unched
gradually into a recital of the colonial wrongs. Rising, as
he advanced, with the grandeur of his subject, and glowing
at length with all the majesty and expectation of the
occasion, his speech seemed more than that of mortal man.
Even those who had heard him in all his glory in the House
of Burgesses of Virginia were astonished at the manner in
which his talents seemed to swell and expand themselves to
fill the vaster theatre in which he was now placed. There
was no rant, no rhapsody, no labor of the understanding, no
straining of the voice, no confusion of the utterance. His
countenance was erect, his eye steady, his action noble, his
enunciation clear and firm, his mind poised on its centre,
his views of his subject comprehensive and great, and his
imagination coruscating with a magnificence and a variety
which struck even that assembly with amazement and awe. He
sat down amidst murmurs of astonishment and applause; and,
as he had been before proclaimed the greatest orator of
Virginia, he was now on every hand admitted to be the first
orator of America."[128]

This great speech from Patrick Henry, which certainly was not made on
that occasion, and probably was never made at all, Wirt causes to be
followed by a great speech from Richard Henry Lee, although the
journal could have informed him that Lee was not even in the House on
that day. Moreover, he makes Patrick Henry to be the author of the
unfortunate first draft of the address to the king,--a document which
was written by another man; and on this fiction he founds two or three
pages of lamentation and of homily with reference to Patrick Henry's
inability to express himself in writing, in consequence of "his early
neglect of literature." Finally, he thinks it due "to historic truth
to record that the superior powers" of Patrick Henry "were manifested
only in debate;" and that, although he and Richard Henry Lee "took the
undisputed lead in the Assembly," "during the first days of the
session, while general grievances were the topic," yet they were both
"completely thrown into the shade" "when called down from the heights
of declamation to that severer test of intellectual excellence, the
details of business,"--the writer here seeming to forget that "general
grievances" were not the topic "during the first days of the session,"
and that the very speeches by which