John Webster

“ From The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt in its present mangled and misshapen form it is impossible to disengage Webster's handiwork with any certainty. The same may be said about the brisk and well-wrought pieces Northward Ho and Westward Ho. Yet I see no reason to dispute Webster's share in these three plays. A Cure for a Cuckold [2] requires more particular comment. This comedy was ascribed by the publisher Kirkman to John Webster and William Rowley. ”

“ Webster, in the Senate of the United States, on the 7th of March, 1850—to be found in the fifth volume of his works, page 353. Mr. Webster was a great man, gentlemen, like John Marshall, and he could stand that test of a great man—to be looked at closely. Our country produces an abundance of so-called great men. The very paving-stones are prolific with them. Every village, and hamlet, and blind alley has one, at least. ”

“ Calhoun was a great debater, but was too dry and hard for the highest eloquence. John Quincy Adams, despite his physical limitations, carried the eloquence of combat and bitter retort to the highest point in the splendid battles of his congressional career, but his learning, readiness, power of expression, argument, and scathing sarcasm were not rounded into a perfect whole by the more graceful attributes which also form an essential part of oratory.
Mr. Webster need not fear comparison with any of his countrymen, and he has no reason to shun it with the greatest masters of speech in England. ”

“ Worcester is quite as far from Washington as the John Grier Home. And I will add, for your further comfort, that whereas there is no man in the neighborhood of this asylum who admires red hair, in Worcester there are several. Therefore, most difficult of men, please be appeased. I didn't come entirely to spite you. I wanted an adventure in life, and, oh dear! ”

“ There is one man in the political history of the United States whom Daniel Webster regarded as his intellectual superior. And this man was Alexander Hamilton; not so great a lawyer or orator as Webster, not so broad and experienced a statesman, but a more original genius, who gave shape to existing political institutions. And he rendered transcendent services at a great crisis of American history, and died, with no decline of popularity, in the prime of his life, like Canning in England, with a brilliant future before him. ”

“ Flam. Hang him; a gilder that hath his brains perished with quicksilver
is not more cold in the liver. The great barriers moulted not more
feathers, than he hath shed hairs, by the confession of his doctor. An
Irish gamester that will play himself naked, and then wage all
downward, at hazard, is not more venturous. So unable to please a
woman, that, like a Dutch doublet, all his back is shrunk into his
breaches.
Shroud you within this closet, good my lord ”

“ The speech which Mr. Webster delivered was one of the greatest ever heard in America. It placed him at once at the head of American orators.
John Adams, the second president of the United States, was then living, a very old man. He said, "This oration will be read five hundred years hence with as much rapture as it was heard. It ought to be read at the end of every century, and, indeed, at the end of every year, forever and ever." ”

“ SCENE IV Enter Flamineo and Gasparo, at one door; another way, Giovanni, attended
Gas. The young duke: did you e'er see a sweeter prince?
Flam. I have known a poor woman's bastard better favoured—this is behind him. Now, to his face—all comparisons were hateful. Wise was the courtly peacock, that, being a great minion, and being compared for beauty by some dottrels that stood by to the kingly eagle, said the eagle was a far fairer bird than herself, not in respect of her feathers, but in respect of her long talons: his will grow out in time. —My gracious lord. ”

“ Clay was passionate and irritable, but forgiving and generous, loath to lose a friend and eager for popularity; Webster seemed indifferent to applause, and even to ordinary friendship, proud, and self-sustained. Clay was vain and susceptible to flattery. No stranger could approach Webster, but Clay was as accessible as a primitive bishop. New England was proud of Webster, but the West loved Clay. Kentucky would follow her favorite to the last, whatever mistakes he might make, but Massachusetts deserted Webster when he failed to respond to her popular convictions. ”

“ Webster of the ability and tact which he displayed at the Rockingham Convention was his election to the thirteenth Congress, where he took his seat in May, 1813. There were then many able men in the House. Mr. Clay was Speaker, and on the floor were John C. Calhoun, Langdon Cheves and William Lowndes of South Carolina, Forsyth and Troup of Georgia, Ingersoll of Pennsylvania, Grundy of Tennessee, and McLean of Ohio, all conspicuous in the young nationalist war party. ”

“ Widow Lindsay was clinging close to the figure of the Virgin that was placed against the wall by her side; Jenny Wilson sought refuge in the arms of honest John; Wat Webster himself got his hand placed upon an old Latin Bible, not one word of which he could read; and some followed one mode of self-defence, and some another, against the expected efforts of the stranger, whose proceedings at his other places of call had been all related at Wat Webster's, with an exaggeration they perhaps stood little in need of. The stranger cared nothing for these indications, not a cinder ”

“ Give me a fair room yet hung with arras, and some great cardinal to lug me by th' ears, as his endeared minion.
Fran. And thou mayest do the devil knows what villainy.
Flam. And safely.
Fran. Right: you shall see in the country, in harvest-time, pigeons, though they destroy never so much corn, the farmer dare not present the fowling-piece to them: why? because they belong to the lord of the manor; whilst your poor sparrows, that belong to the Lord of Heaven, they go to the pot for 't.
Flam. I will now give you some politic instruction. The duke says he
will give you pension ”

“ Dear Judy:
Your letter is here. I have read it twice, and with amazement. Do I understand that Jervis has given you, for a Christmas present, the making over of the John Grier Home into a model institution, and that you have chosen me to disburse the money? Me—I, Sallie McBride, the head of an orphan asylum! My poor people, have you lost your senses, or have you become addicted to the use of opium, and is this the raving of two fevered imaginations? I am exactly as well fitted to take care of one hundred children as to become the curator of a zoo. ”

