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AMERICAN ELOQUENCE.

JAMES OTIS.

THE subject of this memoir, descended in the fifth generation from John Otis, who came over from England at a very early period of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and settled at Hingham, was born on the 5th of February, 1725, in the family mansion, at Great Marshes, now West Barnstable, Massachusetts. Nothing is known of his early youth. Pursuing his classical studies under the guidance of the Reverend Jonathan Russel, minister of the parish in which he lived, he entered Harvard College in June, 1739, and took his first degree in 1743. "During the first two years of his college life," says his biographer, "his natural ardor and vivacity made his society much courted by the elder students, and engaged him more in amusement than in study; but he changed his course in the junior year, and began thenceforward to give indications of great talent and power of application." The only record of his having taken any part in the usual collegiate courses, is that of a syllogistic disputation, on receiving his first degree. At college, excepting his two first years, he was serious in his disposition and steady in the prosecution of his studies. When he came home during the vacations, being so devoted to his books, he was seldom seen; and the near neighbors to his father's dwelling would sometimes only remark his return after he had been at home a fortnight. Though enveloped and marked with some of the gravity and abstraction natural to severe application, he would occasionally discover the wit and humor which formed, afterwards, striking ingredients in his character. A small party of young people being assembled one day at his father's house, when he was at home during a college vacation, he had taken a slight part in their sports, when, after much persuasion, they induced him to play a country dance for them with his violin, on which instrument he then practised a little. The set was made up, and after they were fairly engaged, he suddenly stopped, and holding up his fiddle and bow, exclaimed, "So Orpheus fiddled, and so danced the brutes!" and then tossing the instrument aside, rushed into the garden, followed by the disappointed revellers, who were obliged to convert their intended dance into a frolicsome chase after the fugitive musician.

It was the intention of Mr. Otis to qualify himself for the practice of law, but he did not engage in the appropriate studies for that purpose immediately on leaving college. He wisely devoted nearly two years to the pursuits of general literature and science, intending thereby to establish broad and deep the foundations of his professional studies. In 1745 he commenced the study of the law, in the office of Jeremiah Gridley, at that time the most eminent lawyer in the province; and on completing those studies, he removed to Plymouth, and practised there during the years 1748 and 1749. Finding the "narrow range of country business" unsuited to his powers, he returned to Boston, where he soon rose to the highest position in his profession, being often called upon from other colonies and distant provinces for legal assistance and advice.

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