"The words of fire that from his pen
Were flung upon the lucid page
Still move, still shake the hearts of men,
Amid a cold and coward age.
"His love of truth, too warm, too strong,
For hope or fear to chain or chill,
His hate of tyranny and wrong,
Burn in the breasts he kindled still."
And his moral portrait is still more firmly drawn in prose in this extract from the memorial of him by John G. Whittier: "William Leggett! Let our right hand forget its cunning when that name shall fail to awaken generous emotions and aspirations for a higher and worthier manhood. True man and true democrat; faithful always to liberty, following wherever she led, whether the storm beat in his face or on his back; unhesitatingly counting her enemies his own; poor, yet incorruptible; dependent upon party favor as a party editor, yet risking all in condemnation of that party when in the wrong; a man of the people, yet never stooping to flatter the people's prejudices; he is the politician of all others whom we would hold up to the admiration and imitation of the young men of our country. What Fletcher of Saltoun is to Scotland, and the brave spirits of the old Commonwealth time are to England, should Leggett be to America."
Forrest sorrowed deeply and long over the death of this brave man and devoted friend. He never forgot him, nor ceased, in unbent and affectionate hours, to recall his memory, with pleasing incidents of their intercourse in those earlier days which wore romantic hues when old age had stolen on the retrospective survivor.