Mr. Choate, therefore, from
pure force of mental constitution, threw himself into the life and
position of the parties and witnesses in a jury-case, and they
necessarily became _dramatis personae_, and moved in an atmosphere of
his own creation. His narrative was the simplest and most artistic
exhibition of his case thus seen and presented from the point of
their lives and natures, and not from the dry facts and points of his
case; and his argument was all the more perfect, because not
exhibited in skeleton nakedness, but incorporated and intertwined
with the interior and essential life of persons and events. It was in
this way that he effected the acquittal of Tirrell, whom any
matter-of-fact lawyer, however able, would have argued straight to the
gallows; and yet we have the highest judicial authority for saying
that in that case he did his simple technical duty, without
interposing his own opinions or convictions. We shall say a word,
before we close, of the charge that he surrendered himself too
completely to his client; but to a great degree the explanation and
the excuse at once lie in this dramatic imagination, which was of the
essence of his genius and influence, and through which he lived the
life, shared the views, and identified himself with a great actor's
realization, in _the part_ of his client.
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