short piece written and addressed to the same friend, a little more than a year afterward. The latter displays a great advance in his power of expression and thought, and, if the verses are, as the verses of most youths are, somewhat imitative, they do not lack the elements of real poetry. Some of his companions then thought, and have always believed, that the Muses had been lavish of their gifts to him, and that he did not cultivate them as he should have done. But the truth is, in respect to most of his rhymes that remain, although Nature had made him, in one sense, a poet, and although the prose of his whole life shows how strong were his imaginative tendencies, and how poetical his gravest eloquence often was, there is nothing that can, critically speaking, be dignified by the name of poetry. Whenever he wrote any thing serious in the form of verse, during his college life, or afterward, he was accustomed to laugh at it; and when he wrote any thing comic, his sense of the ludicrous was so strong, and his power of embodying it so exuberant, that he made others laugh with him as heartily as he did himself. But he undoubtedly possessed, at an early age, a faculty of description, in the forms of verse, akin to that which he could always use with wonderful force in prose composition or extemporaneous speaking. There is a tradition of a poem which he read in his junior year, on a battle between an English and a French ship-of-war, in which the latter was sunk, "that held the professor and the class," says one who heard it, "in apparent amazement. I almost shudder," continues his class-mate, “as, fifty-four years after, I seem to see the French ship go down, and to hear her cannon continue to roar till she is absolutely submerged."

1

But not to anticipate the two later and most important years of his residence at Dartmouth, the reader must now go home with him to the paternal roof, at the spring vacation, in May, 1799, during his Sophomore year; for it was then that a domestic episode occurred in his life, which affected it through many a long year of generous and manly resistance against the ills of poverty.

The affection that had existed between Ezekiel and Daniel Webster, from their childhood, was such as even brothers who

1 Dr. Merrill's MSS.

are nearly of an age rarely feel. Whether it was that the younger had, from infancy, stood more than commonly in need of the strong protection of the older and stouter boy, or whether it was the effect of companionship operating upon natures with whom "blood was thicker than water" to a degree not often exceeded in the family tie, they loved each other, until death divided them, as men seldom do or can. They were the sons of an old man, who had become, to repeat his own homely but strong expression, "old before his time;" children of his age, and probably the first of his children who had given much promise of future usefulness, as Daniel was certainly the first of his sons for whom he thought himself called to afford the means of education. The reader already knows the plan which ne had formed for his declining years. Ezekiel was to remain at home, and carry on the farm; Daniel was to be educated for one of the learned professions. But as the ample page of knowledge began to unfold itself before the eyes of the young student, and he saw the wide gulf that was to open between himself and his elder brother, his heart was moved. He believed that Ezekiel's talents were as good as his own, and he could not bear to think of him as destined to an inferior lot in life. When he came home for the vacation, he found that his brother felt the unpromising character of his prospects, and that there was a struggle between duty to his parents and the aspirations of a really superior mind. Daniel was unhappy about this state of things. He had a consultation with his brother, after they had gone to bed, which lasted through the whole night, and until after sunrise, neither of them having shut his eyes. Mr. Webster says of his brother, in the autobiography:

"He had thought of going into some new part of the country. That was discussed and disagreed to. All the pros and cons of the question of remaining at home were weighed and considered, and, when our council broke up, or rather got up, its result was that I should propose to my father that he, late as it was, should be sent to school also, and to college. This, we knew, would be a trying thing to my father and mother and two unmarried sisters. My father was growing old, his health not good, and his circumstances far from easy. The farm was to be carried on, and the family taken care of; and there was nobody to do all this but him, who was regarded as the main stay—that is to say, Ezekiel. However, I ventured on the negotiation, and it was carried, as other things

often are, by the earnest and sanguine manner of youth. I told him that I was unhappy at my brother's prospects. For myself, I saw my way to knowledge, respectability, and self-protection; but, as to him, all looked the other way; that I would keep school, and get along as well as I could, be more than four years in getting through college, if necessary, provided he also could be sent to study. He said at once he lived but for his children; that he had but little, and on that little he put no value, except so far as it might be useful to them. That to carry us both through college would take all he was worth; that, for himself, he was willing to run the risk; but that this was a serious matter to our mother and two unmarried sisters; that we must settle the matter with them, and, if their consent was obtained, he would trust to Providence, and get along as well as he could."

All was now referred, therefore, to the decision of the mother; and her decision involved the family means for her whole remaining life, and for the lives of her unmarried daughters. Her husband told her that the farm was already mortgaged to meet the expenses of Daniel's education; and that if Ezekiel, too, were sent to college, it would take all that they had. Her answer was ready: "Well," said she, "I will trust the boys."

