lover among the
orange-groves, will sing to her guitar the story of these
times--'Ah, woe is me, Alhama,' for a thousand years to come."

Choate, like other good orators, and like some great poets,
notably Wordsworth, created the taste which he satisfied.
His dramatic action, his marvellous and strange vocabulary,
his oriental imagination, his dressing the common and mean
things of life with a poetic charm and romance, did not at
once strike favorably the taste of his Yankee audiences.
Webster and Everett seem to have appreciated him from the
first. But he was, till he vindicated his title to be a great
lawyer, rather a thorn in the flesh of Chief Justice Shaw, of
whose consternation and amazement, caused by the strange
figure that appeared in his court-room, many queer stories
used to be told. But the young men and the people liked
him.

"Non probantur haec senibus--saepe videbam cum invidentem
tum etiam irascentem stomachantem Philippum--sed mirantur
adulescentes multitudo movetur."

It was a curious sight to see on a jury twelve hard-headed
and intelligent countrymen--farmers, town officers, trustees,
men chosen by their neighbors to transact their important
affairs--after an argument by some clear-headed lawyer for
the defence, about some apparently not very doubtful transaction,
who had brought them all to his way of thinking, and had warned
them against the wiles of the charmer, when Choate rose to
reply for the plaintiff--to see their look of confidence and
disdain--"You needn't try your wiles upon me." The shoulder
turned a little against the speaker--the averted eye--and
then the change; first, the changed posture of the body; the
slight opening of the mouth; then the look, first, of curiosity,
and then of doubt, then of respect; the surrender of the eye
to the eye of the great advocate; then the spell, the charm,
the great enchantment--till at last, jury and audience were
all swept away, and followed the conqueror captive in his
triumphal march.

He gesticulated with his whole body. Wendell Phillips most
irreverently as well as most unjustly compared him to a monkey
in convulsions. His bowings down and straightening himself
again were spoken of by another critic, not unfriendly, as
opening and shutting like a jack-knife. His curly black hairs
seemed each to have a separate life of its own. His eyes
shone like coals of fire. There is a passage of Everett's
which well describes Choate, and is a