The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 63, January, 1863

The whole of the second volume and a full half of the first are occupied with Mr. Choate's own productions, mainly speeches and lectures. Many of these have been published before, but some of them appear in print for the first time. Mr. Choate's peculiar characteristics of style and manner—his exuberance of language, his full flow of thought, his redundancy of epithet, his long-drawn sentences, stretching on through clause after clause before the orbit of his thought had begun to turn and enter upon itself—are well known. We cannot say that the contents of these volumes will add to the high reputation which Mr. Choate already enjoys as a brilliant writer, an eloquent speaker, a patriotic statesman; but we can and do say that the glimpses we herein get of his purely human qualities—of that inner life which belongs to every man simply as man—all add to the interest which already clings to his name, by showing him in a light and in relations of which the public who hung with delight upon his lips knew little or nothing. He had long been one of the celebrities of the city; his face and form were familiar to his towns-people, and all strangers were anxious to see and hear him: but, though he moved and acted in public, he dwelt apart. His orbit embraced the three points of the court-room, his office, and his home,—and no more. He had no need of society, of amusement, of sympathy, of companionship. We are free to say that we think it was a defect in his nature, at least a mistake in his life, that he did not cultivate his friendships more. Few men of his eminence have ever lived so long and written so few letters. But his diaries and journals, now for the first time given to the light, show us the inner man and the inner life. Here he communed with himself. Here he intrusted his thoughts, his hopes, his dreams, his aspirations to the safe confidence of his note-book. No portions of the two volumes are to us of more interest than these diaries and journals. They bear the stamp of perfect sincerity. They show us how high his standard was, how little he was satisfied with anything he had done, how deep and strong were his love of knowledge and his love of beauty, how every step of progress was made a starting-point for a new advance. And from these, and other indications which these volumes contain, we can learn how modest he was, how gentle and courteous, how full of playfulness and graceful wit, how unprejudiced, how imbued with reverence for things high and sacred, how penetrated with delicate tact and sensitive propriety. He nursed no displeasures; he cultivated no antipathies; he was free from dark suspicions, sullen resentments, and smouldering hates; he put no venom upon his blade.

The life and labors of a man like Mr. Choate present many points on which it would be easy to dwell with more or less of fulness, but we can only touch upon one or two. We have always thought him especially remarkable for the felicity with which the elements in him were so mingled that the bright gift was not accompanied by the usually attendant shadow. All would admit, for instance, that his temperament was the temperament of genius. The strings of an Aeolian harp are not more responsive to the caressing wind than were the fibres of his frame sensitive to the influence of beauty. His organization was delicate, nervous, and impassioned. The grandeur and loveliness of Nature, fine poetry, stirring eloquence, music under certain forms and conditions, affected him to an extent to which men are rarely susceptible. And yet with all these "robes and singing garlands" of genius about him, he was entirely free from the irritability which usually accompanies genius. His temper was as sweet as his organization was sensitive. The life of a lawyer in great practice is very trying to the spirit, but no one ever saw Mr. Choate discomposed or ruffled, and the sharp contentions of the most protracted and hotly contested trial never extorted from him a testy remark, a peevish exclamation, a wounding reflection. He never wasted any of his nervous energy in scolding, fretting, or worrying. Such invincible and inevitable sweetness of temper would have made the most commonplace man attractive: we need not say what a charm it gave to such powers and accomplishments as those of Mr. Choate.

