1841-1843.]     JOURNAL   OF   READINGS   AND  ACTIONS.  71

built  upon  those  few  and  awful  verses,  Paradise  Regained.  I  recof^nize
and  profoundly  venerate  the  vast  poetical  luminary  '  in  this  more  rrieas-
ing  light,  shadowy.'  Epic  sublimity  the  subject  excludes ;  the  anxious
and  changeful  interests  of  the  drama  are  not  there  ;  it  su^o-ests  an  occa-
sional recollection  of  the  Book  of  Job,  but  how  far  short  of  its  pathos,
its  agencies,  its  voices  of  human  sorrow  and  doubt  and  curiosity ;
and  its  occasional  unapproachable  grandeur ;  yet  it  is  of  the  most  sus-
tained elegance  of  expression ;  it  is  strewn  and  burning  with  the  pearl
and  gold  of  the  richest  and  loftiest  and  best-instructed  of  human  imagina-
tions; it  is  a  mine  —  a  magazine,  '  horrent,'  blazing  with  all  weapons  of
the  most  exquisite  rhetoric ;  with  all  the  celestial  panoply  of  truth,  reason,
wisdom,  duty."


J2  MEMOIR  OF  RUFUS  CHOATE.  [Chap.  IV.
CHAPTER    IV.
1843-1844.
Address  before  the  New  England  Society  of  New  York  —  Letter  to  Professor
Bush  —  Letters  to  Charles  Sumner  —  Letter  to  his  Daughters  —  Speech  on
Oregon  —  First  Speech  on  the  Tariff — Second  Speech  in  Reply  to  Mr.
M'Duffee  —  Journal.
The  twenty-eighth  Congress  met  on  the  4th  of  December,
1843,  and  Mr.  Choate  removed  to  Washhigton  for  the  winter.
