In that interval I called to see him frequently; and,
as my own studies lay in the walks of our earlier history, the talk
usually ran, for a time at least, on the men and things of an epoch in
which the Revolution held the middle place. He seemed to have perfect
command of his stores, not by the mere effort of recollection, but of
memory and reflection combined, eliminating a truth from the facts which
concealed it. A specimen of the talk which actually occurred between us
may illustrate my remark. I would approach him and say deliberately in
his ear--for within a few years past he had become slightly deaf--"Mr.
Tazewell, Col. Richard Bland (who, by the way, died in October, 1776)
wrote tracts in the Parson's cause, a tract against the Quakers, and his
inquiry into the rights of the colonies; did he write any other
pamphlet?" Quick as thought he replied: "Yes, he wrote a tract on the
tenure of lands in Virginia, showing that they were allodial and not
held in fee. I read the tract when I was a boy; and it helped me in my
examination for a license to practise law." He had probably not recalled
this fact before for half a century: no copy of the tract is preserved;
and there was not another human being then living, I may venture to say,
who knew of the existence of such a tract; and so at times with other
facts which he recalled after the lapse of seventy years, and which he
had learned from his father or from Mr. Wythe. On the other hand, when
his earlier recollections were clearly proved to be inaccurate as to
matter of fact, as in the case of what he thought had happened at the
session of the House of Burgesses of 1765, when Henry's resolutions
against the stamp act were passed, and I placed under his eye the
discrepancy between his statement of the case and the entry on the
journals of the House, he would fight manfully in defence of his own
views, but generally ended in cases where the proof was conclusive:
"Well, sir, Mr. Wythe told me so." Dates not common or easily reached
were fixed in his memory by a kind of connexion with his own life; as
for instance, I would ask him whether he remembered the features of
Peyton Randolph? And he would answer: "No, sir; I was born in December,
1774, and he died in October, 1775, in Philadelphia, when I was not a
year old." And it was by questions such as these, which I could answer
with exact precision myself, that I ascertained not only the integrity
and worth of his memory, whic