Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II | Page 7

occasion offered, a felicitous quotation, pungent
apothegm, or symbolic epithet, dropped unawares in undertone,
showed how swiftly scattered rays were brought in her mind to a focus.
When her turn came, by a graceful transition she resumed the subject
where preceding speakers had left it, and, briefly summing up their
results, proceeded to unfold her own view. Her opening was deliberate,
like the progress of some massive force gaining its momentum; but as
she felt her way, and moving in a congenial element, the sweep of her
speech became grand. The style of her eloquence was sententious, free
from prettiness, direct, vigorous, charged with vitality. Articulateness,
just emphasis and varied accent, brought out most delicate shades and
brilliant points of meaning, while a rhythmical collocation of words
gave a finished form to every thought. She was affluent in historic
illustration and literary allusion, as well as in novel hints. She knew
how to concentrate into racy phrases the essential truth gathered from
wide research, and distilled with patient toil; and by skilful treatment
she could make green again the wastes of common-place. Her
statements, however rapid, showed breadth of comprehension, ready
memory, impartial judgment, nice analysis of differences, power of
penetrating through surfaces to realities, fixed regard to central laws
and habitual communion with the Life of life. Critics, indeed, might
have been tempted to sneer at a certain oracular grandiloquence, that
bore away her soberness in moments of elation; though even the most
captious must presently have smiled at the humor of her descriptive
touches, her dexterous exposure of folly and pretension, the swift
stroke of her bright wit, her shrewd discernment, promptitude, and
presence of mind. The reverential, too, might have been pained at the

sternness wherewith popular men, measures, and established customs,
were tried and found guilty, at her tribunal; but even while blaming her
aspirations as rash, revolutionary and impractical, no honest
conservative could fail to recognize the sincerity of her aim. And every
deep observer of character would have found the explanation of what
seemed vehement or too high-strung, in the longing of a spirited
woman to break every trammel that checked her growth or fettered her
movement.
In conversations like these, one saw that the richness of Margaret's
genius resulted from a rare combination of opposite qualities. To her
might have been well applied the words first used as describing George
Sand: "Thou large-brained Woman, and large-hearted Man." She
blended in closest union and swift interplay feminine receptiveness
with masculine energy. She was at once impressible and creative,
impulsive and deliberate, pliant in sympathy yet firmly self-centred,
confidingly responsive while commanding in originality. By the vivid
intensity of her conceptions, she brought out in those around their own
consciousness, and, by the glowing vigor of her intellect, roused into
action their torpid powers. On the other hand, she reproduced a truth,
whose germ had just been imbibed from others, moulded after her own
image and quickened by her own life, with marvellous rapidity. And
the presence of congenial minds so stimulated the prolific power of her
imagination, that she was herself astonished at the fresh beauty of her
new-born thoughts. 'There is a mortifying sense,' she writes,
'of having played the Mirabeau after a talk with a circle of intelligent
persons. They come with a store of acquired knowledge and reflection,
on the subject in debate, about which I may know little, and have
reflected less; yet, by mere apprehensiveness and prompt intuition, I
may appear their superior. Spontaneously I appropriate all their
material, and turn it to my own ends, as if it was my inheritance from a
long train of ancestors. Rays of truth flash out at the moment, and they
are startled by the light thrown over their familiar domain. Still they are
gainers, for I give them new impulse, and they go on their way
rejoicing in the bright glimpses they have caught. I should despise
myself, if I purposely appeared thus brilliant, but I am inspired as by a
power higher than my own.'
All friends will bear witness to the strict fidelity of this sketch. There

were seasons when she seemed borne irresistibly on to the verge of
prophecy, and fully embodied one's notion of a sibyl.
Admirable as Margaret appeared in public, I was yet more affected by
this peculiar mingling of impressibility and power to influence, when
brought within her private sphere. I know not how otherwise to
describe her subtle charm, than by saying that she was at once a
clairvoyante and a magnetizer. She read another's bosom-secret, and
she imparted of her own force. She interpreted the cipher in the
talisman of one's destiny, that he had tried in vain to spell alone; by
sympathy she brought out the invisible characters traced by experience
on his