Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

WILLIAM WIRT.

THE biography of William Wirt, greedy devourers of novels, to the written by Mr. John P. Kennedy, is a surprise of persons on a lower level of warm and honest tribute to a man mental training. It will indeed be who united the charms of literary sen- found, we think, as a general rule, the sibility and the graces of character more profound the culture, the more with the pursuits of legal and political catholic the taste; the more of insight life. The union is not uncommon in for one great occupation, the better dismembers of the legal profession, espe- position for others. Marshall, Kent cially with those of the higher grade, and Story, among others, afford nowhere a genial philosophic culture table examples of the love of letters as bestows vitality upon otherwise bar a support and relief to the rigid de ren principles. A good lawyer is none mands of the bar and the bench. the worse for a keen participation in William Wirt was born at Bladensliterary enjoyments. The refinements burg, Maryland, November 8, 1772. of authorship are not to be neglected His father, Jacob Wirt, was an emi in the training of the mind, even grant from Switzerland, who came to alongside of the subtilties of the law. America some years before the Revolu It is necessary, too, for a counsellor to tion, and established himself at the know many things besides the mere place of his son's birth as a tavernletter of his text-book. He must study keeper. William was the youngest of in particular the powers of language, the family. He was but two years old and for this purpose he will find no when his father died, and at eight, on better instructor outside of his techni- the death of his mother, who was by birth calities than the precision of classic a German, was left to the care of an poets and prose writers. He must uncle. The influence of his childhood know the characters and motives of at Bladensburg, then a place of consimen, a species of knowledge in which derable activity, appeared upon the Locke and Fielding are more available whole to have been happy, and the than Coke and Littleton. He must, to boy's education was well provided for pursue his own studies with effect, in various schools in Maryland. His have an interchange of books and in- childhood embraced the period of the tervals of repose for the mind. Hence war, and he retained in his juvenile regreat lawyers have sometimes been collections a vivid impression of the

passage of Lee's legion through his fast friend of the young preceptor, who town on its way to join Greene in his came to look upon him as a father. southern campaign. The boy was par- He passed nearly two years in his house, ticularly fortunate in being placed at under his guidance, months of preparathe age of eleven at the grammar tion for the study of the law, to which school of the Rev. James Hart, a Pres- the life of Wirt was early devoted. byterian minister in Montgomery coun- We then find him prosecuting his apty. He was four years at this acade- prenticeship to the profession with my, the last two an inmate of the Mr. Hunt, a son of his former teacher family of his instructor. There he at Montgomery Court House, and shortfound a well-stored library, which gave ly removing into Virginia to complete wings to his youthful imagination-a his preparation and enter upon practice faculty, man and boy, which he had in that State. He was admitted in always in prompt exercise. Smollett, 1792 at the Culpepper County Court, Pope and Addison are enumerated and took up his residence in that among the books which fell in his locality. A case, growing out of an way-the sound, demonstrative litera- assault and battery, gave him the opture of the eighteenth century, so often portunity of a hearing; he improved found as the culture of the American the means around him, and worked his celebrities of the last and previous way into a respectable county practice. generation. His first original composition was an essay on the unhappy peculiarities of temper of the usher, which was boldly recited as a declamation by one of the scholars, and his first forensic effort was in an imitation of the neighboring County Court proceedings, in mock trials in the school-room. Wirt drew up the constitution for this mock court.

Virginia, from the first, gave Wirt a friendly reception. His early efforts at the bar were received with favor, and he made his way among the magnates of the neighboring counties. With one of these, Dr. George Gilmore of Pen Park, near Charlotteville, he formed a parti cular intimacy, which was cemented by marriage in May, 1795, with that gen tleman's daughter. He took up his resi dence with his father-in-law, and was thus placed in the centre of an influential circle. He was now at the age of twenty-three, when a man is still a learner. Pen Park was an upper school, a post-graduate course for an earnest mind, rich in books, society

The school soon after broke up, and Wirt, his patrimony exhausted, seemed thrown upon the world at the age of fifteen, when he was invited to the home of one of his schoolmates, whither a good report of his cleverness had been carried, in the capacity of a family instructor. The head of this house- and opportunities for generous cultiva hold, in Montgomery county, Benjamin Edwards, was a gentleman of education and a lawyer of repute at the bar and in the Legislature. He became a

tion. From this vantage ground in the neighborhood of the homes of the Presidents, as they were afterwards to become, Jefferson, Madison and Mon

though a man be full of honor, his
stomach may be empty; or in other
words, honor will not go to market
and buy a peck of potatoes."
He me-
ditated solving the difficulty by a set-
tlement in Kentucky, when his friend,
Littleton Waller Tazewell, generously
offered him a share of his practice, and
retained him at Norfolk, in Virginia.
His success at the bar was immediate;
he had acquired position by his office,
and trained himself in the management
of his voice in which at first he had ex-
perienced considerable difficulty.

