E302 .6 .R2R9 V- A ■0 V o ^^4 O, ■1 °o ,«^' **. ^.^ X'"" -^b v^ ; ,-.0 ^^ "'■*: /-> w ' ^-^, ' .0 >jr?7^ -'%. ^1-^ •■*-, ■/■ JOHN RANDOLPH. fHlirioiiir amir mt aiiowt* The Fiend is long, and lean, and lank, And moves upon a spindle-shank. Old Song BY JULIUS. V ^_, \ \^' THIRD EDITION, f' WASHINGTON .* PRINTED RV PETER FORCE, CORNER OF ELEVENTH STREET ANE PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE. 1829. [The demand for this Sketch having continued after all the copies of the second edition were sold, has induced the publish- er to issue a third edition.] October, 1829. ERRATA. Wt Page 11, line 16, "argumentative/" '^ Page 16, line 16, " an,^* Page 17, line 23, " ^cMrrility." Mv. Mnntfolpfi^ ^ttoatr anXf at ?^onie* The Fiend is long, and lean, and lank. And aioves upon a spindle shank. Oid Song. On his first arrival in London, all eyes were struck with his figure in the streets. The human form from all parts of the globe was to be seen there, but nothing like his. It seemed to belong to a class by itself; long, lean, and loose jointed — a withered face, a shrunken body, and the whole expression peculiar and startling. Many who pass- ed him turned round to take another look. How mysterious exclaimed one, how outlandish anoth- er — a term to which the English are addicted. His complexion was death-like. Sometimes he moved about on foot, and sometimes rode a pony. When saluting people, his voice would mount up to a high, shrill, key, as if he were hallooing. The particulars of his dress were obscured by a long cloak, which, in one respect, claimed resem- blance to the doublet of Gaffer Gray — it was not very new. As it came tight about him, or waved 4 in the wind, many a side-long glance did it get from the passing brokers of Monmouth street.* It was apparent that the wearer had determined, with characteristic independence, on reaching the British Metropolis, to pay no regard to Polonius's advice to Laertes. I must be pardoned these allusions to his per- son and habiliments. It is easy to anticipate the criticism they might draw down ; but in that code, with the general rule comes also the exception. My account must have some touches of external individuality. It is required by the unity and jus- tice of my plan. " Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods, not hew him as a carcase for the hounds," was, I know, said by the poet of nature. He spoke of one who was accomplished, magnan- imous, noble-minded ; of one, who, if he had the I towering crime of ambition, had graces that could captivate, virtues that could attach. But what is to be done with the compound of deformity I am to deal with ? — this " sketch and outline of a man," this haggard anatomy. The great diffi- culty will consist in self-restraint, and this I intend to practise. • An itinerary body known in the London cries by their beards, and the bags they carry. A fatality of circumstances threw me into con- tact with him. How to behave was the question. After weighing all things, I resolved to make the best of him. It was yet a problem what effect the excitements of a new hemisphere might have upon him. I bethought me that I would consider him in the light of a freakish friend, newly ar- rived ; a sort of wandering Whimsiculo. I hid from myself most of the phases of his character, whilst, taking a survey of him all over, I tasked imagination to get at others that might the better bear, under exceptions reserved, to be half present- ed to view. It was a case to have perplexed a casuist. The strife was difficult, the dilemma em- barrassing, the whole enterprise surrounded wiih stumbling blocks. His grotesque aspect, the ob- ject of popular stare and scientific speculation ; his everlasting attempts at effect, whether in conduct or conversation ; his harrangues, given out in ac- cents so novel, and with no poor rivalry of the fame and fashion of Anacharsis Cloots, or Sir Walter Scott's Wamba ; his diverting lapses from the observances of the world ; his profound obei- sance to rank, which, though it overflowed in tem- porary good nature at that epoch of his life and travels, kept showing itself in ways exquisitively 6 ludicrous — all this, and more, how can I ever for- get it ! Good nature itself was a garb that fitted him so awkwardly, that his very desire to wear it pro hac vice could not fail to predispose the looker on to emotions of risibility. It was like attempting to metamorphose Old Rapid in the play, into a man of fashion. In one sense he acquired celebrity. And here, to award him proper justice, I must be more cir- cumstantial than on a former occasion. In a cer- tain part of the west end o{ the town, there ex- isted a well known club.* The kindness of its members had extended to strangers the privilege of resorting to it. Some strangers were disposed to make a large use of the privilege, but I will not be particular. It is enough for my narrative to say, that Mr. Randolph obtained permission to frequent this club. A boon it was of no slight value to him, for here an audience, for the most part, was ready assembled. Here was his daily rendezvous, here the chosen theatre of his displays. His auditors were not such as might be collected at every-day exhibitions. They were of different mould, and especially did they minister to his complacency by tokens of outward civility. Our *'« The Travellers." 