To The Presentment Of Truth, Or Sophism, As The
Cause Might Require, He Gave His Entire Mind With As Perfect Oblivion
Of Self As The Most Heroic Sufferer For Principle.
The faculty which
in Gladstone, the statesman, applied to realities and inspired only by
the desire to discover the
Truth and to clothe it in language,
assumes, in the minds of superficial observers, the air of casuistry
from the nicety of its distinctions and the earnest desire of the
speaker to present truth in its finest shades in Follett, the
advocate, applied indiscriminately to the development of the specious
shows of things as of their essences, wore all the semblance of
sincerity; and, in one sense, deserved it. No fears, no doubts, no
scruples shook him. Of the license which advocacy draws from sympathy
with the feelings of those it represents, he made full use, with
unhesitating power; for his reason, of 'large discourse,' was as
pliable as the affections of the most sensitive nature. Nor was he
diverted from his aim by any figure or fancy: if he neither exalted
his subject by imagination, nor illustrated it by wit, nor softened
its details by pathos, he never made it the subject of vain attempts
at the exhibition of either. He went into the arena, stripped of all
encumbrance, to win, and contended studious only and always of
victory. His presence of mind was not merely the absence of external
distraction, nor the capacity of calling up all energies on an
emergency, but the continued application of them equally to the duty
of each moment.
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