But
with Mr. Choate, the dramatic genius and large scope and vision which
made him superior to other great advocates at the same time prevented
his overestimating the value of his work in kind or degree, showed
him how ephemeral are the actual triumphs and how small the real
value of nearly all the questions he thus vitalized into artistic
reality, when compared with the great outlying truths and principles
to which he allied them. Feeling this all through his cases, at the
same time that he was moulding them and giving them dramatic
vitality, they took their true position from natural reaction and
rebound, with all the more sharpness of contrast, when he came out of
them. With such a nature, it could be assumed _a priori_ as a
psychological certainty, at any rate it was the fact with him, that a
certain unreality was at times thrown over life and its objects, that
its projects and ambitions seemed games and mockeries, and "this
brave o'erhanging firmament a pestilent congregation of vapors," and
that grave doubts and fears on the great questions of existence were
ever on the horizon of his mind. This gave perpetual play to his
irony, and made it a necessity and a relief of mind.
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