Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/73

as a Fourth of July speaker, but he had pre sheep, backed as " Solitude, and other viously delivered a eulogy on the death of Poems, by Joseph Story," and of date 1804. It had become a curiosity, because the Washington. About the same time, per haps taking courage from the fact that the author, grown to be a great world-renowned great English and Indian jurist, Sir William jurist, had bought up all the copies that he Jones, had recently published poems, young could find — deeming the publication a Story also published a volume of verses en youthful folly; and perhaps in poetic mem titled " The Power of Solitude, and other Po ory recalling this verse of Edmund Waller, ems." He had written poetry while yet a subsequently paraphrased by Byron in " Eng schoolboy, and indeed his whole adolescence lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers " : — had been tinged with romance, so that he "That eagle's fate and mine are one. was an idol of the female sex, and did not Which on the shaft that made him die Espied a feather of his own hesitate to reciprocate their attentions. This Wherewith he wont to soar so high." fondness of and aptitude for verse was, as all literati well know, inherited by his Perhaps had Joseph Story lived to hear it son William Wetmore, whose metrical trage mooted that Lord Bacon was the author of dy of Nero is in every well appointed library, the Shakespeare plays, he would have been and whose poetry sharpens even his chisel emboldened to ally " rhyme " with the " rea as sculptor. The same inherited poetic son" of jurisprudence. temperament attends the palette and pencil Young Story needed such possession of of Julian Story, the grandson of Joseph the poetic temperament in order to antidote Story. But even this love of art in the the dryness of his studies. In his novitiate descendant is inherited from the grand- there were only six volumes of American law sire who in college gave much attention to reports, and very crude at that, and for drawing and water-coloring. The son's poet English reports he had only the year-books, ry, however, bears higher marks of inspira Rolle, Siderfin and Coke. Besides, like his tion than does that of the father, whose poem contemporaries, John Marshall, Alexander on solitude was evidently modeled on Mark Hamilton, Emmet, Kent and Pinkney, Akenside's " Pleasures of the Imagination," Story's text-books, beyond Blackstone, were which was the notable poem of Story's boy those dry bits of fossils, Coke on Lyttleton and Fearne on Contingent Remainders. Now hood. These extracted lines give example of the adays, such is the wealth of text-books for poetic ability of Joseph Story when singing the law student that he is in danger of being the charms of solitude, which Robinson Cru mentally wrecked on the maxim, dulce est soe, through the poet Cowper, had con desipcre in loco, with temptations toward temned : — superficiality. Joseph Story's mother was the daughter "Ask lovely Maintenon when Fortune smiled of an eminent Boston lawyer named William To deck with regal charms its fortunate child : Why 'mid St. Cyr's lone walls she loved to dwell Wetmore (from whom the sculptor son And pace with musing steps the vestals' cell, takes his patronymic), and perhaps some Her conscious lips the motive could declare, milk of Themis through her may have Beneath the purple lurked the fiend of Care." suckled her son Joseph and aided to make When Rutherford B. Hayes, George Hoad- him the introactive jurisprudent that he ley and I were classmates at Harvard Law really became. His learning seemed ever School, in 1844, we found chained to a shelf, more than of mere bookish origin. While by Librarian Sibley, in the great college yet a young lawyer he turned from reading library, a small, thin volume bound in dark the few treatises at his command towards