Mr. Choate's mind was so complex, peculiar, and original,--so foreign
in temperament and spirit to the more representative traits of New
England character,--so large, philosophic, and sagacious in vision
and survey of great questions, and so dramatic and vehement in their
exposition and enforcement,--so judicial and conservative in always
maintaining in his arguments the balance and relation of
interdependent principles, and so often in details marring the most
exquisite poetry with the wildest extravagancies of style,--so free
from mere vulgar tricks of effect, and so full of imaginative
tricksiness and surprises,--so mischievous, subtle, mysterious,
elusive, Protean,--that it is no wonder he has been more admired and
more misunderstood than any eminent American of his time. It was
because of these unaccustomed qualities of mind that matter-of-fact
lawyers and judges came slowly but surely to Mr. Webster's
conclusion, that he was "the most accomplished of American lawyers,"
whether arguing to courts or juries. In the same way, critically
correct but unimaginative scholars, who "can pardon anything but a
false quantity,"--who "see the hair on the rope, but not the rope,"
and detect minute errors, but not poetic apprehension,--admitted at
last the fulness and variety of his scholastic attainments.
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