Mr. Jefferson furnished anecdotes, facts, and documents for Wirt's Life of Henry, and Mr. Wirt submitted his manuscript to him for criticism and review, which he gave, and also suggested alterations that were made. We find, from his letters to Mr. Wirt, that when the latter flagged and hesitated as to the completion and publication of his work, it was Jefferson who urged him on. In writing of Henry's supposed inattention to ancient charters, we find him expressing himself thus: "He drew all natural rights from a purer source—the feelings of his own breast."[6]
In connection with this subject, we can not refrain from quoting from Wirt the following fine description of Henry in the great debate on the Stamp Act:
It was in the midst of this magnificent debate, while he (Henry) was descanting on the tyranny of the obnoxious act, that he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, and with the look of a god, "Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—" ("Treason!" cried the Speaker. "Treason! treason!" echoed from every part of the House. It was one of those trying moments which are so decisive of character. Henry faltered not an instant; but rising to a loftier altitude, and fixing on the Speaker an eye of the most determined fire, he finished his sentence with the firmest emphasis)—"may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."[7]
When we think of the wonderful powers of this great man, whose heaven-born eloquence so stirred the hearts of men, how touching the meekness with which, at the close of an eventful and honorable career, he thus writes of himself: "Without any classical education, without patrimony, without what is called the influence of family connection, and without solicitation, I have attained the highest offices of my country. I have often contemplated it as a rare and extraordinary instance, and pathetically exclaimed, 'Not unto me, not unto me, O Lord, but unto thy name be the praise!'"[8]
Jefferson continued to prosecute his studies at William and Mary, and we have in the following incident a pleasing proof of his generosity:
While at college, he was one year quite extravagant in his dress, and in his outlay in horses. At the end of the year he sent his account to his guardian; and thinking that he had spent more of the income from his father's estate than was his share, he proposed that the amount of his expenses should be deducted from his portion of the property. His guardian, however, replied good-naturedly, "No, no; if you have sowed your wild oats in this manner, Tom, the estate can well afford to pay your expenses."
When Jefferson left college, he had laid the broad and solid foundations of that fine education which in learning placed him head and shoulders above his contemporaries. A fine mathematician, he was also a finished Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian scholar. He carried with him to Congress in the year 1775 a reputation for great literary acquirements. John Adams, in his diary for that year, thus speaks of him: "Duane says that Jefferson is the greatest rubber-off of dust that he has met with; that he has learned French, Italian, and Spanish, and wants to learn German."
His school and college education was considered by him as only the vestibule to that palace of learning which is reached by "no royal road." He once told a grandson that from the time when, as a boy, he had turned off wearied from play and first found pleasure in books, he had never sat down in idleness. And when we consider the vast fund of learning and wide range of information possessed by him, and which in his advanced years won for him the appellation of a "walking encyclopædia," we can well understand how this must have been the case. His thirst for knowledge was insatiable, and he seized eagerly all means of obtaining it. It was his habit, in his intercourse with all classes of men—the mechanic as well as the man of science—to turn the conversation upon that subject with which the man was best acquainted, whether it was the construction of a wheel or the anatomy of an extinct species of animals; and after having drawn from him all the information which he possessed, on returning home or retiring to his private apartments, it was all set down by him in writing—thus arranging it methodically and fixing it in his mind.