If it be true that it takes a great man to interpret the life of a great man then Bushrod Washington made no mistake in the selection of a biographer. For Marshall, under the influence of Washington, came to be nearly as great a man as the character whose life and achievement held his deepest thought for nearly a quarter of a century. . . . Marshall's sympathetic understanding of his subject, his firsthand knowledge of events with his remarkable powers of expression qualified him to produce the masterpiece that has come down to us.