University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VII.

HIS CHARACTER.

The most difficult part remains to be performed, a description of Mr. Randolph's
character. This has been in a partial manner developed, as we have
proceeded by degrees to unfold his political and private life, so that the reader
may already form a tolerable estimate of his pretensions in the twofold relation
in which he has been presented. "Take him all in all, he was a man whose
like we may never see again." He was "sui generis," and as such, it is next
to impossible for the biographer to classify or fix his proper rank in the scale of
human destiny. It is difficult to find a parallel (the usual recourse of Plutarch
and his successors), to draw a comparison between him and any known personage
in ancient or modern times, as a more familiar and invariable standard from
which to infer their respective merits, and thus form a correct and impartial
decision. From what is known and admitted, by juxtaposition or contrast, we
might be enabled by induction, to learn what was before unknown. He was
elevated so high above his cotemporaries by the greatness and originality of his
genius, like a "winged Mercury newly alighted on a heaven-kissing hill," as

well as from his strong aristocratic prejudices, his pride and selfish qualities,
that we are not permitted to approach near enough to catch the delicate lineaments
of his physiognomy.

As an orator, he was more splendid than solid; as a politician, he wanted the
profound views of a great statesman, and a larger stock of patience, gentleness,
and pliability, to lead and guide a party successfully in its struggle for power,
while he was too intolerant and indocile to be led by one, or to go through the
drillings and discipline required as a regular in the ranks. He was incapable of
the confinement, the application, and the drudgery of office. His genius, to use
one of his favorite figures (which is not original, but borrowed from Swift), might
be compared to a fine-edged knife, used for the common purpose of severing
paper, that is apt to slip or turn aside from the right line, and endanger the
hand of the operator, while a man of more moderate abilities, but of business
habits, who might be likened to an ivory folder, will go through the task
smoothly and steadily, though of a duller edge or more homely material. He
wanted consistency of political conduct, as well as a uniform and acknowledged
code of principles, and no party could, during the short period of his fortuitous
junction, calculate upon any two successive votes, when the emergency arose
that required them. He was possessed of a fine taste for literature, a general
reader, a "ripe scholar," particularly in the department of Belles Lettres; by
which acquirements he was well supplied with apt illustrations to embellish
and enrich his oratory. He levied his contributions from the wide dominions of
ancient and modern literature, with the undisputed authority of a conqueror,
which he stored away in his capacious memory, as an inexhaustible magazine,
to distribute with judicious discrimination upon every subject that arose in
debate. Although in the course of his long political career of more than thirty
years, he spoke volumes, and some of his speeches towards the close of it
were rather verbose and irrelevant, yet he never failed during some part of
them, to arouse and astonish his audience by some classical allusions, happy
similes, "some thoughts that breathed and words that burned," some beautiful
and striking metaphor, and most mellifluous and harmonious periods. Even
now, in reading those speeches (although so much is lost in their delivery),
while we may have to penetrate through a heap of chaff (if anything of his may
be so abused in terms), in reaching the kernel or grain, we are abundantly rewarded
in the richness if not in the abundance of the product. He was listened
to with undivided attention; and although the mind might not be chained and
carried captive in the triumphant march of a gigantic intellect, by the depth of
research and the force of reasoning, yet was it fascinated, won, and unresistingly
carried along, as by a spell, by the ease, the grace, the fluency, and the pleasing
emphatic delivery of the speaker. His sallies of wit, his biting sarcasm, his
happy retorts and home-thrusts, his satiric turn or his playful humor, rendered
him a more agreeable and popular speaker than others who were more severe
and elaborate. If ridicule be the test of truth, he had a most effectual way of
drawing her into the light of all the orators of his day; he possessed the rare
art of trying the measures and the opinions of the prominent men to whom it

was his destiny to be regularly opposed, by that touchstone; and by it to hold
them up to the derision or censure of the people. With this powerful lever, he
could shake if not move from its foundations any administration. That it contributed
in no small degree to subvert that of the second Adams, no man can
doubt who witnessed his repeated and dexterous attacks, and observed the effects
of his peculiar mode of warfare. The public were but gratified spectators of
these exhibitions of this successful combatant upon the political arena, while
the Senate chamber was become a national amphitheatre from which to enjoy
them, from that weakness, not to call it depravity of human nature, that derives
an innate pleasure at the sight of suffering or misfortune in others, while itself
remains secure from harm or danger. He delighted in opposition, it was his
element, his pabulum of political existence. He could not swim with the current,
but preferred to buffet and to breast it manfully and unyieldingly. "The
elements were so mixed in him," that it is difficult for any one to hold him up
to the world and "say this was a man, and challenge its confirmation." He
was not much respected as a politician, nor beloved as a man. His friends
feared him too much to love him, for although these two passions may
be blended in the same breast as regards an infinite being, it is a most difficult
task to unite them as an offering on the altar of private friendship.