99 1

Perhaps there is nowhere a tablet in the Temple of Fame, on which any thing more touching than this act of maternal heroism has been or can be inscribed. Thenceforward there was a long period of anxiety and privation for all of them. But its compensations came. The father lived to know that his sons were to take their places among the most honored of their native State. The mother lived longer, to behold the opening of that great career which was before the younger, and to find repose and every comfort in the house of her elder The sisters lived to find how safe had been their reliance on fraternal gratitude and honor. On the early grave, therefore, to which one of these brothers went suddenly down, in the prime of a useful and honorable, although a less distinguished life, and on the tomb in which the other, when full of years and honors, and with all the renown that a statesman can reap, was laid by a mourning nation, it should be written that a mother's sagacious faith in the future of her sons supplied to a father's courage all that was needed for one of the largest parental

son.

1 MS. notes, by Mrs. Ticknor, of Mr. Webster's conversation, in 1825.

sacrifices that the lives of educated men, in any country, have ever had to show.

Perhaps the reader may now think that the question of Daniel Webster's exact rank as a college student has sunk intc insignificance. Here was a youth, scarcely more than seventeen years of age, so strong in fraternal affection, so firm in his selfreliance, so capable of looking forward to estimate the future for his brother and himself, that he could tell his aged father that he would assume the burdens that this great sacrifice was to cast upon the family. We are concerned, in this investigation of his life, with the growth of character, as well as with the growth of his mind, or his acquisitions of knowledge; and when we go back with him to his college, we are to remember that, although a boy in years, in moral stature he is already a man. He might have, it is known that he did have, other methods of discipline, other objects of ambition, other desires for knowledge, than those which were limited or satisfied by the academic prizes. He began to fight the great battle of life almost before the down was upon his lip; and if he fought it in his own way, or chose his weapons for himself, or burnished his armor more variously than his comrades, it was because the responsibility of the contest had come upon him so early, and so gravely; and because Nature had given him the strength, and pointed him the way.

Ezekiel Webster, who was at the age of nineteen when the consent of his parents was given to the plan for his education, immediately began to attend a small academy, then recently established, in Salisbury. He remained at this school for two terms, and then went to reside with Dr. Wood, with whom his preparation for college was finished. "His intellectual character," his brother informs us, "as it afterward developed itself, was not early understood, at least not in its full extent. He was thought to have good sense, but not to have, and perhaps had not, great quickness of apprehension." He was at first distrustful of himself, and appears to have been in the habit of writing to Daniel, as if the latter, with superior powers, and earlier advantages, could not appreciate what he had to contend with. Daniel would never admit that his brother was his

1 Autobiography.

1

inferior in natural abilities. It is singular to see the order of Nature thus reversed in their relative situations, and to find the younger generously and judiciously performing the duties of mentor to the elder. "You tell me," writes Daniel, "that you have difficulties to encounter which I know nothing of. What do you mean, Ezekiel? Do you mean to flatter? That don't become you; or do you think you are inferior to me in natural abilities? If so, be assured you greatly mistake. Therefore, for the future, say in your letters to me, 'I am superior to you in natural endowments; I will know more in one year than you do now, and more in six than you ever will.' I should not resent this language. I should be very well pleased in hearing it; but be assured, as mighty as you are, your great puissance shall never insure you a victory without a contest."1

Ezekiel was certainly not the equal of Daniel at any period of their lives; but he was a man of fine intellect, and, notwithstanding all the difficulties with which he had to contend, he entered Dartmouth College in March, 1801, six months before his brother was graduated, so well prepared, and with such admirable habits of study, that he immediately took, and always retained, so long as he could remain at the college, a high rank in his class. His father's means were from the first inadequate to meet the expenses of both his and Daniel's education. But the compact which had been made at the family altar came at once into operation. Daniel was now able to earn a little more than he needed to spend. He superintended a small weekly newspaper, printed in Hanover, and called The Dartmouth Gazette, during the year 1800, which was his junior year. What he received for this literary service paid his own board for the year, and so far relieved the family burdens. In the winter vacation of the same year, he taught a school in Salisbury, and the money thus earned helped to defray Ezekiel's expenses at Dr. Wood's. This was the beginning of that remarkable struggle, which lasted for several years, and through which

Letter to E. Webster, April 25, 1800. Correspondence, i., 83.)

2 In Mr. Webster's Correspondence, vol. i., p. 31, there is an account of Ezekiel Webster's college reputation written by his son-in-law, Professor Sanborn, in

1857. It will give the reader some idea of that beloved brother, whose name Mr. Webster desired might be associated with his own, so long as his own might endure.