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Show GREATEST OF LEGAL ORATORS Proud Position That Has Been Accorded Ac-corded to William Pinkney of Maryland. But by Ion? odds the greatest of our purely legal orators was William Pinkney of Maryland. His speeches were the beacon lights that directed the footsteps of the Supreme court of the United States in the formative period of our government. The great argument in the Nereide prize law caso is steeped in a richer rhetoric than almost any other of his speeches. The bold figure of Hercules Her-cules crushing the Nemean lion has been referred to as one of the sub-limest sub-limest in our oratory. Seldom has any man been so abundantly abund-antly equipped for the highest displays dis-plays of eloquence, and this, too, was largely the result of his later studies. When sent as an ambassador to England Eng-land he was asked at table one day tor his opinion on a certain Greek phrase being discussed at the time, and was ineffably mortified and humiliated hu-miliated to confess that he knew noth- ing of the subject under discussion. Then and there was born in him the determination to be a classical scholar, schol-ar, and bending himself to the task he became in a few years highly proficient pro-ficient not alone in the ancient but in the modern classics as well. His eloquence satisfied the intellect as well as the love of ornament. No vocabulary ever surpassed -his in full and rounded excellence. Poetic to a rare degree1; yet governed withal by an almost perfect taste, he clothed his large philosophy in the sheen of such a golden style as made It seem quite a matter of course that Story and Marshall should pronounce him "incomparable" "in-comparable" and that he should be the "boast of Maryland and the pride of the United States." It is n"bt too much to say that had all o his speeches before the Supreme1 court and elsewhere been' preserved he would have been universally esteemed the greatest of legal orators in the whole world. He was greater than Isaeus or Lysias because his view was broader and more philosophical and his powers of expression by far more poetical captivating and persuasive. |