So, too, there is the old, traditionary commonplace about genius being one thing and application another, and their being in necessary antagonism to each other. But Mr. Choate was a man of genius, at least in its popular and generally received sense. The glance of his mind was as rapid as the lightning; he learned almost by intuition; his fancy was brilliant, discursive, and untiring; his perceptions were both quick and correct: if there ever were a man who could have dispensed with the painful acquisitions of labor, and been content with the spontaneous growth of an uncultivated soil, that man was Mr. Choate. And yet who ever worked harder than he? what plodding chronicler, what prosaic Dryasdust ever went through a greater amount of drudgery than he? His very industry had the intense and impassioned character which belonged to his whole temperament and organization. He toiled with a fiery earnestness and a concentration of purpose which burned into the very heart of the subject he was investigating. The audience that hung with delight upon one of his addresses to the jury, at the close of a long and exciting trial, in which the wit and eloquence and poetry seemed to be the inspiration of the moment,—electric sparks which the mind's own rapid motion generated,—thought as little of the patient industry with which all had been elaborated as they who admire an exquisite ball-dress, that seems a part of the lovely form which it adorns, think of the pale weaver's loom and the poor seamstress's needle. We have known brilliant men; we have known laborious men; but we have never known any man in whom the two elements were met in such combination as Mr. Choate.

But we must pause. We are insensibly going beyond our limits. We are forgetting the biography and recalling Mr. Choate himself, a theme too fruitful for a literary notice. We conclude, then, with an expression of thanks to Professor Brown for the entirely satisfactory manner in which he has performed a task of no common difficulty. The friends of Mr. Choate will find in these volumes not only ample, but new matter, to justify the admiration which he awakened; and to those who did not know him they will show how just was his title to their admiration.

The Story of the Guard, a Chronicle of the War. By JESSIE BENTON FRÉMONT. 16mo. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

The subject, the authorship, and the style of this book combine to secure for it the immediate attention of American readers. In our own case, this attention has deepened into hearty interest and sympathy; and we are so confident that such will be the result in every mind, that we the more cheerfully resign ourselves to the necessity which renders a full and fair review of this little book an impossible thing for us. Let us briefly call to notice some of its peculiar excellences, and indicate the line of thought which we think its sympathetic critic will follow.

Certainly no worthier subject could be chosen than the deeds of that brave young Guard, which was at first the target for so many slanders, and at last the centre of heartiest love and pride to all the North. Its short and brilliant career lacks nothing which chivalry find romance could lend, to render it the brightest passage in the history of the war. It is but a few days since Frémont's Virginia Body-Guard—now that of General Sigel—made a bold dash into Fredericksburg, rivalling the glory of their predecessors; but, though every one of Frémont's campaigns should boast a Body-Guard, and every Guard immortalize a new Springfield, the crown of crowns will always rest on the gallant little major and his dauntless few whose high enthusiasm broke the spell of universal disaster, sounding the bugle-notes of victory through the dreary silence of national despair.

General Frémont's practice in the West was invariably to educate his raw troops in the presence of an enemy. Whether this was of choice or of necessity we do not pretend to say; but the fact remains, that the tide of war was turned back upon our enemies by an army composed of men who had but just taken up their weapons. We once had the pleasure of hearing General Frémont explain the system which he pursued with this army; and we remember being struck with the fact that he laid great stress on constant skirmishing, as the means of acquiring a habit of victory. We cannot enlarge here upon this interesting topic. We design only to adduce the circumstance, that the charge at Springfield concluded a series of five fights within a single week, every one of which resulted in triumph to our arms with the exception of that at Fredericktown. They were slight affairs; but, as Frémont so well says, "Little victories form a habit of victory."

The charge of the Guard we shall not eulogize. It is beyond the praise of words. It is wonderful that Major Zagonyi should have been able in so few days to bring into such splendid discipline a body of new recruits. The Prairie Scouts (who seem to have been a band of brave men under a dashing young leader) had not the perfect training which carried the Guard through a murderous fire, to form and charge in the very camp of the enemy. They plunged into the woods, and commenced a straggling bush-fight, as they were skilled to do. Worthy of praise in themselves, (and they have earned it often and received it freely,) the Scouts on this occasion serve to heighten the effect of that grand combination of impulse and obedience which makes the perfect soldier.

We cannot but add a word or two (leaving many points of interest untouched) upon the manner in which Mrs. Frémont has treated her subject. It is novel, but not ineffective. Zagonyi tells much of the story in his own words; and we are sure that it loses nothing of vividness from his terse and vigorous, though not always strictly grammatical language. "Zagonyi's English," says some one who has heard it, "is like wood-carving."

