It would, however, be unfair to the ancient exercises of 'case-putting' and 'mooting' not to bear in mind that by habituating successful barristers to take personal interest in the professional capabilities of students, they helped to maintain a salutary intercourse betwixt the younger and older members of the profession. So long as 'moots' lasted, it was the fashion with eminent counsel to accost students in Westminster Hall, and gossip with them about legal matters. In Charles II.'s time, such eminent barristers as Sir Geoffrey Palmer daily gave practical hints and valuable suggestions to students who courted their favor; find accurate legal scholars, such as old 'Index Waller,' would, under judicious treatment, exhibit their learning to boys ambitious of following in their steps. Chief Justice Saunders, during the days of his pre-eminence at the bar, never walked through Westminster Hall without a train of lads at his heels. "I have seen him," says Roger North, "for hours and half-hours together, before the court sat, stand at the bar, with an audience of students over against him, putting of cases, and debating so as suited their capacities, and encouraged their industry. And so in the Temple, he seldom moved without a parcel of youths hanging about him, and he merry and jesting with them."

Long after 'moots' had fallen into disuse, their influence in this respect was visible in the readiness of wigged veterans to extend a kindly and useful patronage to students. Even so late as the close of the last century, great black-letter lawyers used to accost students in Westminster Hall, and give them fair words, in a manner that would be misunderstood in the present day. Sergeant Hill—whose reputation for recondite legal erudition, resembled that of 'Index Waller,' or Maynard, in the seventeenth century—once accosted John Scott, as the latter, in his student days, was crossing Westminster Hall. "Pray, young gentleman," said the black-letter lawyer, "do you think herbage and pannage rateable to the poor's rate?" "Sir," answered the future Lord Eldon, with a courteous bow to the lawyer, whom he knew only by sight, "I cannot presume to give any opinion, inexperienced and unlearned as I am, to a person of your great knowledge, and high character in the profession." "Upon my word," replied the sergeant, eyeing the young man with unaffected delight, "you are a pretty sensible young gentleman; I don't often meet with such. If I had asked Mr. Burgess, a young man upon our circuit, the question, he would have told me that I was an old fool. You are an extraordinary sensible young gentleman."

The period when 'readings,' 'mooting,' and 'case-putting' fell into disuse or contempt, is known with sufficient accuracy. Having noticed the decay of readings, Sir John Bramston writes, in Charles II.'s reign, "At this tyme readings are totally in all the Inns of Court layd aside; and to speak truth, with great reason, for it was a step at once to the dignity of a sergeant, but not soe now." Marking the time when moots became farcical forms, Roger North having stated that his brother Francis, when a student, was "an attendant (as well as exerciser) at the ordinary moots in the Middle Temple and at New Inn," goes on to say, "In those days, the moots were carefully performed, and it is hard to give a good reason (bad ones are prompt enough) why they are not so now." But it should be observed, that though for all practical purposes 'moots' and 'case-puttings' ceased in Charles II.'s time, they were not formally abolished. Indeed, they lingered on throughout the eighteenth century, and to the present time—when vestiges of them may still be observed in the usages and discipline of the Inns. Before the writer of this page was called to the bar by the Masters of the Society of Lincoln's Inn, he, like all other students of his time, had to go through the form of putting a case on certain days in the hall after dinner. The ceremony appeared to him alike ludicrous and interesting. To put his case, he was conducted by the steward of the inn to the top of the senior bar table, when the steward placed an open MS. book before him, and said, "Read that, sir;" whereupon this deponent read aloud something about "a femme sole," or some such thing, and was still reading the rest of the MS., kindly opened under his nose by the steward, when that worthy officer checked him suddenly, saying, "That will do, sir; you have put your case—and can sign the book." The book duly signed, this deponent bowed to the assembled barristers, and walked out of the hall, smiling as he thought how, by an ingenious fiction, he was credited with having put an elaborate case to a college of profound jurists, with having argued it before an attentive audience, and with having borne away the laurels of triumph. Recently this pleasant mockery of case-putting has been swept away.

In Roger North's 'Discourse on the Study of the Laws,' and 'Life of the Lord Keeper Guildford,' the reader may see with clearness the course of an industrious law-student during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and it differs less from the ordinary career of an industrious Temple-student in our time, than many recent writers on the subject think.

