to his part, and of as instantaneous withdrawal from it,—­like the elder Booth, joking one minute at a side-scene and in the next having the big tears of a realized Lear running down his cheeks.  An eminent critic says,—­“Genius always lights its own fire,”—­and this constant double process of mind,—­one of self-direction and self-control, the other of absolute abandonment and identification,—­each the more complete for the other,—­the dramatic poet, the impassioned orator, and the great interpretative actor, all know, whenever the whole mind and nature are in their highest action.  Mr. Choate, therefore, from pure force of mental constitution, threw himself into the life and position of the parties and witnesses in a jury-case, and they necessarily became dramatis personae, and moved in an atmosphere of his own creation.  His narrative was the simplest and most artistic exhibition of his case thus seen and presented from the point of their lives and natures, and not from the dry facts and points of his case; and his argument was all the more perfect, because not exhibited in skeleton nakedness, but incorporated and intertwined with the interior and essential life of persons and events.  It was in this way that he effected the acquittal of Tirrell, whom any matter-of-fact lawyer, however able, would have argued straight to the gallows; and yet we have the highest judicial authority for saying that in that case he did his simple technical duty, without interposing his own opinions or convictions.  We shall say a word, before we close, of the charge that he surrendered himself too completely to his client; but to a great degree the explanation and the excuse at once lie in this dramatic imagination, which was of the essence of his genius and influence, and through which he lived the life, shared the views, and identified himself with a great actor’s realization, in the part of his client.

In making real to himself the nature, life, and position of his client,—­in gathering from him and his witnesses, in the preparation and trial of his case, its main facts and direction, as colored or inflamed by his client’s opinions, passions, and motives,—­and in seeking their explanation in the egotism and idiosyncrasy which his own sympathetic insight penetrated and harmonized into a consistent individuality,—­he, of course, knew his client better than his client knew himself; he conceived him as an actor conceives character, and, in a great measure, saw with his eyes from his point of view, and, in the argument of his case, gave clear expression and consistent characterization to his nature and to his partisan views in their relations to the history of the case.  We have seen his clients sit listening to the story of their own lives and conduct, held off in artistic relief and in dramatic relation, with tears running down cheeks which had not been moistened by the actual events themselves, re-presented by his arguments in such coloring and perspective.