Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/660

 628

The Green Bag

language is of that ﬂorid, glowing and

there such large and literary sarcasm or such beautiful ﬁgures of speech. It is said that one juryman was able, forty years later, at the age of ninety-seven, to repeat it almost verbatim. Never

descriptive quality always so effective

were irony and sarcasm made so beauti

in a trial.

ful or used so eﬂectively as in this

speech. This is, indeed, in the fullest sense a great speech. His retorts to the strictures of opposing counsel

are models of their kind,

and the

The famous description of

Blennerhassett’s Isle is one of the gems of American oratory and has gone into history as a masterpiece of descriptive power. The sketch which Wirt drew in this speech of the character and ambi tions of Burr, though ridiculed in many a jest by that unfortunate man, has be come the accepted version. Wirt was one of those few great American orators whose highest ambitions were centred

on his work at the bar.

In this respect

he strongly resembled his great rival,

Pinkney. His taste was not always so delicate and correct as that of the Mary lander, nor was his grasp of the philoso

phy of the law so abstruse or thorough. yet in some of the graces of oratory he was superior.

After Wirt's speech many years inter

speech, while few can read his appeal to

that jury as Kentuckians without fore~ seeing the inevitable verdict of not guilty. It was, indeed, just such a speech as would have the greatest effect

upon a cultivated popular audience. Light and spontaneous, it thrills the senses with delight. The color and glow of rhetoric is there without its labor and

aﬁectations.

In many respects it is the

greatest of Prentiss’s speeches, and in all events will rank among the ﬁrst half

dozen of the kind ever delivered in America. It differs from Wirt's speech in the Burr trial as the flood differs from the placid stream. To employ Pope's ﬁgure further, Wirt’s speech is the river within bounds ﬂowing through beau teous woodlands and many a green and

evned before another truly great speech was reported, although many had been

pleasant sward, reﬂecting the over-hang ing boughs, the blue skies and the ﬂeecy

delivered.

clouds, self-contained, easy, buoyant, sinuous and graceful. Prentiss’s, on the other hand was the raging ﬂood, sublime in its strength and impetuosity, rolling

In 1840 a stenographer reported the

celebrated murder trial of Judge Wilkin son at Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

It was

graced by the eloquence of the famous

its fervid energies in a tumbling torrent

Judge Rowan, of Ben Hardin, one of the

to the sea and leaving no part of its

best trial lawyers the country has pro duced, and of the brilliant and meteoric

journey untouched by its triumphant force. If Wirt could have fashioned the sleeping marble into a mimicry of life

Sergeant S. Prentiss. Though Hardin's speech was a masterpiece of oratory and argument, it was made under the vast disadvantage of being on the wrong side of the case, while that of Prentiss was undoubtedly the universal favorite of

the occasion.

On this occasion Prentiss

outshone himself in a brilliant speech, shot to the core with that vivid power and color which he alone seemed able to impart to spoken words. Never was

more real than that of Angelo, Prentiss could have made the white cold ﬁgures glow with real life and warmth.

Combining much of the ﬁery and dash ing qualities of Prentiss with the more subdued beauties of Wirt, and adding to them an original sarcasm and humor, racy and irresistible is Thomas F. Mar

shall’s speech in defense of Matt F. Ward. It is in this argument that, in