment obscured by cloud or eclipse; there reigns a bright, a genial, a perpetual summer. His perceptions are as intuitive and as strong as those of Judge Marshall. He has as much intrepidity of intellect as Mr. Pinkney, and great boldness; but no insolence, no exultation of manner. He wants only ambition to make him rival, nay, perhaps even to surpass the accomplished champion of the federal bar. His fault is subtlety, and a provoking minuteness of detail in his argument. He sometimes shows legal and rhetorical artifice where there is not the least occasion for either. These defects, however, have been acquired in the long habit of addressing subordinate tribunals, where his genius riots in its strength, and are so little connected with the original organization of his mind as to be easily cured.
"There is something absolutely painful in reflecting on the destiny of this extraordinary man. Endowed with the best and most various gifts I ever knew concur in any individual; possessing a vast fund of information, and indefatigable in whatever he undertakes; he has a thousand times exhibited talents equal to any occasion, and is still unknown to the world, and, until lately, was almost unheard of beyond the limits of his native State. One may easily reconcile to his philanthropy that "some mute, inglorious Milton" may rest in every neglected grove, because it requires a strong effort of imagination to suppose the clod of the valley ever to have been "pregnant with celestial fire;" but we have not this comfort to allay our mortification, when we see talents of the purest and brightest ray, united to the noblest qualities of the human heart, emitting their lustre in broad daylight, and to the public eye, unnoticed or forgotten. The sentiment which it excites in one is not so much sympathy with the object as regret for the public loss in not appreciating the rarest gifts of Providence to man. The individual himself seems too elevated to permit a vulgar pity. The world is too contemptible in his eyes to render its praise or its censure matter of interest. Perhaps there is something in this public indifference even congenial to one conscious of the inexhaustible resources and the unconquerable power of his mind. The eagle loves the awful solitude of her sublime cliffs, which remove her far from the importunate chattering and impertinent intrusion of magpies and daws; but it is truly a misfortune to the country that the imperial bird should sleep on her lonely eyrie, and leave the supreme dominion to region kites and mousing owls.
"I had long been curious to see the natural vigor, fertility, and adroitness of Mr. Tazewell contrasted with the consummate art and accomplished prowess of Mr. Pinkney; and participated in the public disappointment, (as I must ever deplore the cause which produced it,) when the death of Mr. Pinkney rendered it impossible, just at the moment that the contest was to take place. But a few days before Mr. Pinkney's death, (a circumstance which probably hastened it,) he had exerted himself very much in the argument of a cause of great interest to his client. Immediately the discussion was over, and while the accents of that cycnea vox reverberated in the ears of all who heard the last effort of his eloquence, he began the preparation for his argument with Mr. Tazewell. His application was too intense; his strength, and health, and life, sunk under it; and they who hastened from a distance to witness the competition, beheld anticipated victory and triumph turned into a funeral procession: O fallacem hominum spem, fragilemque fortunam, et inanes nostras contentiones!"
The reader will keep in mind that this sketch by Mr. Gilmer was written nearly forty years ago, and before Mr. Tazewell appeared in the Senate of the United States.
No. IV.
EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF MR. TAZEWELL RESPECTING PUBLIC OFFICE.
Mr. Tazewell kept no copies of his letters to his friends, and I make the subjoined extracts, explanatory of his views respecting public office, wholly from those in my own possession. I may state here that when a commissioner was appointed to Kentucky, in 1823, Mr. Tazewell was consulted on the subject by some of his friends in the General Assembly, and he agreed to undertake the office; but when he heard that the friends of Benjamin Watkins Leigh, his warm personal friend, desired the appointment of that distinguished jurist, he sent a peremptory withdrawal of his name, and urged the nomination of Mr. Leigh. When he believed that the arbiters of the dispute between Kentucky and Virginia would be chosen at large, he suggested the names of Jeremiah Mason of New Hampshire, William Hunter of Rhode Island, and Langdon Cheves of Philadelphia.
In a letter, dated January 1, 1823, he says: "I ask nothing from my country, but there is nothing she should ever require of me in vain.... As a citizen of Virginia, I hold myself bound at all times to render any aid which it may be within the compass of my poor abilities to offer in furtherance of the rights, the interests, and even the wishes of its government.... Proud as I should be at being selected as the advocate of my country's rights by the unsolicited voice of her legislature, I could not purchase even this gratification at the expense of any whom I love, esteem, or admire."