His rhymes are
without any especial character, neither much better nor much worse than
most college verses, and they have no intrinsic value beyond showing that
their author, whatever else he might be, was no poet. But in his own field
something of this time, having a real importance, has come down to us. The
fame of his youthful eloquence, so far beyond anything ever known in the
college, was noised abroad, and in the year 1800 the citizens of Hanover,
the college town, asked him to deliver the Fourth of July oration. In this
production, which was thought of sufficient merit to deserve printing, Mr.
Webster sketched rapidly and exultingly the course of the Revolution, threw
in a little Federal politics, and eulogized the happy system of the new
Constitution. Of this and his other early orations he always spoke with a
good deal of contempt, as examples of bad taste, which he wished to have
buried and forgotten. Accordingly his wholesale admirers and supporters who
have done most of the writing about him, and who always sneezed when Mr.
Webster took snuff, have echoed his opinions about these youthful
productions, and beyond allowing to them the value which everything
Websterian has for the ardent worshipper, have been disposed to hurry them
over as of no moment.
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