The letters of the General himself form one of the most interesting features of the book. We would only remark, in this connection, the wide difference between the General's style and that of his wife. Mrs. Frémont is a true woman, and has written a true woman's book. The General is a true man, and his words are manly words. Her style is full, free, vivid, with plenty of dashes and postscripts,—the vehicle of much genius and many noble thoughts; but in itself no style, or a careless and imperfect one. The Pathfinder writes as good English prose as any man living. We cannot be mistaken. The hand that penned the "Story of the Guard" could not hold the pen of the Proclamation or the Farewell Address, or the narrative of the Rocky-Mountain Expedition. Nevertheless, it has done well. Let its work lie on our tables and dwell in our hearts with the "Idyls of the King,"—the Aeolian memories of a chivalry departed blending with the voices of the nobler knighthood of our time.

Seven Little People and their Friends. New York: A.F. Randolph.

This is a charming book for the holidays. Not that it requires such a temporary occasion to give it interest, elevated as it is by its inherent excellence above that class of books which may be said almost entirely to depend upon such factitious accidents for whatever of success they may reasonably hope to obtain. It is, irrespective of time or occasion, a genuine story-book, adapted particularly to children between the ages of six and sixteen years, yet not, as is usually the case in books for children, confined to these narrow limits in either direction; since there is somewhat for any child that can be supposed to have an interest in narrative, and a great deal for every man who has genius, according to Coleridge's well-known definition of genius,—namely, that it is the power of childhood carried forward into the developments of manhood. This is saying, indeed, quite as much as could be said for the general features of the book, and more than could be said for any other child's book, excepting alone Hans Andersen's inimitable stories.

Speaking of the book as compared with the works of Hans Andersen, it is more consciously a work of art, in an intellectual sense; it is more complicated in incident, or rather, we should say, in the working-up of the incident, whether that be an advantage for it or not. In almost every instance, Hans Andersen's stories could be told apart from the book,—indeed, it is true that many of them were thus told to children, whom the Danish storyteller casually met, before they were committed to writing; and they were written, we imagine, very much as they were told. The seven stories of which this book is made up, on the other hand, could none of them be told naturally, and yet preserve every artistic feature which belongs to them, as they are written. As there is more of intellectual consciousness in their development, giving them more finish and greater multiformity as products of art, so also there is more depth of idea in their design. The writer is evidently not satisfied with simple narrative; the movement of his stories is more important in his eye than incident, and to the former there must have been considerable sacrifice of the latter,—that is, much of the incident which might have been given in a simple narrative has been left out, because it would mar the formal design.

From what has been said it will be evident that the book is not one of those designed to affect the reader mainly through a scrupulous conscience, or indeed distinctively through conscience at all. It appeals to the imagination preëminently, and through that to the will. It is the greatest merit of the book, that it is designed for the culture and development of the imagination in children,—a faculty almost entirely neglected, or, what is worse, oftentimes despotically crushed and thwarted in children.

In "The Three Wishes" is developed for the child the mystery of work and of worship; but it is all accomplished through incidents appealing wholly to imagination, and with beautiful art. "The Little Castaways"—really a deliberate farce, "taking off," the stories of similar incident written for older folk—is yet, in itself, for the child much more than that which is thus "taken off" ever could be for the older and more romantic reader. "The Rock-Elephant" is full of humor and imaginative pathos. "A Faëry Surprise-Party" is as delicate as are Jack Frost's pencillings, through which all the events of the story curiously move. "New-Year's Day in the Garden" has equal delicacy, and even greater beauty.

In all the stories there is a humanizing of all elements introduced, even the most material. We are assured that the author's efforts will meet with success. Children, certainly, and all those especially interested in children, will hail the book with delight. It is finely illustrated by F.A. Chapman, who, it is evident, has spared no pains to render it attractive. The engravings, be it said in their favor, are not too directly suggestive, as is generally the case, but, from their delicate insinuations, particularly beautiful.