h we all know in aged persons retains with
freshness the incidents of youth, but his capacity of combination which,
in the degree in which he possessed it, was extremely rare in young or
old; and from the nature of my pursuits for the time in question I may
be said not only to have tested his powers of recollection, but to have
probed the depth of his knowledge in relation to the history of Virginia
and its cognate topics more effectually than it was the privilege of any
one else to do; and my admiration of his talents and of his resources
increased to the last. Let it be remembered that there was no more
reason to look for profound learning on these subjects from Mr.
Tazewell, whose life was crowded with business, than from any of his
eminent contemporaries, some of whom I knew well, but none of whom
approached him in these respects; and I have pointed out, merely for
the sake of example, a single department of knowledge only in which I
happened to take a passing interest, leaving all those untouched on
which I have heard him discourse for thirty years at least, and you will
be able to form an opinion of the nature, variety, and extent of his
acquisitions, and feel with me what a gap the death of such a man has
made in the commonwealth.

From the complexion of his mind he was cautious in bestowing
commendation on men and things. Great speeches in public bodies rarely
came up to his severe and simple standard of taste; and I do not think
that he was sensible in a very high degree of the minor elegancies of
rhythm and the harmony of words. His own style might be defined plain
words in their right places; and he had studied Anglo-Saxon, and drew
largely on the Anglo-Saxon element of our tongue, and especially on its
monosyllables. His logic was generally so severe that not a clause and
hardly a word could be changed or misplaced without danger, and the
merit of his work was rather in the strength and beauty of the
demonstration as a whole, than in the rhetorical grace or effect of its
several parts. I speak of his great arguments. In his letters he
sometimes showed a skill in harmony rarely surpassed. His letter to the
executor of Mr. Wickham is delicately drawn; his letter to Mr. Foote on
the compromise resolutions is a chaste and elegant composition; and his
address from the chair at a meeting of the citizens of Norfolk on the
occasion of the death of Jefferson, which I have already alluded to,
when he proposed a statue