1 orator of the human race, allured by supposed admiration of his parts, would go on with his discourses. They are graven upon the everduring tablets of the club. How shall I report them ? Spirit of Swift aid me ! His quotations from Latin whilst the Oxonians were by ; quantum mutatus ab illo Hectare, which was but the herald of what was to follow, for out came, in apposite and beautiful connexion, quantum mutata ab ilia Virginia! The latter was uttered slowly and sagely ; also with a pious and filial sigh, for he grew pensive when picturing the changes to which fate had doomed the " Old Dominion," being prone to dwell upon the antiquity of the colony in the heart of the mother country. His reminiscen- ces still more recherche from the French, nous verrons, nous verrons, Je n^oublierai jamais, Je ri'oublierai jamais, with sayings and mottoes from other tongues and books, from the Whole Duty of Man, from Tom Jones, Doctor Faustus, Shake- speare, Rochester, the Bible, Racine, Pope, San- cho, Vicar of Wakefield, Virgil, Caleb Quotem, Patrick Henry, Juvenal, Jack Robinson, every body ; all this, with various additional infusions of classical, topographical, and genealogical eru- dition, the genealogy comprehending man and 8 beast, king, peer, and race horse — presented a scene at which Momus himself would have stood at gaze. It received its last finish from the enfold- ed drapery of the old green tunick, through which peeped the sunken head of the orator, as he sat in bent-up posture, his finger pointing the while. — Never had Pall Mall witnessed any thing like it. Looks were exchanged that bespoke the universal surprise. Some left the occupations they were lounging over, to get nearer to him. Some, un- moved from their seats of damask, would yet turn up their significant glances from the page before them. A young Etonian was heard to whisper, let's catch him with ibant ponere juxta. English reserve could not stand it. Such auditors always suppress intemperate jollity; but a guarded, con- tagious, merriment went round. The most un- bending gave way ; the more arch aimed, by their blandishments, at decoying him into repetitions. It was a scene sui generis, novel even for London. The sillikiccabee feast for variety, and the cauldron of the wierd sisters for congruity, were its only types. Repeated it was, with variations — " Hoby's boots for ever so help him Heaven, and Manton's guns — his rascally overseer who had cheated him — the round heads, how he hated them — the cavaliers, 9 how he loved them — Virginia, old Virginia, true to Charles — the vermin in his own country that fattened on the public crib, he gave it to them, that he did and would — Bladensburg, Yazoo, the Yankees, the Negroes, Mason and Dickson's line, the man in the moon" — every thing danced in the astounding gallimaufry. Such a clatter of dis- cordant ideas, such a hurly burly of the brain, had been heard in the edifice that stood in Moor- lields, but never elsewhere in England. It must not be forgotten, that he filled up his intervals with the most reverential indications of his devo- tion to the rank and title that surrounded him. Sometimes they became almost Koo too ^' All things however, as all men, are destined to come to an end. In London no divertisement can have more than its appointed run. As the novelty of this faded, its attractiveness began to fade too. The auditors were plainly seen to flag. They grevi^ sky, a feeling not diminished in them, from its absence in him. He has said on the floor of an august assembly in his own country, as part of his argument I believe on an internal improve- ment question, that he had the entree of some of * The nine prostrations. See the hook of Impcihil Coemonics of ilie Chinese, and Lord Amherst's embassy. B 10 their domicils afterwards. If he had, it was in the capacity in which Wamba found himself seated on the Dais of Cedric, the better to carry off the entertainment for the lady Rowena and Sir Knight Templar. What a charlatan am I describing. I am ready to throw away the pen. But no — he has earned retribution at my hands. I will go on. I seem to persuade myself that the reader also says, do not stop. You have in him materials, the most in- viting and authentic, for laughter and for scorn. He is the double mark of jocularity and detesta- tion. Proceed : you owe it to the public amuse- ment, what is of higher aim — to the cause of mo- ral and social order, which he has so long invaded, to aid in making him better known ; to toss him in sport and analyze him in rigor. Spare him not. It is fit, it is even a duty, that some citizen should offer himself as lictor, when the state is beset by so enormous a transgressor. The fasces of your office will be holy ; bind him fast and do not let go the rods. The applause of the nation will wait upon your inflictions; for who, from the north to the south, from the forests to the ocean, but