orough knowledge of law, and that adaptiveness and
readiness of faculty which are never surprised into forgetfulness or
confusion, so that he can instantly see, meet, reason upon, and apply
his legal learning to the unexpected as well as the expected points
of law and evidence as they arise in a case. Secondly, he must have
thorough knowledge of human nature: he must not only profoundly
discuss motives in their relations to the laws of the human mind, and
practically reconcile motives with conduct as they relate to the
parties and witnesses in his cases, but he must prepare, present,
develop, guide, and finally argue his case, within the rules of law,
with strict reference to its effect upon the differing minds of
twelve men. It would be difficult to name any other field of public
mental effort which demands and gives scope for such variety of
faculty and accomplishment.

Whatever may have been Mr. Choate's defects of character or of style,
no competent judge ever saw his management of any case in court, from
its opening to its close, without recognizing that he was a man of
genius. It mattered not whether the amount involved was little or
great, whether the parties were rich or poor, wise or ignorant,
whether the subject-matter was dry or fertile,--such were his
imaginative insight, his knowledge of law and of human nature, his
perfection of arrangement, under which every point was treated fully,
but none unduly, his consummate tact and tactics, his command of
language in all its richness and delicacy to express the fullest
force and the nicest shades of his meaning, and his haggard beauty of
person and grace of nature, that every case rose to dramatic dignity
and to its largest relations to law, psychology, and poetry; and
thus, while giving it artistic unity and completeness, he all the
more enforced his arguments and insured his success. How widely
different in method and surroundings from the poet's exercise of the
creative faculty in the calm of thought and retirement, on a selected
topic and in selected hours of inspiration, was his entering, with
little notice or preparation, into a case involving complicated
questions of law and fact, with only a partial knowledge of the case
of his antagonist! met at point after point by unexpected evidence
and rulings of law, often involving such instantaneous decisions as
to change his whole combinations and method of attack; examining
witnesses with unerring skill, whom he