might be, was no poet. But in his own field
something of this time, having a real importance, has come down to us. The
fame of his youthful eloquence, so far beyond anything ever known in the
college, was noised abroad, and in the year 1800 the citizens of Hanover,
the college town, asked him to deliver the Fourth of July oration. In this
production, which was thought of sufficient merit to deserve printing, Mr.
Webster sketched rapidly and exultingly the course of the Revolution, threw
in a little Federal politics, and eulogized the happy system of the new
Constitution. Of this and his other early orations he always spoke with a
good deal of contempt, as examples of bad taste, which he wished to have
buried and forgotten. Accordingly his wholesale admirers and supporters who
have done most of the writing about him, and who always sneezed when Mr.
Webster took snuff, have echoed his opinions about these youthful
productions, and beyond allowing to them the value which everything
Websterian has for the ardent worshipper, have been disposed to hurry them
over as of no moment. Compared to the reply to Hayne or the Plymouth
oration, the Hanover speech is, of course, a poor and trivial thing.
Considered, as it ought to be, by itself and in itself, it is not only of
great interest as Mr. Webster's first utterance on public questions, but it
is something of which he had no cause to feel ashamed. The sentiments are
honest, elevated, and manly, and the political doctrine is sound. Mr.
Webster was then a boy of eighteen, and he therefore took his politics from
his father and his father's friends. For the same reason he was imitative
in style and mode of thought. All boys of that age, whether geniuses or
not, are imitative, and Mr. Webster, who was never profoundly original in
thought, was no exception to the rule. He used the style of the eighteenth
century, then in its decadence, and very florid, inflated, and heavy it
was. Yet his work was far better and his style simpler and more direct than
that which was in fashion. He indulged in a good deal of patriotic
glorification. We smile at his boyish Federalism describing Napoleon as
"the gasconading pilgrim of Egypt," and Columbia as "seated in the forum of
nations, and the empires of the world amazed at the bright effulgence of
her glory." These sentences are the acme of fine writing, very boyish and
very poor; but they are not fair examples of the whole, which is much
simpler and m