has been outraged by him ? who has escaped his viperous inroads, what individual, what fam- 11 ilj — who among the quick or the dead ? I will then to my task. — I shall be a benefactor to in- terests of the body social as well as body politic, upon which he brutally tramples. It is a task which I should perform with more of self-appro- bation, were not my materials as loathsome as they are abundant. One recommendation I will claim for them. They shall have no connexion with the politics of the day, it being my design to delineate him upon principles of abstract right and wrong. To those who may possibly think, that in what has preceded, the coloring has been free, I reply, that, even if it be, I do nothing more than copy in this respect the example of the best mas- ters — provided that the likeness be preserved. But 1 promise, in what is to follow, to be aug- mentative and exact, challenging assent to what I say, only according to its intrinsic application and force. I will strive to discriminate and sum up his character after the manner of Sallust or of Hume ; and although, in execution, I must needs fall immeasurably behind such illustrious models, I mean at least to aim at being the historian rather than the painter. With an eye steadfast to the original before me, I proceed to the duty I have assigned to my self. 12 When he got to London he was seized with an ambition, which took directions as bold, and as slj, as the passion in him was alternately keen and fidgetty, to throw himself into distinguished cir- cles. His inbred and long indulged selfishness, in conjunction with the irascible cast of his feelings and foulness of his tongue, had rooted into his entire corporeal and intellectual existence, invinci- ble barriers to the success of this ambition. To the sensibilities, to the restraints, bodily and of mind — to the multiplied obligations and habitudes, to all the anxious and assiduous cultivation, that go to make up the gentleman, he was a stranger. His irregular and undisciplined temper, was the parent of rudeness in him, and his vanity hurried him into offences against good sense and decorum. The bland spirit and reciprocal forbearance of polished intercourse, seemed to be altogether in- comprehensible to his perceptions. It is certain that they were remote from his practice. True dignity frowned him from her presence. Her sanctuary was profaned at his fantastic approach. True urbanity could never impart its charm to the actions of one whose physical indiosyncrasy prevented his being at peace with himself, and the perverseness of whose moral nature placed 13 him at war vvitli others. Something there was in liis countenance, which bespoke the bitter con- sciousness he had of his doom upon earth ; of the secret torments under which he writhed, of the matchless delights from which he was excluded. The fountahi of man's highest transports and ho- liest affections, was, alas, unknown to him. O heavy malediction, O ! sufficient to have awakened commisseration for his lot, were it not averted by the sense of his own transgressions. To all ten- derness towards the feelings of others, he was con- stitutionally dead. The transient courtesy that he was enforced to counterfeit, could not mask from careful observation, the brooding devil that lurked within. His bald flattery, laid at the feet of birth and station, the proof of which propensity in him was, on a subsequent occasion, echoed from the mobs of Liverpool to our shores, confirmed still more the most unfavorable suspicions of him. Hie niger est ; hune tu Romane caveto. Possess- ing no attribute of benignity to conciliate, or of grace to win ; a monopolist or a mute when con- versation went its rounds ; by turns a misanthrope and a merry-Andrew ; afflicted by envy of his race, destitute of all endearing sympathies, desti- tute of the desire to please and unwillingness to 14 oftpiid, that lie at the foundation of good breeding every where, — \a hat place was there for him in a society whose maxims had no recipient in any quality of his own nature, or any part of his own conduct ? for one whose captious and snarling humor had ever supplied his titles to social eclat : whose refinements were in his malice, not in his manners. I recall the word. I revoke my error. Incapable of refinement in any thing, his malice was headlong, promiscuous and savage-like. He was thus, by the primary laws of his exis- tence, and the distinctive peculiarities of his ca- reer, unfitted for the circles that he sought. Those were circles that overlooked not the slightest de- viations in their votaries, much less trespasses so egregious and constant as his. Upon the order and beauty of private life, upon its harmonious scenes and enjoyments, he broke in as a spoiler, and was shunned as an intruder. Its tranquil at- mosphere, its subdued and guarded tones and sen- timents, its easy, respectful, emulous politeness, its air of mutual reliance and esteem — all took as the sign of a coming blight the entrance of one whose fiist object and inclination were, to criti- cise and to wound ; who looked only in sneers, and spoke only in