From Hancock, we have only the envelope of a document "on public
service," directed to "The Hon. the Assembly, or Council of Safety of
New Hampshire," and with the autograph affixed, that, stands out so
prominently in the Declaration of Independence. As seen in the
engraving of that instrument, the signature looks precisely what we
should expect and desire in the handwriting of a princely merchant,
whose penmanship had been practised in the ledger which he is
represented as holding, in Copley's brilliant picture, but to whom his
native ability, and the circumstances and customs of his country, had
given a place among its rulers. But, on the coarse and dingy paper
before us, the effect is very much inferior; the direction, all except
the signature, is a scrawl, large and heavy, but not forcible; and even
the name itself, while almost identical in its strokes with that of the
Declaration, has a strangely different and more vulgar aspect. Perhaps
it is all right, and typical of the truth. If we may trust tradition,
and unpublished letters, and a few witnesses in print, there was quite
as much difference between the actual man, and his historical aspect, as
between the manuscript signature and the engraved one. One of his
associates, both in political life and permanent renown, is said to have
characterized him as a "man without a head or heart." We, of an after
generation, should hardly be entitled, on whatever evidence, to assume
such ungracious liberty with a name that has occupied a lofty position
until it, has grown almost sacred, and which is associated with memories
more sacred than itself, and has thus become a valuable reality to our
countrymen, by the aged reverence that clusters round about it.
Nevertheless, it may be no impiety to regard Hancock not precisely as a
real personage, but as a majestic figure, useful and necessary in its
way, but producing its effect far more by an ornamental outside than by
any intrinsic force or virtue. The page of all history would be half
unpeopled if all such characters were banished from it.