Under Charles II., James II., and William III. the law-student was compelled to muster the barbarous Law-French; but the books which he was required to read were few in comparison with those of a modern Inns-of-Court man. Roger North mentions between twenty and thirty authors, which the student should read in addition to Year-Books and more recent reports; and it is clear that the man who knew with any degree of familiarity such a body of legal literature was a very erudite lawyer two hundred years since. But the student was advised to read this small library again and again, "common-placing" the contents of its volumes, and also "common-placing" all new legal facts. The utility and convenience of common-place books were more apparent two centuries since, than in our time, when books of reference are always published with good tables of contents and alphabetical indexes. Roger North held that no man could become a good lawyer who did not keep a common-place book. He instructs the student to buy for a common-place register "a good large paper book, as big as a church bible;" he instructs him how to classify the facts which should be entered in the work; and for a model of a lucid and thoroughly lawyer-like common-place book he refers "to Lincoln's Inn library, where the Lord Hale's common-place book is conserved, and that may be a pattern, instar omnium."



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PUPILS IN CHAMBERS.

But the most important part of an industrious law-student's labors in olden time, was the work of watching the practice of Westminster Hall. In the seventeenth century, the constant succession of political trials made the King's Bench Court especially attractive to students who were more eager for gossip than advancement of learning; but it was always held that the student, who was desirous to learn the law rather than to catch exciting news or hear exciting speeches, ought to frequent the Common Pleas, in which court the common law was said to be at home. At the Common Pleas, a student might find a seat vacant in the students' benches so late as ten o'clock; but it was not unusual for every place devoted to the accommodation of students in the Court of King's Bench, to be occupied by six o'clock, A.M. By dawn, and even before the sun had begun to break, students bent on getting good seats at the hearing of an important cause would assemble, and patiently wait in court till the judges made their appearance.

One prominent feature in the advocate's education must always be elocutionary practice. "Talk; if you can, to the point, but anyhow talk," has been the motto of Advocacy from time immemorial. Heneage Finch, who, like every member of his silver-tongued family, was an authority on matters pertaining to eloquence, is said to have advised a young student "to study all the morning and talk all the afternoon." Sergeant Maynard used to express his opinion of the importance of eloquence to a lawyer by calling law the "ars bablativa." Roger North observes—"He whose trade is speaking must not, whatever comes out, fail to speak, for that is a fault in the main much worse than impertinence." And at a recent address to the students of the London University, Lord Brougham urged those of his auditors, who intended to adopt the profession of the bar, to habituate themselves to talk about everything.

In past times law-students were proverbial for their talkativeness; and though the present writer has never seen any records of a Carolinian law-debating society, it is matter of certainty that in the seventeenth century the young students and barristers formed themselves into coteries, or clubs, for the practice of elocution and for legal discussions. The continual debates on 'mootable days,' and the incessant wranglings of the Temple cloisters, encouraged them to pay especial attention to such exercises. In Charles II.'s reign Pool's company, was a coterie of students and young barristers, who used to meet periodically for congenial conversation and debate. "There is seldom a time," says Roger North, speaking of this coterie, "but in every Inn of Court there is a studious, sober company that are select to each other, and keep company at meals and refreshments. Such a company did Mr. Pool find out, whereof Sergeant Wild was one, and every one of them proved eminent, and most of them are now preferred in the law; and Mr. Pool, at the latter end of his life, took such a pride in his company that he affected to furnish his chambers with their pictures." Amongst the benefits to be derived from such a club as that of which Mr. Pool was president, Roger North mentions "Aptness to speak;" adding: "for a man may be possessed of a book-case, and think he has it ad unguem throughout, and when he offers at it shall find himself at a loss, and his words will not be right and proper, or perhaps too many, and his expressions confused: when he has once talked his case over, and, his company have tossed it a little to and fro, then he shall utter it more readily, with fewer words and much more force."