sarcasms. It was not even 15 " the delicac}' of sneer," which Mr. Snake eulo- gises in the School for Scandal— no, it was over- charged and spiteful, for the external symbols of the accomplished cjnic, were more than he could reach. Nor were his sarcasms like the gilded weapons of civilized hostility, sparkling as they pierce : — they were the mere poisoned darts of the wily barbarian. The " stately homes" of England, know when to throw open their gorgeous portals ; but their hospitality, as kind as it is mag- nificent, above all their confidence — slowly given at all times — befitted not such a guest. His fai- lure to gain the privileged recesses of a system upon the confines of which he had mounted for u moment by storm, produced an inward exasper- ation, the expression of which it is the wary office of his pride to repress. It suited his cunning bet- ter to speak of his privilege of entree to these dom- icils, thus allowing his vanity to blazen his ig- norance, for he knows not the meaning of the term as he has here used it. He used it in refer- ence to an ancient mansion in Picadilly,* the no- ble proprietor of which is not more remarkable for the splendour of his rank and fortune, than for the train of mild and engaging virtues that adorn his " Devonshire House. 16 private, as his constitutional principles have illus- trated his public life ; and who could no more amalgamate with this cadaverous personage of motley talk and gestures, this Mr. Squeakery, this foe to all that is amiable and benign in life, than he could with a gibbering ghost of the charnel house, or the Red Rover of the ocean. The lat- ter was not a more practised freebooter upon pro- perty and life, than the Rover I am portraying is upon reputation. Driven back from tlie first project of his trans- Atlantic ambition, that of obtruding himself upon high society, what remained to be said of him ? How was he to be defended in a community where he was regarded without fear, and judged by na enlightened scrutiny ? To what part of his whole being was his abashed compatriot and apol- ogist to turn ? Coming to the virtues of the heart, that elevate and purify the human character, it was conceded, as fundamental to all discussion about him, that he was an outcast of them. Vi- tality itself, so often appearing to sink in his im- perfect frame, seemed chiefly to be sustained by his vindictiveness and rancour. These kindled in him a feeling, the reanimating impulse of which enabled him to struggle against dissolution, a state 17 fraught with increased horror to his contempla- tion — as withdrawing him from his work of de- traction and revenge. His bad passions, which were his motives for living, became in this manner the means of strengthening his hold upon life, by their stimulating efficacy upon the morbid mass within him. His passports to fame were hence clearly to be made out, if at all, on other grounds than those of the Virtues. What were they ? On looking at his intellect, it was obvious that it had been scathed by the same stroke that blasted his heart and his body. There was nothing direct in his mind, nothing natural, nothing simple ; nothing that admitted the presence or the possibil- ity of real greatness- All was suspicious, insidi- ous, accusatory; all afifecteii plainness and sys- tematic juggling ; pretended uniformity and in- cessant contradiction. No results therefore came from his mind, but such as were missba[)en or malignant. It had no power of connected thought or action, and, impervious to all benevolent or kindly or philanthropic excitements, could be rous- ed only by such as exploded in testiness and sur- rility. It was worked upon both by presumption and impatience, the former debarring it from the conception, the latter from the achievement of ex- 18 celleiice, in any thing. He once threw from his hands a disquisition of Mr. Madison's upon public law, declaring it too vapid to be read — his self- inflation hiding from him his own inability to com prehend either, its profound knowledge or its ele- vated patriotism. His ostentatious claim to a cer- tain uncompromising honesty and stiffness of prin- ciple, which, like a braggart, he was fond of throwing out, was but the more incongruous from the incapacity of his mind to form any system of principles whatever. Those who might even deny this, could not help admitting, that all the prin- ciples which he had, laid at the mercy of his ani- mosities, and were put on and put off accordingly. The friend and the foe of the three illustrious Pre- sidents from Virginia ; the public eulogist one day of the productions of a venerable native artist, the next their public reviler ; at one season of his life, the plam democrat, at another, affecting the hauteur of aristocracy, without its dignity ; in youth bedecked in homespun ; in age playing the ci-devant young man, with a motley wardrobe of bye-gone patterns from abroad, ludicrously limp- ing after, without being able to follow, the fashions of a Regent street dandy — such is this aboriginal Pantaloon, every thing by turns and nothing long= 19 devoted only to himself; uniform in nothinjr but the