We propose to try to give some idea of those mental characteristics and peculiarities in which he differed from other lawyers, and to indicate some salient points of his genius and nature which went to make up so original and interesting an individuality.  Immense labor and talent will no more produce genius or its results, than mere natural genius, without their aid and instrumentality, can reach and maintain the highest rank in any of the great departments of life or thought.  With true genius, imagination is, to be sure, paramount to great and balanced faculties; but genius is always demonstrating its superiority to talent as well by its greater rapidity and certainty in seizing, arranging, and holding facts, and by the extent of its acquisitions, as by its superior philosophic and artistic grasp and vision.

Though Mr. Choate was so much more than a mere lawyer, it was in court that he displayed the full force and variety of his powers. Hic currus et arma.  We shall, however, speak more especially of his jury-trials, because in them more of his whole nature was brought into play, and because of them and of his management of them there is and can be no full record.  The arguments and triumphs of the great advocate are almost as evanescent and traditionary as the conversation of great talkers like Coleridge.  In what we have to say we cannot be expected to call up the arguments and cases themselves, and we must necessarily be confined to a somewhat general statement of certain mental qualities and characteristics which were of the secret of his power.  We shall be rewarded, if we succeed in giving in mere outline some explanation of the fact, that so much of interest and something of mystery attach themselves throughout the country to his name and genius.

A jury-trial is in itself dramatic; but mere eloquence is but a small part of what is demanded of a great advocate.  Luther Martin and Jeremiah Mason were the most eminent American examples of the very many great jury-lawyers who were almost destitute of all that makes up popular eloquence.  A jury-lawyer is of course greater with it, but he can do entirely without it.  Almost all great trials appeal to the intellects rather than to the passions of jurors.  What an advocate needs first is thorough knowledge of law, and that adaptiveness and readiness of faculty which are never surprised into forgetfulness or confusion, so that he can instantly see, meet, reason upon, and apply his legal learning to the unexpected as well as the expected points of law and evidence as they arise in a case.  Secondly, he must have thorough knowledge of human nature:  he must not only profoundly discuss motives in their relations to the laws of the human mind, and practically reconcile motives with conduct as they relate to the parties and witnesses in his cases, but he must prepare, present, develop, guide, and finally argue his case, within the rules of law, with strict reference to its effect upon the differing minds of twelve men.  It would be difficult to name any other field of public mental effort which demands and gives scope for such variety of faculty and accomplishment.