Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/766

 LORD ERSKINE adventure, I would have hid myself from him; but it was even thou, my companion, my guide, mine own familiar friend." It may be well for those who aspire to high rank in advocacy to reflect that Erskine, who ordinarily spoke extempora neously, wrote down word for word the rhythmical passages of most of his famous speeches. It is true, ever true, that no pronounced and permanent effect is made upon the minds of men by public speech save as the result of much thinking or generally much careful writing. Cicero declared that he who will undertake to instruct a public audience without first instructing himself is guilty of impudence. After Sheridan's death, from his common place books it was discovered that those marvelous witticisms which had convulsed his contemporaries, and many of which yet survive, had been carefully considered, written out, rewritten, and rearranged, so that at the proper time they might pro duce the most charming appearance of original and spontaneous humor. Lord Bacon declared that " Reading maketh a full man; conference, a ready man; and writing, an accurate man." It is true that there are a few men with such amazing powers of self-concentration that they can think out almost verbatim the dis courses with which they will subsequently arouse, charm, persuade, or convince. Such an orator was our Ben Hill of Georgia. In my college days I have seen him sit for hours in rapt contemplation, utterly oblivious of the conversation of his family and the varied sounds of the house hold. In a few days, perhaps the next day, the result of this concentrated thought would appear in a powerful discourse before some great popular assembly trem bling for the safety of all that men hold dear, in a lucid but unanswerable argu ment on some intricate legal topic involv ing thousands, in one of those irresistible appeals to a jury in which he was scarcely surpassed by Erskine himself, or in those

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Notes on the Situation, written for an agonized people, which imperiously de manded that they should "call their an cient thoughts from banishment." The late Associate Justice L. Q. C. Lamar whose oration on Sumner will never be forgotten, once told me that it was his custom to think out with precise verbal accuracy the speech he designed to make, and then to write it out precisely as he had thought it out. The task would seem impossible, but ho man could question the intellectual honesty or fidelity of that great son of Georgia. But I may not detain you. I have said enough — perhaps more than enough — to indicate where you may find deep waters of "the well of English undefiled." Well may we paraphrase the rare and ancient verse: "Some strains of eloquence, which hung In ancient times on Tully's tongue; But which, conceal'd and lost, had lain, Till Erskine found them out again."

Will you not, my young friends, endowed with the powers and privileges of his noble profession, seek to emulate the lofty accom plishments, the patriotic labors, the un selfish and fearless devotion of its accom plished chief. Far from the scene of his triumphs, in Westminster Hall, his sacred ashes repose in the ancient family vault, "where Scotia's grandeur springs." But the members of the Bar the world around adore his memory. A statue stands to his honor in Lincoln's Inn Hall, where he mastered the rudiments of his profession. In historic Holland House, whose high born inmates through successive generations have ever consecrated their hereditary powers to the maintenance of liberty and the confusion of intolerance, there stands a bust of him with the noble inscription, " Nostra eloquentiae i'jcil: princeps." These marble memo rials may endure for ages, but long after they have crumbled to dust, and as long as the language of his matchless forensic orations survives, therein will also survive