tricks of a Zany, and his envious malignity against the human race, to which he but imper- fectly belongs. It followed by irresistible deduction, that a mind so radically vicious and inconsistent in its texture, was as devoid of elegance, as it was of depth and strength. Its general bias, all its predilections were faulty and corrupt. If not so from his egot- ism, which prevented him from acquiring full knowledge upon any subject, his gall stamped and discoloured them vAih these characteristics. There could be no delicacy of taste where there was no purity of feeling, and thus the sense of literary like that of moral beauty, was wholly perverted in him. True scholarship repelled his pretensions. Tried by chastened standards, they came under the sentence which his burlesque obtrusions of them provoked. It was made known by tlie Oxonians in significant jeers. Neither his Latlnity nor his English could pass. His syntax, nay his very orthoepy, was remarked to be as defective as his infringements of the canons of taste were per- petual, both in his selection of topics and manner of treating them. It was really hard to determine whether, in his furor lingua', nature or Priscian / 20 got most blows from him. Quoters of Latm like himself were common in England, but not in good company since the ridicule cast upon them by Fielding and Smollet. Oratory asked if her art in America had sunk to mere gabble. She grave- ly demanded, if it consisted of speeches eked out by a jumble of all things, with hard names applied to all persons. On examination it was perceived, that this was a succint explanation of his speech- es ; and that no other, to be given in the same compass, suited them so well. Genius advanced with her enquiry — genius with piercing eye, and robed in splendour. She held wreaths in her palm, and her ornaments had the solidity as well as the lustre of gold. Her presence awed whilst it daz- zled. The questions which she propounded were listened to with eager and deep attention. Being told that he had been thirty years in public life, she desired to be informed, what memorials he had raised up of himself in the American nation ; what laws he had introduced ; what measures he had carried forward ; what schemes of public ad- vantage he had recommended ; what works he had founded, useful or munificent; what act he had done, what idea he had originated, that was to attest to after times his wisdom, his intelligence, 21 or his patriotism ? If nothing of himself, had he been fellow-worker with others in rearing up any of those establishments of policy or legislation, which, in peace as in war, had enhanced the sober renown, or lighted up the glory of the Republic ? The inquiries were fruitless. They produced nothing. Opportunities the most ample had been lost upon him. Spacious as had been the field, and fertilizing the elements, for him there was no harvest. All, all, was sterility, as if under his barren star there could be no offspring. Judg- ment, who stood by with her balance, was aghast! She surrendered him up in amazement. The film was removed, and instead of the heav- enly body in whose glittering beams he had been affecting to shoot, nothing was seen — but a jack- lantern. And is this the person, the exclamation went round, who has ranked men of abilities among his admirers ? Is this the person, the out- pourings of whose spite have been dignified with the name of eloquence, whose audaciousness has been exalted into genius, whose very impudence has been confounded with brilliancy ? Is this the individual whose literary and personal buf- fooneries have been hailed with plaudits ? Im- possible ! there is too much good sense, too much 22 good taste, too much good feeling in the United States. The whole must have been irony, pure irony. Supposing him to be rescued from this con- clusion, it was with one accord declared, that the only way of accounting for any talents in him was by referring them to his depravity, which was ever driving him upon strains of thought and utterance, the first risings of which, though joyful to his bosom, other men would stifle. There are among mankind those who, wanting strength and swiftness to run ahead of their fellow men in the noble race of achievement and distinction, seek notoriety by running side-ways, in strides of moral and mental obliquity. To this class emphatically belonged, it was also declared, the individual in question. If, in sober belief, such a compound of Harlequinism and depravity did command any homage for talonts in the new world, the only remaining solution of the anomalous fact was to be found in his having, like any other bad actor for thirty years upon the stage, utterly spoiled the public taste. His claims to all genuine superiority had evi- dently fallen in quick succession to the ground. On the most deliberate estimate which right reason and critical justice could form of his qualities un- 25 (ler a strict but fair review of ihem all, the deci- sion passed against him as gentleman, scholar, orator, statesman, and man of genius. It became hopeless, on the book of his life being opened and scanned, to deck