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MEN of genius often die early. Keats died at twenty-six, Shelly at
thirty, Byron at thirty-six, and Burns at thirty-seven. Henry Grady was
born May 24th, 1850, and hence was a little more than thirty-nine years
of age at his death.
In the opinion of many, no more brilliant man has lived since Byron
died. In the power of intense, beautiful and striking expression he has
had no equal among us. Had he turned his attention to poetry he would
have written something as beautiful as Childe Harold.
Take, for instance, a sentence or two, written eight or ten years ago,
in an article from New York to the _Constitution_, entitled “The
Atheistic Tide.” The whole article is exceptionally brilliant. I select
at random a paragraph or two:
“We have stripped all the earth of mystery and brought all its phenomena
under the square and compass, so that we might have expected science to
doubt the mystery of life itself, and to plant its theodolite for a
measurement of the Eternal, and pitch its crucible for an analysis of
the Soul. It was natural that the Greek should be led to the worship of
his physical Gods, for the earth itself was a mystery that he could not
divine, a vastness and a vagueness that he could not comprehend. But we
have fathomed its uttermost secret—felt its most hidden pulse, girdled
it with steel, harnessed and trapped it to our liking. What was mystery
is now demonstration—what was vague is now apparent. Science has
dispelled illusion after illusion, struck down error after error, made
plain all that was vague on earth and reduced every mystery to
demonstration. It is little wonder then that, at last, having reduced
all the illusions of matter to an equation, and anchored every theory to
a fixed formula, it should assail the mystery of life itself and warn
the world that science would yet furnish the key to the problem of the
soul. The obelisk, plucked from the heart of Egypt, rests upon a shore
that was as vaguely and infinitely beyond the knowledge or aspiration of
its builders, as the shores of a star that lights the spaces beyond our
vision are to us to-day. The Chinaman jostles us in the streets, and the
centuries that look through his dreamy eyes have lost all sense of
wonder—ships that were freighted in the heart of Africa lie in our
harbors, and our market-places are vocal with more tongues than
bewildered the builders of Babel—a letter slips round the earth in
ninety days and the messages of men flash along the bed of the ocean—we
tell the secrets of the universe as a woman tells her beads, and the
stars whirl serenely through orbits that science has defined—we even
read of the instant when the comet that plunged in dim illimitable
distance, where even the separate stars are lost in mist and vapor,
shall whirl again into the vision of man, a wanderer that could not
shake off the inexorable supervision of science, even in the chill and
measureless depths of the universe.”
This brilliancy, this dazzling, meteoric imagination, made against his
reputation in the earlier years of his career. The impression got abroad
that he was simply fanciful and superficial—that he could paint his
productions in the gorgeous imagery of poetry, but that he had no great
intellectual strength and force. It took some time to dispel this
illusion. It was only after the great breadth of his mind displayed
itself in his powerful speeches in New York, Dallas, Tex., Augusta, Ga.,
and Boston, that the public began to see that, back behind his rich and
brilliant imagination, there was a masterful intellect, able to
comprehend the profoundest questions of social and political policy.
His development as an orator was indeed phenomenal. Nothing has ever
been known like it since Sheridan quit play-writing to enter the English
House of Commons, and delivered, according to the judgment of Fox and
Burke, the most eloquent oration ever spoken to an English auditory.
Grady’s whole preparation had been in the line of journalism. He had
never practiced at the bar, in the forum, or on the hustings. Yet such
was his genius, that, from the very moment he got before the American
public, he leaped from the base to the very summit of oratorical fame.
His oratory was _sué generis_. Like all great men he had no prototype.
There was nothing sonorous in his tones of voice—he had nothing of the
declamatory pomp of Toombs, the stately periods of Hill, the slow,
measured cadences of Stephens. Like Mark Antony he talked along; but
such talk—as sweet as the harp of Orpheus whose melody swayed the trees
of the forest and rent asunder the solid rocks. Like a fountain
unsealed, his thought flowed forth in gushing opulence, and in every
rhythmic period his soul voiced itself in perfect music. He could awake
all the sleeping passions of the heart and set them astir with his own
enthusiasm. Like a pendulum, he swung betwixt a smile and a tear, now
convulsing all with his humor and anon melting all with his pathos.
Added to such brilliant gifts as a writer and a speaker, he had the
genius of common sense. He could project a movement of great practical
interest, and perfect and accomplish it with the same marvellous
facility that he could indite a morning editorial. He saw in our uncut
quarries the marble halls and palaces of the rich—in our mountains of
ore the matchless steam engines and their tracks of steel along which
our growing commerce was to be borne to the distant marts of the
world—in our waving forests of pine, the cities of majestic splendor and
beauty that were to adorn and enrich our vast domain. As Webster said of
Hamilton, in reference to the public credit, he touched the dead corpse
of our industries and they arose and stood upon their feet.
To all these gifts of head, there was an added heart of boundless
sympathies. In his writings there is always an undertone of sentiment,
bespeaking a moral nature as opulent as was his intellectual endowment.
His imagination caught up the good, the beautiful and the true. With the
alchemy of his genius he could transmute the simplest flower into a
preacher of righteousness, and get from it some lessons of wisdom and
truth. To lift up and crown humanity was the supremest aspiration of his
life. This ruling passion was strong in death, and even in the delirium
preceding dissolution, his brain was rife with its own desiring
phantasies, and he died in the midst of dreams born of yearnings to help
and bless the needy and the heavy laden.
Perhaps no one has lived among us who possessed more of the elements
which go to make up the hero, the popular idol. Noble in presence,
gracious in manner, gentle in spirit, manly in everything, he commanded
not only the admiration but the love of all. If all who tenderly loved
him could lay a garland upon his grave his ashes would rest beneath a
mountain of flowers.
To die so wept and mourned were more to be desired than the glittering
honors of splendid obsequies. To live, as he will live, embalmed in the
immortality of love, is better far than enshrinement in the cold
emblazonry of marble.
Loving hands and hearts will erect to his memory the granite shaft, cut
and chiselled with words of eulogy, but his most enduring monument is
his grand, historic life, standing out imperishably based upon the
affections and the love of a grateful people, and pointing unborn
generations to the same heights of purity and honor he so worthily
attained.
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