These words make it clear that Mr. Pool's 'company' was a select 'law-debating society.' Far smaller as to number of members, something more festive in its arrangements, but not less bent on furthering the professional progress of its members, it was, some two hundred years since, all that the 'Hardwicke' and other similar associations are at the present.[29]

To such fraternities—of which the Inns of Court had several in the last century—Murray and Thurlow, Law and Erskine had recourse: and besides attending strictly professional clubs, it was usual for the students, of their respective times, to practise elocution at the coffee-houses and public spouting-rooms of the town. Murray used to argue as well as 'drink champagne' with the wits; Thurlow was the irrepressible talker of Nando's; Erskine used to carry his scarlet uniform from Lincoln's Inn Hall, to the smoke-laden atmosphere of Coachmakers' Hall, at which memorable 'discussion forum' Edward Law is known to have spoken in the presence of a closely packed assembly of politicians, idlers upon town, shop-men, and drunkards. Thither also Horne Tooke and Dunning used to adjourn after dining with Taffy Kenyon at the Chancery Lane eating-house, where the three friends were wont to stay their hunger for sevenpence halfpenny each. "Dunning and myself," Horne Tooke said boastfully, when he recalled these economical repasts, "were generous, for we gave the girl who waited on us a penny apiece; but Kenyon, who always knew the value of money, rewarded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes with a promise."

Notwithstanding the recent revival of lectures and the institution of examinations, the actual course of the law-student has changed little since the author of the 'Pleader's Guide,' in 1706, described the career of John Surrebutter, Esq., Special Pleader and Barrister-at-Law. The labors of 'pupils in chambers, are thus noticed by Mr. Surrebutter:—

"And, better to improve your taste, Are by your parents' fondness plac'd Amongst the blest, the chosen few (Blest, if their happiness they knew), Who for three hundred guineas paid To some great master of the trade, Have at his rooms by special favor His leave to use their best endeavor, By drawing pleas from nine till four, To earn him twice three hundred more; And after dinner may repair To 'foresaid rooms, and then and there Have 'foresaid leave from five till ten, To draw th' aforesaid pleas again."

Continuing to describe his professional career, Mr. Surrebutter mentions certain facts which show that so late as the close of last century professional etiquette did not forbid special pleaders and barristers to curry favor with solicitors and solicitors' clerks by attentions which would now-a-days be deemed reprehensible. He says:—

"Whoe'er has drawn a special plea Has heard of old Tom Tewkesbury, Deaf as a post, and thick as mustard, He aim'd at wit, and bawl'd and bluster'd And died a Nisi Prius leader— That genius was my special pleader— That great man's office I attended, By Hawk and Buzzard recommended Attorneys both of wondrous skill, To pluck the goose and drive the quill. Three years I sat his smoky room in, Pens, paper, ink, and pounce consuming; The fourth, when Epsom Day begun, Joyful I hailed th' auspicious sun, Bade Tewkesbury and Clerk adieu; (Purification, eighty-two) Of both I wash'd my hands; and though With nothing for my cash to show, But precedents so scrawl'd and blurr'd, I scarce could read a single word, Nor in my books of common-place One feature, of the law could trace, Save Buzzard's nose and visage thin, And Hawk's deficiency of chin, Which I while lolling at my ease Was wont to draw instead of pleas. My chambers I equipt complete, Made friends, hired books, and gave to eat; If haply to regale my friends on, My mother sent a haunch of ven'son, I most respectfully entreated The choicest company to eat it; To wit, old Buzzard, Hawk, and Crow; Item, Tom Thornback, Shark, and Co. Attorneys all as keen and staunch As e'er devoured a client's haunch. And did I not their clerks invite To taste said ven'son hash'd at night? For well I knew that hopeful fry My rising merit would descry, The same litigious course pursue, And when to fish of prey they grew, By love of food and contest led, Would haunt the spot where once they fed. Thus having with due circumspection Formed my professional connexion, My desks with precedents I strew'd, Turned critic, danc'd, or penn'd an ode, Suited the ton, became a free And easy man of gallantry; But if while capering at my glass, Or toying with a favorite lass, I heard the aforesaid Hawk a-coming, Or Buzzard on the staircase humming, At once the fair angelic maid Into my coal-hole I convey'd; At once with serious look profound, Mine eyes commencing with the ground, I seem'd like one estranged to sleep, 'And fixed in cogitation deep,' Sat motionless, and in my hand I Held my 'Doctrina Placitandi,' And though I never read a page in't, Thanks to that shrewd, well-judging agent, My sister's husband, Mr. Shark, Soon got six pupils and a clerk. Five pupils were my stint, the other I took to compliment his mother."

