ce, and that his health--
he was then beginning to show signs of the disease which
ended his life shortly after--was not sufficient for undertaking
the great study and the labor which the new office would require.
He was not long on the Bench, and was not greatly distinguished
as a Judge. But he wrote a few opinions which showed his
great intellectual capacity for dealing with the most complicated
legal questions, especially such are apt to arise in patent
cases.

He was a delightful man in ordinary conversation. He had
an infinite wit and great sense of humor. He used to tell
delightful stories of queer characters and events that had
come within his own observation. My relations to him for a
good while were entirely antagonistic. We had some very
sharp controversies. He would never tolerate any expression,
in his presence, of disrespect to Jefferson Davis. He would
always meet the statement that Mr. Davis was a traitor with
a vigorous denial. When I made a motion excepting Jefferson
Davis from the benefit of the bill to pension the soldiers
of the Mexican War, Mr. Lamar compared him to Prometheus,
and me to the vulture preying upon his liver. He was the
last person from whom I should have expected an expression
of compliment, or even of kindness in those days. Yet when
the question of my reelection was pending in 1883 and the
correspondent of a newspaper which was among my most unrelenting
and unscrupulous opponents thought he might get some material
which would help him in his attacks, called upon Mr. Lamar
in the Democratic cloak room, and asked him what he thought
of me, Mr. Lamar replied in language which seems almost ridiculous
to quote, and which was inspired only by his indignation
at the attempt to use him for such a purpose: "Sir, Massachusetts
has never been more powerfully represented in the Senate,
not even in the time of Daniel Webster, than by Mr. Hoar."

It was with feeling of great pleasure that in 1886 I saw
Harvard confer her highest honor on this delightful Mississippian.

He was, in his time, I think, the ablest representative,
certainly among the ablest, of the opinions opposed to mine.
He had a delightful and original literary quality which, if
the lines of his life had been cast amid other scenes than
the tempest of a great Revolution and Civil War, might have
made him a dreamer like Montaigne; and a chivalrous quality
that might have made him a companion of Athos and D'Artagnan