(1799-1859)
BY ALBERT STICKNEY
ufus Choate, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of advocates who have appeared at the English or American bar, was one of the most remarkable products of what is ordinarily considered hard, prosaic, matter-of-fact New England. He was a man quite apart from the ordinary race of lawyers or New-Englanders. He was as different from the typical New-Englander as was Hawthorne or Emerson. He had the imagination of a poet; and to his imagination, singular as it may seem, was largely due his success in handling questions of fact before juries.
Rufus Choate
He was born of good old English stock, in the southeastern part of the town of Ipswich, in the county of Essex and State of Massachusetts, on the first day of October, 1799. His ancestors had lived in Essex County from a very early date in its history and had filled important public positions. He was born and bred in sight of the sea, and his love for it stayed with him through life. One of his most eloquent addresses was on 'The Romance of the Sea.' And in his last illness at Halifax, his keenest pleasure was to watch the ships sailing in front of his windows. Dropping into sleep on one occasion, a few days before his death, he said to his attendant, "If a schooner or sloop goes by, don't disturb me; but if there is a square-rigged vessel, wake me."
Mr. Choate had the ordinary education then given in New England to young men who had a love of learning. He began with the district school; from there he went to the academy at Hampton, New Hampshire; and later he entered Dartmouth College, where he graduated the first scholar in his class, in 1819. It is hard to find an accurate standard of comparison between the scholarship of that period and that of the present. No doubt, in our New England colleges of to-day there is a larger number of young men who have a considerable store of knowledge on many subjects of classical learning. But it is very doubtful if the graduates of Harvard and Yale of to-day are able to read the standard classic authors at the day of their graduation, with the ease and accuracy of Mr. Choate at the end of his active professional career in the year 1859. His continued devotion to the classics is shown by the following extract from his journal in the year 1844, while he was a member of Congress:—
"1. Some professional work must be done every day.... Recent experiences suggest that I ought to be more familiar with evidence and Cowen's Phillips; therefore, daily for half an hour, I will thumb conscientiously. When I come home again, in the intervals of actual employment, my recent methods of reading, accompanying the reports with the composition of arguments upon the points adjudged, may be properly resumed.
"2. In my Greek, Latin, and French readings—Odyssey, Thucydides, Tacitus, Juvenal, and some French orator or critic—I need make no change. So, too, Milton, Johnson, Burke—semper in manu—ut mos est. To my Greek I ought to add a page a day of Crosby's Grammar, and the practice of parsing every word in my few lines of Homer. On Sunday, the Greek Testament, and Septuagint, and French. This, and the oration of the Crown, which I will completely master, translate, annotate, and commit, will be enough in this kind. If not, I will add a translation of a sentence or two from Tacitus."