Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[114] like his physique, was impressive from its massiveness, not from its subtlety. More nearly than any other American he approached the fervor and the stately force of classical oratory. He was not a Demosthenes or a Cicero or even a Burke; but he did find spoken discourse so natural a medium for the expression of his powerful personality as to give the best of his work some security of permanence.

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William Ellery Channing.

The first American clergyman, after Jonathan Edwards, to achieve a positive literary hold upon the English-speaking world was William Ellery Channing, who must not be confused with his son and two nephews, each bearing the William with a different middle name, and all men of marked intellectual activity. The hold taken at one time by Dr. Channing is seen in the fact that six different reprints of his little book on Self-culture were published in England by different publishers in a single year. During his whole life, it is said, Channing never knew a day of unimpaired health, yet during that life, which ended in 1842, he was the recognized leader of New England thought; known first as a