Having fleeced pupils, and worked as a special pleader for a time, Mr. Surrebutter is called to the bar; after which ceremony his action towards 'the inferior branch' of the profession is not more dignified than it was whilst he practised as a Special Pleader.

It appears that in Mr. Surrebutter's time (circa 1780) it was usual for a student to spend three whole years in the same pleader's chambers, paying three hundred guineas for the course of study. Not many years passed before students saw it was not to their advantage to spend so long a period with the same instructor, and by the end of the century the industrious student who could command the fees wherewith to pay for such special tuition, usually spent a year or two in a pleader's chambers, and another year or two in the chambers of an equity draughtsman, or conveyancer. Lord Campbell, at the opening of the present century, spent three years in the chambers of the eminent Special Pleader, Mr. Tidd, of whose learning and generosity the biographer of the Chancellors makes cordial and grateful acknowledgment. Finding that Campbell could not afford to pay a second hundred guineas for a second year's instruction, Tidd not only offered him the run of his chambers without payment, but made the young Scotchman take back the L105 which he had paid for the first twelve months.

In his later years Lord Campbell delighted to trace his legal pedigree to the great pleader and 'pupillizer' of the last century, Tom Warren. The chart ran thus: "Tom Warren had for pupil Sergeant Runnington, who instructed in the mysteries of special pleading the learned Tidd, who was the teacher of John Campbell." With honest pride and pleasant vanity the literary Chancellor maintained that he had given the genealogical tree another generation of forensic honor, as Solicitor General Dundas and Vaughan Williams, of the Common Pleas Bench, were his pupils.

Though Campbell speaks of Tom Warren as "the greater founder of the special pleading race," and maintains that "the voluntary discipline of the special pleader's office" was unknown before the middle of the last century, it is certain that the voluntary discipline of a legal instructor's office or chambers was an affair of frequent occurrence long before Warren's rise. Roger North, in his 'Discourse on the Study of the Laws,' makes no allusion to any such voluntary discipline as an ordinary feature of a law-student's career; but in his 'Life of Lord Keeper Guildford' he expressly informs us that he was a pupil in his brother's chambers. "His lordship," writes the biographer, "having taken that advanced post, and designing to benefit a relation (the Honorable Roger North), who was a student in the law, and kept him company, caused his clerk to put into his hands all his draughts, such as he himself had corrected, and after which conveyances had been engrossed, that, by a perusal of them, he might get some light into the formal skill of conveyancing. And that young gentleman instantly went to work, and first numbered the draughts, and then made an index of all the clauses, referring to that number and folio; so that, in this strict perusal and digestion of the various matters, he acquired, not only a formal style, but also apt precedents, and a competent notion of instruments of all kinds. And to this great condescension was owing that little progress he made, which afterwards served to prepare some matters for his lordship's own perusal and settlement." Here then is a case of a pupil in a barrister's chambers in Charles II.'s reign; and it is a case that suffers nothing from the fact that the teacher took no fee.

In like manner, John Trevor (subsequently Master of the Rolls and Speaker of the Commons) about the same time was "bred a sort of clerk in old Arthur Trevor's chamber, an eminent and worthy professor of the law in the Inner Temple." On being asked what might be the name of the boy with such a hideous squint who sate at a clerk's desk in the outer room, Arthur Trevor answered, "A kinsman of mine that I have allowed to sit here, to learn the knavish part of the law." It must be observed that John Trevor was not a clerk, but merely a "sort of a clerk" in his kinsman's chamber.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, and in the earlier half of the eighteenth century, students who wished to learn the practice of the law usually entered the offices of attorneys in large practice. At that period, the division between the two branches of the profession was much less wide than it subsequently became; and no rule or maxim of professional etiquette forbade Inns-of-Court men to act as the subordinates of attorneys and solicitors. Thus Philip Yorke (Lord Hardwicke) in Queen Anne's reign acted as clerk in the office of Mr. Salkeld, an attorney residing in Brook Street, Holborn, whilst he kept his terms at the Temple; and nearly fifty years later, Ned Thurlow (Lord Thurlow), on leaving Cambridge, and taking up his residence in the Temple, became a pupil in the office of Mr. Chapman, a solicitor, whose place of business was in Lincoln's Inn. There is no doubt that it was customary for young men destined the bar thus to work in attorneys' offices; and they continued to do so without any sense of humiliation or thought of condescension, until the special pleaders superseded the attorneys as instructors.