roe, to whom he was introduced, he made his legal circuits with his friends, sharing quite as much, probably, in the festivities as in the labors of the profession. His domestic life too was of the happiest, affording free vent to his generous nature in his mode of life at Rose Hill, a separate seat in the neighborhood of Pen Park, where his residence was established on the death of his father-in-law. But this career of youth and enjoyment was to be brought to a sudden termination. The death of his wife, in 1799, separated Wirt from this family connection. He took It was at this date that he made his refuge from his affliction in Richmond, first distinct essay as a writer in geneand was put by his friends in the post ral literature, and became known to of clerk of the House of Delegates. the public as an author, a rare AmeriHe occupied this position for three can product in those days. The "Letsessions, when he was chosen by the ters of the British Spy" were published Legislature chancellor of one of the in the "Argus," at Richmond, in the three districts into which this jurisdic- autumn of 1803. They were a brief tion was now divided. It embraced series of essays, undertaken, as Wirt the eastern shore of Virginia and the tells us in one of his private epistles, to tide-water counties below Richmond, divert his mind during a period of unand required a residence at Williams-easiness and alarm, intended to depict burg. The date of this appointment the manners and opinions of Virginians was the end of 1802. It also found him under cover of a device often practised just entered upon a second marriage, in the literary world. "I adopted the with the daughter of Robert Gamble, character," says the author, "of a Britof Richmond. He discharged the du- ish Spy, because I thought that such a ties of the chancellorship for less than title in a republican paper would exa year. It was a laborious position, of cite more attention, curiosity and intermore honor than profit; Wirt natur- est than any other; and having adopt ally, as a rising lawyer, looked to the ed that character I was bound to supemoluments of the bar, and resigned port it. I endeavored to forget myself; the office. "This honor of being a to fancy myself the character which I chancellor," he wrote to his intimate had assumed; to imagine how, as a friend, Dabney Carr-a friendship to Briton, I should be struck with Richwhich we are indebted for many inter- mond, its landscapes, its public charac esting letters" is a very empty thing, ters, its manners, together with the stomachically speaking; that is, al- political sentiments and moral complex

[ocr errors]

The success of the "Spy" was a very promising beginning for a young au thor. It passed through several editions in the course of a few years, and was reprinted in London with an apology for presenting the book to an English audience. "The people of the United States of America," says this preface, "have so very small a claim on the world for any particular mark of distinction for honors gained in the field of literature, that it is feared the present demand on the English reader may be considered more as a call on British courtesy and benevolence than one of right and equity." This was in 1810. The language of the British

ion of the Virginians generally." In addition to these topics, much attention is given to the study of oratory, and several critical portraits are drawn of the leading speakers at the bar. One sketch, the account of James Waddell, has been justly admired, and is better known at this day than any other portion of the volume. The description is heightened by an honest enthusiasm. The style of the work was in general excellent; a little diffuse, perhaps, but informed by sound judgment and good feeling. The public received it well, and the sensitive author was himself the severest critic upon it; for Wirt was always bent upon self-examination, and in his correspondence constantly press has somewhat changed since that appears repenting of or regretting something or other. "Next to the exuberance of verbiage and the want of matter, is the levity, desultoriness, and sometimes commonness, of the thoughts which are expressed. Upon the whole, the work is too timid and too light." Such is his confession to his friend The next literary venture of Wirt, Carr-a proof quite as much of the was of a humble character: the contriacuteness of his mind as of the defects bution, with a few friends, of a short of his work. As Goldsmith says on a series of essays to the "Richmond Ensomewhat similar occasion, many things quirer," under the general title of "The may be found fault with, and a Rainbow." A collection of these aphundred reasons given to prove them peared in a thin volume at Richmond, beauties. An author who ventures at the close of 1804. They start with before the public should do his best a eulogy of the admired productions and leave the rest to his audience. He of Addison, Johnson, Mackenzie and should not retain his wit and imagina- the rest, but they have little if any tion as counsel against himself-a thing in common with those pleasant course of proceeding in which few law- papers. They are fair newspaper artilaw-papers. yers at least will be found to imitate cles, of a didactic character, with no The re the author of the "British Spy." The right to their fanciful name. bar is not often troubled with such marks on the rise of Bonaparte on the sensibility. French Revolution, may be read again,

time; but it was true that America had then offered very little to the world. Washington Irving, it may be mentioned, had published his "Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle," his first produc tion, only the year before, in a newspaper in New York.

« AnteriorContinuar »