him in the honors of any one of those characters, any more than to make him out an amiable or good man. Amiable or good ! how immense his distance from these attributes ! ! In all probability, he would himself have scorned them, as disparaging to those opposite qualities of the heart of which alone he was ambitious. His title to the other characters recapitulated, was instantaneously overthrown as spurious. There was no local partiality, no recollection of his ad- ventitious fame, none — of the empty exaggera- tions and thoughtless praises by which it had been puffed out ; there was no ingenuity of fancy or force of logic could save him. It might be a shock to prejudices springing from such sources as these, and which time had made almost inveterate, suddenly and totally to give him up ; but there was no resisting the convictions which made it inevitable. Still the contest was not over. Al- though it was clear that there was no power of argument, power of knowledge, or power of wis- dom in him, candor required the admission, that 24 there was a character in which he had long flour- ished in his own country, and flourished in supre- macy : THE CHARACTER OF A CALUMNIATOR. This was the exclusive test to which his claims at last came. Nothing else was left upon which to build the least hope of reputation for his mental faculties. But in calumny, he was great. Here, thought I, he will bear the bell. I shall have the victory now. True, there will be something igno- ble in it ; but, nevertheless, it will be victory. There is nothing can match him in this line surely. John Randolph against the world. Here I will take post as on a rock. Tom Spring is not more the champion of England, or Grimaldi the hero of pantomine, than our Randolph is foremost in cutting and mauling a character to pieces He can do it in an aboriginal style with which you, in Europe, trammeled by your formalities and your fastidiousness, are unacquainted. All re- serves he scorns, all circumlocutions. Semper paratus, as he would say. He can drag into his speeches, a President or Secretary, aye all four of the Secretaries, and scalp them all, no matter what the debate, when your Sheridans, your Can- nings, your Broughams, would be looking at each other in mute wonder, never dreaming by what 26 hocus pocus he had contrived it. Nor is the ab- ruptness of his onset greater than the fury with which he can j!i;ash and mangle, when once at work. How pungent and lacerating his satire, his invective how formidable ! how consuming ! Who is there can stand before it ? And then that long finger — ah, how worse than any dagger as he points it at his foes, and, raging patriot, at the foes of his country. How it killed Beau Dawson, how it frightens others ! Talk of the supplosio pedis if you will ; or the percussio frontis ; neither of them ever came up to this in- dicatio digiti, this javelin of rhetoric — for what other name can future Longinuses and Quintiliians give it — which he darts out with an oratorical effect so chivalrous and deadly. Whilst I was indulging in this vein of antici- pated triumph, the Briton put a single question. He professed himself ignorant of any aboriginal style of oratory, but simply asked, whether, after all, we, in our country, supposed Mr. Randolph superior, in the line of abuse, to their Cobbett ! I was wholly unprepared for this question. It proved overwhelming. I shrunk from it without the power of rallying. It was plain, on a mo- 26 ment's reflection, that the resemblance would hold with extraordinary fidelity up to a certain point, but fall short afterwards. I saw, in despair, that, even in this line too, I was to be vanquished. Miserum mcmoratu ! Alike they were in their appetite of slander, universal and unappeasable ; alike in having each dedicated a life to the pursuit ; alike in having mutually ran-a-muck at all parties, all opinions, all men ; alike in their efforts to pull down every thing, and in being able to set up nothing; alike — in vulgarity. But here the re- semblance ended. In pursuing the subject I was constrained to admit, thali. Cobbet had the advan- tage. He dealt out blows of masculine force and vigor, reasoning whilst he denounced Randolph, impotent of reason, poured out sheer venom ; and, vile in his impotence, poured it out upon females as well as men. The one laid on his calumny with the downright passions of a man. The other foamed out his, with the rage of a Jezabel. I am bound to add, that I never heard of Cobbet's slandering women. It is understood, on the con- trary, that he is kind to the sex, and that the do- mestic feelings are sound in him. It is time for me to think of coming to a pause. 