Six feet and seven inches high, and corpulent in
proportion, this inexorable representative of good sense and sound law
stood, while he was arguing a case, "quite near to the jury," says
Webster,--"so near that he might have laid his finger on the foreman's
nose; and then he talked to them in a plain conversational way, in short
sentences, and using no word that was not level to the comprehension of
the least educated man on the panel. This led me," he adds, "to examine
my own style, and I set about reforming it altogether."
Mr. Mason was what the lawyers call a "cause-getting man," like Sir
James Scarlett, Brougham's great opponent at the English bar. It was
said of Scarlett, that he gained his verdicts because there were twelve
Scarletts in the jury-box; and Mason so contrived to blend his stronger
mind with the minds of the jurymen, that his thoughts appeared to be
theirs, expressed in the same simple words and quaint illustrations
which they would have used if asked to give their opinions on the case.
It is to be added, that Mason's almost cynical disregard of ornament in
his addresses to the jury gave to an opponent like Webster the advantage
of availing himself of those real ornaments of speech which spring
directly from a great heart and imagination. Webster, without ever
becoming so supremely plain and simple in style as Mason, still strove
to emulate, in his legal statements and arguments, the homely, robust
common-sense of his antagonist; but, wherever the case allowed of it, he
brought into the discussion an element of _un_-common sense, the gift of
his own genius and individuality, which Mason could hardly comprehend
sufficiently to controvert, but which was surely not without its effect
in deciding the verdicts of juries.
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