His head was of the clearest.  Horace says of Apollo that he did not always keep his bow bent; but Tazewell’s mind was always on the stretch, or, in a stricter sense, was never on the stretch at all.  The most intricate combination of figures he saw through at a glance; and in the arts the most complex machinery was easily understood by him, and readily made plain to others by his familiar explanations.  Processes of reasoning the most elaborate seemed rather the play of his mind than a serious exercise of its powers; and in his most refined speculations he never for a moment lost himself, or allowed the hearer to lose him.  When in a playful mood he chose to use the weapons of the sophist, the ablest men feared the ticklish game and fought shy, and where the line lay between truth and error it was impossible to find out; and he was equally skilful in unravelling the sophistry of others, dissecting it asunder with the keenest relish and with exquisite skill.  When he seriously undertook to assert and defend the truth, he was irresistible, and it was vain to oppose him.  Excessive ingenuity has been laid at his door; but, while conceding that his long dallying with inferior courts was likely to lead to faults in that direction, yet, if we look to the occasions when he was charged with using it, and its effect at the time, we may be inclined to believe that his judgment of the line of argument to be pursued was as likely to be appropriate as that of the critic who formed his opinion according to some abstract standard of propriety.

He was never out of tune.  Call on him when you would, and you found him self-poised and fresh.  Argument or narrative followed at your command.  This part of his character was very apparent to me during the last seven years of his life.  In that interval I called to see him frequently; and, as my own studies lay in the walks of our earlier history, the talk usually ran, for a time at least, on the men and things of an epoch in which the Revolution held the middle place.  He seemed to have perfect command of his stores, not by the mere effort of recollection, but of memory and reflection combined, eliminating a truth from the facts which concealed it.  A specimen of the talk which actually occurred between us may illustrate my remark.  I would approach him and say deliberately in his ear—­for within a few years past he had become slightly deaf—­“Mr. Tazewell, Col.  Richard Bland (who, by the way, died in October, 1776) wrote tracts in the Parson’s cause, a tract against the Quakers, and his inquiry into the rights of the colonies; did he write any other pamphlet?” Quick as thought he replied:  “Yes, he wrote a tract on the tenure of lands in Virginia, showing that they were allodial and not held in fee.  I read the tract when I was a boy; and it helped me in my examination for a license to practise law.”  He had probably not recalled this fact before for half a century:  no copy of the tract is preserved; and there was not another