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The Green Bag
artist, the implements of art are at hand, the theme is a. mighty one, but the genius of the artist is wanting. Turning the leaves of the volume of his life, where is the chapter or para
graph that his family or friends would wish efiaced—-where are the acts public or private in his diversified career that
we would sweep into oblivion?
There
are none—nothing to erase, nothing to revise, no step to retrace, nothing that were his life to live again we would not wish to see repeated.
He is gone and his loss will not be supplied;
we shall not look upon his
like again; his example to lead, to counsel, to revive the drooping spirit, to strengthen the weary and to sustain the step that falters will still be with us-but not his magnetic presence, not the voice to the expressions of which our unconstrained homage yielded glad obedience. As a judge, in the books he leaves indestructible memorials of his learning and his intellectual power-these will live co-existent with the matchless institutions bequeathed us by the fathers of which he was the sturdiest
champion.
I
To Lord Coke By HARRY R. BLYTHE E prate of greatness in our age, Vaunting our peerless legal sage As if another king could reign
In thy well-won domain. All, all is treason,—we are clowns
Who think to wear a monarch’s crowns, Yet vassals are we, none the less,
Forgive our littleness.
The times may change, the king lives on; So shalt thou live when we are gone,
Robed in the matchless purple gown Of thy undimmed renown.
