NEITHER ORATOR NOR GOOD TALKER.
Reading edition
Jefferson was neither an orator nor a good talker. He could not make a speech. His voice would sink downwards instead of rising upwards out of his throat.
But as regards legal learning he was in the front rank. No one was more ready than he in ably written opinions and defenses.
It was in what John Adams termed "the divine science of politics" that Jefferson won his immortal and resplendent fame.