[9] This speech Mr. Tazewell was surprised to learn from the public prints, was regarded as a great effort. In a letter dated the 3d of February, 1825, a few days after the delivery of the speech, he writes to a friend in Virginia as follows: "The newspapers and my Virginian friends have done me irreparable mischief in the too lavish encomia they have bestowed upon my speech, as you call it. Believe me, I was very much in the situation of him who had been talking prose all his life without knowing it. I had no conception that I had made a speech, and really thought I had merely given a clear and distinct exposition of a matter of public law as familiar to me as the doctrine of dower, and concerning which I had no more doubt. And it was with infinite astonishment I first saw the strong panegyric heaped upon my argument here. So true is this, that on the evening after I had concluded it, I wrote to my friend Wickham, telling him if his eye should see anything of it through the newspapers, he would wonder how so much A B C knowledge could be tolerated here, but that I saw it was necessary to state it, and therefore he must not think me so much of a pedant as he might otherwise be disposed to do. Had the thing been suffered to pass unnoticed, I might have hoped at some time or other to gain some credit for a speech when I saw an occasion offered to make one; and I have vanity enough to believe that I could make a much better almost any day of the week." He complains of the bad Latin the papers put in his mouth, and of such expressions as "three twins," &c., &c. I grieve to think that so few specimens of Mr. Tazewell's arguments are to be found in print. I have heard from him year after year, in conversation, arguments on current or general topics, which, if emblazoned through the press, would make a fair reputation for a speaker, and he all unconscious at the time that he was making any considerable effort. [10] Ex-President Tyler, who was the third, was unexpectedly prevented from being present: the Hon. George Loyall and the speaker were the other two. [11] In a note to a friend, written Christmas day, 1850, he speaks of the Bible as "the good book," and says, "it has ever been regarded as most precious." [12] From letters in my possession, I could quote a dozen instances in which he expresses his readiness to accept any office which the State might confer upon him; but he did not desire any appointment State or Federal; that he would seek none, but that he could not refuse his services to Virginia when she required them. See extracts in Appendix, No. 4.