The tenure of his friendship's assurance was too frail to render it sincere or
ardent. The many sudden transitions on his part, from avowed friendship to
its opposite, upon trivial and unsatisfactory grounds, rendered the enlistment of
new recruits in his ranks too discouraging to keep them supplied, and thus he
was left in the sad predicament of dying almost friendless. He appeared to be
too far removed beyond the common sphere of human attraction (while he revolved
in a most eccentric one), to receive the genial warmth of friendship, and
too frigid and repulsive to communicate it in turn. Yet, in listening to his conversation,
or in perusing his letters, you find he employs all the terms and expressions
consecrated to the service of that holy passion. To his young relatives,
some of whom he had educated, he breathed, at times, the warmest professions
of affection; and, for short periods, during the innocence and unsuspecting
guilelessness of their boyhood, they received more substantial proofs of it.
He left them nothing out of his immense fortune, but preferred to dispose of it
capriciously to others, or to the supererogatory foundation of a college. We may
be asked, were there no virtues, no redeeming qualities in the character of Mr.
Randolph, as a counterbalance to this long array of antagonist ones? It were
hardly credible that there were not. We are forced to admit some of a negative
kind. His charity, which, from his means and his leading a life of single blessedness,
he could have well and abundantly dispensed, went beyond the proverb,
by not only beginning at home, but ending there. His appetite for money, as
in all similar cases, "increased with the food it fed on," till it grew insatiable.
How else can we account for his acceptance of the Russian mission, with the
mental and physical disqualifications under which he labored, and in defiance of
his open and solemn declarations? How else account for the sale of his slaves,
by the disposition of his last will of 1832, after having previously left them

free? What, then, are his redeeming virtues, to stand out in bold relief from
this dark ground, to deserve our applause or gratitude? He possessed courage
in a high degree. He had a nice sense of honor—possessed sterling integrity
and honesty in all his dealings—was incorruptible in integrity, and perfectly
chaste and pure in his morals. To these we will add his patriotism (though
rather local or limited to the bounds of his own State), and the extraordinary
gifts with which nature had endowed him; and, after making every allowance
for his bodily infirmities, in defence of some of his failings, we leave him to
the gentle reader to pass his own sentence of adjudication upon him, whether
of censure or approbation, after duly weighing the testimony in the scale of
even-handed justice.

CONCLUSION.

It may be thought a breach of the unities, and a violation of order, again to
introduce Mr. Randolph, or, in a measure, to cause his resurrection from the
dead, after the solemn formalities of his death and burial. Had I confined myself
to the delineation of his character, it would have immediately followed his death,
as a legitimate and usual conclusion. If we consider him as he has been represented
in his later years, since he abandoned the lead of the Republican party
as early as the administration of Jefferson, and joined in opposition to every
successive one (to which length of time seemed only to add an accumulation of
force and impulse), as a splendid ruin of what he might have been, a benefactor
of his race, we might in some measure plead a justification of what we
have added, by assimilating it to a melancholy view, in detail, of the columns
and pillars and other fragments of this mighty ruin as they arose before us.

We may also defend our course by considering for a moment the nature of
the subject on which we treat. For who can expect to be regular and consistent,
and conformable to the strict rules and canons of biographical criticism, in
giving the sketch of one whose whole life has been one course of irregularity,
consistent only in inconsistency, and a violation of every principle of moral
and political harmony? To be candid, however, I feel that I must, at last, cast
myself upon the indulgence of the reader, while I confess the simple truth.
After I had brought to an end the private life (and, as I thought, my labors) of
the subject of my memoir, in the course of my long and wearisome researches
through a mass of old documents and piles of public journals, I discovered
new materials and further particulars tending to develope the features of the
subject who sat before me, which were too valuable to throw away, and which
I found (perhaps either in my indolence or want of ingenuity) difficult to dovetail
in, or unite with the structure, without going to the trouble and delay of
taking it to pieces and reconstructing it. I thought it better to follow the example
of a man with a small family, who constructs a house adapted to the
accommodation of the existing members. Finding his family afterwards increasing
upon his hands, and requiring more room, he prefers to add a wing to

demolishing the old, and erecting a new edifice. I have no doubt the reader
will bear me out in the remark, that any facts, anecdotes, or circumstances relating
to John Randolph, are interesting and appropriate wheresoever placed,
like a profusion of diamonds in a royal diadem, whose order of arrangement
is lost in their brilliancy; or like the desperate, the happy hit of Apelles, who,
after many vain efforts to finish his picture of a mastiff by drawing the foam on
his mouth, in despair threw his sponge at it, and by accident crowned his work
with success. It may be properly expected that I would not conclude this
sketch without deciding the important question of Mr. Randolph's sanity. In
answer to that point, I must declare that I acknowledge myself incompetent to
judge. I will even admit that, in the worst periods of mental aberration, he
had ten times more sense than ever I had, which may perhaps only leave the
question where we found it. On the main point, that on which the happiness
of our whole lives in this world depends, the promotion of his self-interests
and his pecuniary independence, if perfect success is the test of sanity, he must
stand acquitted on that charge. The whole subject, however, has been referred
to a higher tribunal than any that my frail judgment could afford, the High
Court of Appeals of Virginia, on the question of the validity of his wills.
Their decision, in which we must acquiesce, will for ever settle that point, both
as regards the fact of that "infirmity of great minds," as of the period of its
occurrence.