[29] The mention of 'the Hardwicke' brings a droll story to the writer's mind. Some few years since the members of that learned fraternity assembled at their customary plate of meeting—a large room in Anderton's Hotel, Fleet Street—to discuss a knotty point of law about anent Uses. The master of young men was strong; and amongst them—conspicuous for his advanced years, jovial visage, red nose, and air of perplexity—sate an old gentleman who was evidently a stranger to every lawyer present. Who was he? Who brought him? Was there any one in the room who knew him? Such were the whispers that floated about, concerning the portly old man, arrayed in blue coat and drab breeches and gaiters, who took his snuff in silence, and watched the proceedings with evident surprise and dissatisfaction. After listening to three speeches this antique, jolly stranger rose, and with much embarrassment addressed the chair. "Mr. President," he said—"excuse me; but may I ask,—is this 'The Convivial Rabbits?'" A roar of laughter followed this enquiry from a 'convivial rabbit,' who having mistaken the evening of the week, had wandered into the room in which his convivial fellow-clubsters had held a meeting on the previous evening. On receiving the President's assurance that the learned members of a law-debating society were not 'convivial rabbits,' the elderly stranger buttoned his blue coat and beat a speedy retreat.



PART VIII.

MIRTH.



CHAPTER XXXIX.

WIT OF LAWYERS.

No lawyer has given better witticisms to the jest-books than Sir Thomas More. Like all legal wits, he enjoyed a pun, as Sir Thomas Manners, the mushroom Earl of Rutland discovered, when he winced under the cutting reproof of his insolence, conveyed in the translation of 'Honores mutant mores'—Honors change manners. But though he would condescend to play with words as a child plays with shells on a sea-beach, he could at will command the laughter of his readers without having recourse to mere verbal antics. He delighted in what may be termed humorous mystification. Entering Bruges at a time when his leaving had gained European notoriety, he was met by the challenge of a noisy fellow who proclaimed himself ready to dispute with the whole world—or any other man—"in omni scibili et de quolibet ente." Accepting the invitation, and entering the lists in the presence of all the scholastic magnates of Bruges, More gravely inquired, "An averia carucae capta in vetitonamio sint irreplegibilia?" Not versed in the principles and terminology of the common law of England, the challenger could only stammer and blush—whilst More's eye twinkled maliciously, and his auditors were convulsed with laughter.

Much of his humor was of the sort that is ordinarily called quiet humor, because its effect does not pass off in shouts of merriment. Of this kind of pleasantry he gave the Lieutenant of the Tower a specimen, when he said, with as much courtesy as irony, "Assure yourself I do not dislike my cheer; but whenever I do, then spare not to thrust me out of your doors!" Of the same sort were the pleasantries with which, on the morning of his execution, he with fine consideration for others strove to divert attention from the cruelty of his doom. "I see no danger," he observed, with a smile, to his friend Sir Thomas Pope, shaking his water-bottle as he spoke, "but that this man may live longer if it please the king." Finding in the craziness of the scaffold a good pretext for leaning in friendly fashion on his gaoler's arm, he extended his hand to Sir William Kingston, saying, "Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up; for my coming down let me shift for myself." Even to the headsman he gave a gentle pleasantry and a smile from the block itself, as he put aside his beard so that the keen blade should not touch it. "Wait, my good friend, till I have removed my beard," he said, turning his eyes upwards to the official, "for it has never offended his highness."

