On the day he
completed his magnificent Bunker Hill oration, delivered on the 17th of
June, 1825, he wrote to Mr. George Ticknor: "I did the deed this
morning, i.e. I finished my speech; and I am pretty well persuaded that
it will _finish_ me as far as reputation is concerned. There is no more
tone in it than in the weather in which it has been written; it is
perpetual dissolution and thaw." Every critic will understand the force
of that word "tone." He seemed to feel that it had not enough robust
manliness,--that the ribs and backbone, the facts, thoughts, and real
substance of the address, were not sufficiently prominent, owing to the
frequency of those outbursts of magnetic eloquence, which made the
immense audience that listened to it half crazy with the vehemence of
their applause. On the morning after he had delivered his eulogy on
Adams and Jefferson, he entered his office with his manuscript in his
hand, and threw it down on the desk of a young student at law whom he
specially esteemed, with the request, "There, Tom, please to take that
discourse, and weed out all the Latin words."
Webster's liking for the Saxon element of our composite language was,
however, subordinate to his main purpose of self-expression. Every word
was good, whether of Saxon or Latin derivation, which aided him to
embody the mood of mind dominant at the time he was speaking or writing.
No man had less of what has been called "the ceremonial cleanliness of
academical pharisees;" and the purity of expression he aimed at was to
put into a form, at once intelligible and tasteful, his exact thoughts
and emotions.
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