very
feature; and he closed the grand appeal with the solemn
words, 'or give me death!' which sounded with the awful
cadence of a hero's dirge, fearless of death, and victorious
in death; and he suited the action to the word by a blow
upon the left breast with the right hand, which seemed to
drive the dagger to the patriot's heart."[159]

Before passing from this celebrated speech, it is proper to say
something respecting the authenticity of the version of it which has
come down to us, and which is now so universally known in America. The
speech is given in these pages substantially as it was given by Wirt
in his "Life of Henry." Wirt himself does not mention whence he
obtained his version; and all efforts to discover that version as a
whole, in any writing prior to Wirt's book, have thus far been
unsuccessful. These facts have led even so genial a critic as Grigsby
to incline to the opinion that "much of the speech published by Wirt
is apocryphal."[160] It would, indeed, be an odd thing, and a source
of no little disturbance to many minds, if such should turn out to be
the case, and if we should have to conclude that an apocryphal speech
written by Wirt, and attributed by him to Patrick Henry fifteen years
after the great orator's death, had done more to perpetuate the renown
of Patrick Henry's oratory than had been done by any and all the words
actually spoken by the orator himself during his lifetime. On the
other hand, it should be said that Grigsby himself admits that "the
outline of the argument" and "some of its expressions" are undoubtedly
"authentic." That this is so is apparent, likewise, from the written
recollections of St. George Tucker, wherein the substance of the
speech is given, besides one entire passage in almost the exact
language of the version by Wirt. Finally, John Roane, in 1834, in his
conversation with Edward Fontaine, is said to have "verified the
correctness of the speech as it was written by Judge Tyler for Mr.
Wirt."[161] This, unfortunately, is the only intimation that has
anywhere been found attributing Wirt's version to the excellent
authority of Judge John Tyler. If the statement could be confirmed, it
would dispel every difficulty at once. But, even though the statement
should be set aside, enough would still remain to justify us in
thinking that Wirt's version of the famous speech by no means deserves
to be called "apocryphal," in any such sense as that