21 1 have more, much more, to say of this tran- scendent imposter, as inclination may prompt and leisure allow ; but not now. Of leisure it is pro- per to premise, that there is but little to me. This my attempt to present some analysis of his intellectual and moral enormities to the American people, would not else have been so long delayed. This side of the commission of flao;itious crimes that incur the public vengeance of tRe law, it is probable that a worse individual than John Ran- dolph is hardly to be found ; one who, in his life of more than fifty years, has done* less good of any kind, public or private, and who has devoted himself more unremittingly to giving pain to oth- ers ; who has committed more offences against those good feelings and good manners that are the cement of the social and moral world ; whose ca- reer has been more broadly marked by affectation, mummery and malevolence. In going on with my task of further laying bare the vices of his head and heart, by appropriate anecdotes, I will violate no confidence. Not that I have ever had any from him, a traitor by instinct to his friendships, and whose person I hold in unmixed abhorrence, but that I will have nothing to say of him in connec- 28 tion with private names or private mansions. Be such violations vv^ith him, as ruthless monster, he violates the mansions of the dead. I will track him, as I have been doing, in the clubs, coffee houses, and highways of England ; or elsewhere at my pleasure. Let me add, that to assail others, in print or otherwise, is no part of my vocation. I desire to seek in a different train of pursuits, my pastime^ and my duties. Yet, when holding up to merited odium as well as derision this most malignant of aggressors — and I have aimed at do- ing both by reflecting his true image to the na- tion — I shroud not myself in secrecy. From the public my name will be kept : not so from the ag- gressor, should he want it. It seems that his pe- culiar ravenousness cannot be gorged by victims in the legislative hall alone. At the last session of Congress, he determined to enlarge the sphere of his immolations. Prolific in the nice conceits of a calumniator, if prolific in nothing else, he hit upon an ingenious expedient. He turned author. He subsidized the pen as the ally of his tongue. Nothing too high for the flight of his ambition ; so he determines to go down to posterity both as writer and speaker ! ! Was the orator of Tus- 29 culum his inspiring model ? In a new ecstacy of malice, he betakes himself therefore to the com- position of libels in the retirement of his closet, ushering them into the world under the cunning form of NOTES to his speeches.* And so it is, that he embalms the after thoughts of his spleen ! So it is, that he serves up a dainty second course to his feast. The glutton cannot get enough in Congress, though forever munching. He munched in the Senate, until Virginia, shocked at his inde- cencies, drove him by a legislative vote from that body; hurled him, in her just and chastising anger, from a station that he polluted. It was a vote that will be identical in all time with his infamy, since it was instigated by the sense of his inde- cencies alone ; for he had made a show of de- fending in the Senate a cause that Virginia ap- proved. What a degradation ! What a lesson to those who prostitute, to passions so horrible, the functions of a legislator ! How impressive, to a mind of any feeling, how awful ! But how did he take it ? History has, perhaps, no parallel in- * In these memorable NOTES, with an improved edition of which he has threatened to witch the world, he diverts himself wiih the personal ap- pearance of his victims. This is good. It has given fair hold of his own. 30 stance of shamelessness. Instead of falling down in contrition before the offended dignity of his native State, or fljing to some hiding place for the remnant of his inglorious life, the Hideous Brazenface, incorrigible in his foul appetites, and with this brand of expulsion from the Senate fresh upon his forehead, reappeared in the House of Representatives — and resumed his munching. And there he sits, exulting in his abomination. There, contumacious in iniquity, he sits virtually baffling the solemn vote of a commonwealth ! There hr> is, reinstated upon his throne of slander, giving loose, as with renovated audacity, to the habits of his remorseless nature ! There, day after day, his ghastly form looking like a frightful skeleton, is he to be seen drawing fresh prey into his maw ! But there alone to munch and to devour, will no longer serve him ; no, his grand meal in the House over, like an amateur gormandizer, he must have his piquant relishes, his bloody titbits afterwards. To these he treats himself — in his notes — his CLASSIC NOTES. This is the desert with which he garnishes out the shambles of his human slaughter house. Defamation is his darling pas- sion, his eternal lust; in public, in solitude, in 31 youth, in age, before the assemblies of the nation and in the seclusions of his study, at home, abroad — in both hemispheres — upon the great deep itself — it is his mighty, his absorbing, his undecaying lust. Like hungry Death upon a pale horse, there is no satiating him. He rides. Jehu- like, with yawning jaws, crying — more ! more ! JULIUS. My, 1828. RB 9.3.^ I c .0^ ■^ A' ;.b=^. " v^ .-.tlZ ^^, " ,-^5^^ %^ Af ^ /■■■ ^ ^. ,v" .'J4:%''"^'<^ ^^ v' K .^' ^m//. o V \' V .^ w**' .\^ ... ^ " ^?^ ^ • < ^ * .V^ O. * o « - '^ 3^ ^O ^ ST. AUGUSTINE ^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS liiiiiiiiiiir 011 769 375 2