“ Webster's power as an orator. Of all the occasions of his life, this encounter with the doctrine of nullification on its first bold announcement in the senate was certainly the greatest, and the speech was equal to the occasion. It struck a chord in the heart of the American people which had not ceased to vibrate when the crisis came thirty years later. It gave articulate expression to a sentiment of loyalty to the Union that went on growing until the American citizen was as prompt to fight for the Union as the Mussulman for his prophet or the cavalier for his king. ”

“ In political wisdom and experience he had no contemporaneous superior; there was no public man from 1820 to 1850 who had so great a prestige, and whose name and labors are so well remembered. His speeches and forensic arguments are more often quoted than those of any other statesman and lawyer the country has produced. His works are in every library, and are still read. His fame has not waned, in spite of the stirring events which have taken place since his death. Great generals have arisen and passed out of mind, but the name and memory of Webster are still fresh. ”

“ Webster's financial speeches are very calm, like the papers of Hamilton and Jay in "The Federalist," but as interesting and persuasive as those of Gladstone, the greatest finance-minister of modern times. They are plain, simple, direct, without much attempt at rhetoric. He spoke like a great lawyer to a bench of judges. The solidity and soundness of his views made him greatly respected, and were remarkable in a young man of thirty-four. ”

“ Webster's speeches are likely to live for their style alone, outside their truths, like those of Cicero and Demosthenes, like the histories of Voltaire and Macaulay, like the essays of Pascal and Rousseau; and they will live, not only for both style and matter, but for the exalted patriotism which burns in them from first to last, for those sentiments which consecrate cherished institutions. How nobly he recognizes Christianity as the bulwark of national prosperity! ”

“ Mr. Webster was, in his arguments on tariffs and cognate questions, the champion of the North, as Mr. Calhoun was of the South; and this opposition and antagonism gave great force to Webster's eloquence at this time. His sentences are short, interrogative, idiomatic. He is intensely in earnest. He grapples with sophistries and scatters them to the winds; both reason and passion vivify him.
This was the period of Webster's greatest popularity, as the defender of Northern industries. This made him the idol of the merchants and manufacturers of New England. He made them rich ”

“ Does a man fall hopelessly because he stumbles? Is a man to be dethroned because he is not perfect? When was Webster's vote ever bought and sold? Who ever sat with more dignity in the councils of the nation? Would he have voted for "back pay"? Would he have bought a seat in the Senate, even if he had been as rich as a bonanza king?
Consider how few errors Webster really committed in a public career of nearly forty years. Consider the beneficence and wisdom of the measures which he generally advocated, and which would have been lost but for his eloquence and power. ”

“ Webster, perhaps, is only following the laws of his blood and constitution. I suppose his pledges were not quite natural to him. He is a man who lives by his memory; a man of the past, not a man of faith and of hope. All the drops of his blood have eyes that look downward, and his finely developed understanding only works truly and with all its force when it stands for animal good ”

“ Webster, as it exhibits him as a "Strict-Constructionist," and as a master of that peculiar kind of deductive reasoning which is commonly considered the special distinction of his great antagonist, Mr. Calhoun. In subtilty and refinement of argument it is fully the match of most of Mr. Calhoun's elaborate disquisitions. At the time of its delivery it excited the almost savage ire of John Quincy Adams, as will be seen by reference to the latter's "Diary." It was in connection with this speech that Mr. Adams speaks of "the rotten heart of Daniel Webster." ”

“ His greatest services to his country, however, were as the defender of the Constitution. Here he soared to the highest rank of political fame. Here he was a statesman, having in view the interests of the whole country. He never was what we call a politician. He never was such a miserable creature as that. I mean a mere politician, whose calling is the meanest a man can follow, since it seeks only spoils, and is a perpetual deception, incompatible with all dignity and independence, whose only watchword is success.
Not such was Webster. ”

“ Webster never indulged in mere rhetorical flights; his sentences, simple in structure and weighted with meaning, went straight to the mark, and his arguments were so skilfully framed that while his most learned and critical hearers were impressed with a sense of their conclusiveness, no man of ordinary intelligence could fail to understand them. To these high qualifications of the orator was added such a physical presence as but few men have been endowed with. ”

“ Webster failed to reach the position he desired, because of his enemies, and, possibly, from jealousy of his towering height,--just as Clay failed, and Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton, and Stephen Douglas, and William H. Seward. The politicians, who control the people, prefer men in the presidential chair whom they think they can manage and use, not those to whom they will be forced to succumb. Webster was not a man to be controlled or used, and so the politicians rejected him. ”

“ The beginning of a new era in his private life coincided with the beginning of a new era in his career as a statesman. After 1830 Mr. Webster was recognized as one of the greatest powers in the nation, and it seemed natural that the presidency should be offered to such a man. His talents, however, were not those of a party leader, and the circumstances under which the Whig party was formed were not such as to place him at its head. ”

“ There is a chess wikia here. If all else fails, they will probably be very keen to accept a game transcript. John Vandenberg (chat) 09:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC) Webster's first dictionary I have a copy of Webster's first dictionary published in 1806, which date is noted in Wikipedia's first page of text on Noah Webster. He taught in my town of Glastonbury, Connecticut. I believe my late father, Dr. Lee Jay Whittles, M.D., received it in the 1930's from a grateful patient during the Depression Does anyone know how many copies of this 1806 edition were printed by Goodwin in New Haven, Connecticut? ”

“ There is a sense in which all American statesmen may be said to be intellectually the descendants and disciples either of Jefferson or of Hamilton, and as a representative follower of Hamilton, Mr. Webster was sure to be drawn rather toward Clay than toward Jackson. The course of industrial events in New England was such as to involve changes of opinion in that part of the country, which were soon reflected in a complete reversal of Mr. Webster's attitude toward the tariff. ”