He could describe with great vividness, brevity, and force what had happened in the past, what actually existed, or what the future promised.  But his fancy never ran away with him or carried him captive into the regions of poetry.  Imagination of this sort is readily curbed and controlled, and, if less brilliant, is safer than that defined by Shakespeare.  For this reason, Mr. Webster rarely indulged in long, descriptive passages, and, while he showed the highest power in treating anything with a touch of humanity about it, he was sparing of images drawn wholly from nature, and was not peculiarly successful in depicting in words natural scenery or phenomena.  The result is, that in his highest flights, while he is often grand and affecting, full of life and power, he never shows the creative imagination.  But if he falls short on the poetic side, there is the counterbalancing advantage that there is never a false note nor an overwrought description which offends our taste and jars upon our sensibilities.

Mr. Webster showed his love of direct simplicity in his style even more than in his thought or the general arrangement and composition of his speeches.  His sentences are, as a rule, short, and therefore pointed and intelligible, but they never become monotonous and harsh, the fault to which brevity is always liable.  On the contrary, they are smooth and flowing, and there is always a sufficient variety of form.  The choice of language is likewise simple.  Mr. Webster was a remorseless critic of his own style, and he had an almost extreme preference for Anglo-Saxon words and a corresponding dislike of Latin derivatives.  The only exception he made was in his habit of using “commence” instead of its far superior synonym “begin.”  His style was vigorous, clear, and direct in the highest degree, and at the same time warm and full of vitality.  He displayed that rare union of strength with perfect simplicity, the qualities which made Swift the great master of pure and forcible English.

Charles Fox is credited with saying that a good speech never reads well.  This opinion, taken in the sense in which it was intended, that a carefully-prepared speech, which reads like an essay, lacks the freshness and glow that should characterize the oratory of debate, is undoubtedly correct.  But it is equally true that when a speech which we know to have been good in delivery is equally good in print, a higher intellectual plane is reached and a higher level of excellence is attained than is possible to either the mere essay or to the effective retort or argument, which loses its flavor with the occasion which draws it forth.  Mr. Webster’s speeches on the tariff, on the bank, and on like subjects, able as they are, are necessarily dry, but his speeches on nobler themes are admirable reading.  This is, of course, due to the variety and ease of treatment, to their power, and to the purity of the style.  At the same time, the immediate effect of what he said was immense,