famous sentiment which he proposed at the Decatur dinner, and which
elicited so much remark at the time.

But it was probably in his association with Chancellor Wythe, who loved
and petted the promising boy, the son of his old neighbor in
Williamsburg, whom he had taken from the dying bedside of another old
neighbor, that Tazewell formed his taste for profound research, and his
determination to master the law as a science. Wythe, above all our early
statesmen, was deeply learned in the law, had traced all its doctrines
to their fountain-heads, delighted in the year-books from doomsday down;
had Glanville, Bracton, Britton, and Fleta bound in collects; had all
the British statutes at full length, and was writing elaborate decisions
every day, in which, to the amazement of county court lawyers, Horace
and Aulus Gellius were sometimes quoted as authorities. And it is worthy
of note, that Tazewell, affectionately attached as he was to Wythe, did
not adopt his prejudices or antipathies, nor those peculiarities of
punctuation and the disuse of capital letters at the beginning of
sentences, which even Mr. Jefferson copied from his old master, but
cherished a proper and becoming admiration for Pendleton, as will
presently appear, between whom and Wythe there had been a life-long
rivalry, and more recently some sharp judicial passages at arms, which
we could wish were blotted out forever, but which, embodied in
ever-during type, posterity must read and deplore. And, although he was
in every material respect the architect of his own reputation, it has
occurred to me that it was in memory of his affectionate relations with
Wythe and Wickham, and with a view of paying the debt which he owed
them, as well as from the natural goodness of his heart, that Tazewell
was fond of the society of young men, and was ever ready to advise them
in their studies, or to argue with them a difficult head in the law, and
freely to assist them in other respects. An eminent counsel still