trates the use which Mr. Webster made of the
ideas of other people. He did not say to Mr. Bosworth, here is the true
point of the case, but he saw that something was wanting, and asked the
young lawyer what it was. The moment the proposition was stated he
recognized its value and importance at a glance. He might and probably
would have discovered it for himself, but his instinct was to get it from
some one else.

It is one of the familiar attributes of great intellectual power to be able
to select subordinates wisely; to use other people and other people's labor
and thought to the best advantage, and to have as much as possible done for
one by others. This power of assimilation Mr. Webster had to a marked
degree. There is no depreciation in saying that he took much from others,
for it is a capacity characteristic of the strongest minds, and so long as
the debt is acknowledged, such a faculty is a subject for praise, not
criticism. But when the recipient becomes unwilling to admit the obligation
which is no detraction to himself, and without which the giver is poor
indeed, the case is altered. In his earliest days Mr. Webster used to draw
on one Parker Noyes, a mousing, learned New Hampshire lawyer, and freely
acknowledged the debt. In the Dartmouth College case, as has been seen, he
over and over again gave simply and generously all the credit for the
learning and the points of the brief to Mason and Smith, and yet the glory
of the case has rested with Mr. Webster and always will. He gained by his
frank honesty and did not lose a whit. But in his latter days, when his
sense of justice had grown somewhat blunted and his nature was perverted by
the unmeasured adulation of the little immediate circle which then hung
about him, he ceased to admit his obligations as in his earlier and better
years. From no one did Mr. Webster receive so much hearty and generous
advice and assistance as from Judge Story, whose calm judgment and wealth
of learning were always at his disposal. They were given not only in
questions of law, but in regard to the Crimes Act, the Judiciary Act, and
the Ashburton treaty. After Judge Story's death, Mr. Webster not only
declined to allow the publication by the judge's son and biographer of
Story's letters to himself, but he refused to permit even the publication
of extracts from his own letters, intended merely to show the nature of the
services rendered to him by Story. A cordial assent would have enhan