strictly occasional; the great majority are chiefly, if not wholly,
political speeches, containing merely passages here and there in the same
vein as his great commemorative addresses. Before finally leaving the
subject, however, it will be well to glance for a moment at the few
orations which properly belong to the same class as the first two which we
have been considering.

The Bunker Hill oration, after the lapse of only a year, was followed by
the celebrated eulogy upon Adams and Jefferson. This usually and with
justice is ranked in merit with its two immediate predecessors. As a whole
it is not, perhaps, quite so much admired, but it contains the famous
imaginary speech of John Adams, which is the best known and most hackneyed
passage in any of these orations. The opening lines, "Sink or swim, live or
die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote," since
Mr. Webster first pronounced them in Faneuil Hall, have risen even to the
dignity of a familiar quotation. The passage, indeed, is perhaps the best
example we have of the power of Mr. Webster's historical imagination. He
had some fragmentary sentences, the character of the man, the nature of the
debate, and the circumstances of the time to build upon, and from these
materials he constructed a speech which was absolutely startling in its
lifelike force. The revolutionary Congress, on the verge of the tremendous
step which was to separate them from England, rises before us as we read
the burning words which the imagination of the speaker put into the mouth
of John Adams. They are not only instinct with life, but with the life of
impending revolution, and they glow with the warmth and strength of feeling
so characteristic of their supposed author. It is well known that the
general belief at the time was that the passage was an extract from a
speech actually delivered by John Adams. Mr. Webster, as well as Mr.
Adams's son and grandson, received numerous letters of inquiry on this
point, and it is possible that many people still persist in this belief as