634
THE GREEN BAG
that swayed him, religion, the double impulse of duty and devotion, was the strongest. First, and before all else, he rendered to God obedience and affection. His work as phil anthropist, as lawyer, as magistrate, was colored and dominated by religious feeling. At the bar and on the bench he was the priest engaged in expounding or in adminis tering law. To him law and gospel were in separable; the new legal testament was a necessary supplement to the old. He won eminent distinction in both fields of professional service, first in that of advo cate and next in that of judge. To por tray him as an advocate, I borrow from the vivid delineation which Judge Harris, his friend and associate, has left us in the thirtysixth volume of the Georgia Reports. "In early manhood he was distinguished by manly beauty. The contour of the face was highly intellectual, the forehead high, broad and fully exposed. He had dark gray eyes, restless and constantly varying in ex pression, and a quivering lip. A physiogno mist would have been delighted to meet with a subject, in whom the ideal of the personnel of the orator would be so nearly realized. His voice was clear and melodious—a rich baritone—obedient to his will and modula ted with consummate art, so that it con tinued to charm by its cadence so long as he spoke, and at no time exhibited strain or in equality. This control over it was doubtless owing very much to the distinctness of his articulation of each syllable of a word, and marked emphasis. He used little gesture, but it was graceful and expressive; his atti tude was adapted with care to the theme and occasion. Add to these personal, and I might with propriety call them external, qualifications, his large encyclopedic knowl edge, gathered from libraries of law and literature, and we can begin to make some estimate of the resources with which his oratory was supplied. Indeed, it may be said without exaggeration, that learning waited on him as a handmaid, presenting at all times for his choice and use all that an
tiquity had not lost—all that a prolific press has disseminated. With a vivid imagina tion quick to body forth the creations of the mind, his speeches at the bar abounded in imagery; but it was not sought for or culled from a commonplace book to dazzle or adorn. It sprung up spontaneously from the exuberance of a mind heated with thought; his tropes were the corruscations of the glowing axle in rapid motion, shedding a brilliant light over the pathway of reason. . . . His imagery was drawn from the remembered bright and golden thoughts of Shakespeare and Milton, from the sacred poetry of Job and David, the wisdom of Solomon, and of the son of Sirach, and from the prophetic inspirations of Ezekiel and Isaiah—in a word, from the whole Bible. Most aptly were his illustrations culled from such a garner, and woven into the fabric of his speeches. It required a person of his precise mental constitution, of unaffected and humble piety and cultivated taste, to employ this high poetic thought and wisdom without irreverence; and this was done with such marvelous skill that even hypercriticism did not venture to condemn." As a judge, he is the seer of the Georgia bench. He discovered, organized, and de veloped those gems of our law which have inherent vitality, and which require no artificial aid to enable them to live. He de voted himself to the labor of stripping off shucks or shell or whatever might conceal the core of natural justice which he was sure lies in the true law when not cankered by technicality or by harmful legislation. In this work he was the leader and conductor, though it is not to be denied that he was greatly aided by his able but more conserv ative associates. One or both of them stood by him in nearly every instance. He delivered but one dissenting opinion in the first twenty volumes of the reports, and none at all in the first nineteen volumes. From the start, the court as a whole was liberal and progressive. Judge Lumpkin's judicial career was the
