We propose to try to give some idea of those mental characteristics
and peculiarities in which he differed from other lawyers, and to
indicate some salient points of his genius and nature which went to
make up so original and interesting an individuality. Immense labor
and talent will no more produce genius or its results, than mere
natural genius, without their aid and instrumentality, can reach and
maintain the highest rank in any of the great departments of life or
thought. With true genius, imagination is, to be sure, paramount to
great and balanced faculties; but genius is always demonstrating its
superiority to talent as well by its greater rapidity and certainty
in seizing, arranging, and holding facts, and by the extent of its
acquisitions, as by its superior philosophic and artistic grasp and
vision.
Though Mr. Choate was so much more than a mere lawyer, it was in
court that he displayed the full force and variety of his powers.
_Hic currus et arma_. We shall, however, speak more especially of his
jury-trials, because in them more of his whole nature was brought
into play, and because of them and of his management of them there is
and can be no full record.
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