His wit was not less ready than brilliant, and on one occasion its readiness saved him from a sudden and horrible death. Sitting on the roof of his high gate-house at Chelsea, he was enjoying the beauties of the Thames and the sunny richness of the landscape, when his solitude was broken by the unlooked-for arrival of a wandering maniac. Wearing the horn and badge of a Bedlamite, the unfortunate creature showed the signs of his malady in his equipment as well as his countenance. Having cast his eye downwards from the parapet to the foot of the tower, he conceived a mad desire to hurl the Chancellor from the flat roof. "Leap, Tom! leap!" screamed the athletic fellow, laying a firm hand on More's shoulder. Fixing his attention with a steady look, More said, coolly, "Let us first throw my little dog down, and see what sport that will be." In a trice the dog was thrown into the air. "Good!" said More, feigning delight at the experiment: "now run down, fetch the dog, and we'll throw him off again." Obeying the command, the dangerous intruder left More free to secure himself by a bar, and to summon assistance with his voice.

For a good end this wise and mirth-loving lawyer would play the part of a practical joker; and it is recorded that by a jest of the practical sort he gave a wholesome lesson to an old civic magistrate, who, at the Sessions of the Old Bailey, was continually telling the victims of cut-purses that they had only themselves to thank for their losses—that purses would never be cut if their wearers took proper care to retain them in their possession. These orations always terminated with, "I never lose my purse; cut-purses never take my purse; no, i'faith, because I take proper care of it." To teach his worship wisdom, and cure him of his self-sufficiency, More engaged a cut-purse to relieve the magistrate of his money-bag whilst he sat upon the bench. A story is recorded of another Old Bailey judge who became the victim of a thief under very ridiculous circumstances. Whilst he was presiding at the trial of a thief in the Old Bailey, Sir John Sylvester, Recorder of London, said incidentally that he had left his watch at home. The trial ended in an acquittal, the prisoner had no sooner gained his liberty than he hastened to the recorder's house, and sent in word to Lady Sylvester that he was a constable and had been sent from the Old Bailey to fetch her husband's watch. When the recorder returned home and found he had lost his watch, it is to be feared that Lady Sylvester lost her usual equanimity. Apropos of these stories Lord Campbell tells—how, at the opening period of his professional career, soon after the publication of his 'Nisi Prius Reports,' he on circuit successfully defended a prisoner charged with a criminal offence; and how, whilst the success of his advocacy was still quickening his pulses, he discovered that his late client, with whom he held a confidential conversation, had contrived to relieve him of his pocket-book, full of bank-notes. As soon as the presiding judge, Lord Chief Baron Macdonald, heard of the mishap of the reporting barrister, he exclaimed, "What! does Mr. Campbell think that no one is entitled to take notes in court except himself?"

By the urbane placidity which marked the utterance of his happiest speeches, Sir Nicholas Bacon often recalled to his hearers the courteous easiness of More's repartees. Keeping his own pace in society, as well as in the Court of Chancery, neither satire nor importunity could ruffle or confuse him. When Elizabeth, looking disdainfully at his modest country mansion, told him that the place was too small, he answered with the flattery of gratitude, "Not so, madam, your highness has made me too great for my house." Leicester having suddenly asked him his opinion of two aspirants for court favor, he responded on the spur of the moment, "By my troth, my lord, the one is a grave councillor: the other is a proper young man, and so he will be as long as he lives." To the queen, who pressed him for his sentiments respecting the effect of monopolies—a delicate question for a subject to speak his mind upon—he answered, with conciliatory lightness, "Madam, will you have me speak the truth? Licentia omnes deteriores sumus." In court he used to say, "Let us stay a little, that we may have done the sooner." But notwithstanding his deliberation and the stutter that hindered his utterances, he could be quicker than the quickest, and sharper than the most acrid, as the loquacious barrister discovered who was suddenly checked in a course of pert talkativeness by this tart remark from the stammering Lord Keeper: "There is a difference between you and me,—for me it is a pain to s-speak, for you a pain to hold your tongue." That the familiar story of his fatal attack of cold is altogether true one cannot well believe, for it seems highly improbable that the Lord Keeper, in his seventieth year, would have sat down to be shaved near an open window in the month of February. But though the anecdote may not be historically exact, it may be accepted as a faithful portraiture of his more stately and severely courteous humor. "Why did you suffer me to sleep thus exposed?" asked the Lord Keeper, waking in a fit of shivering from slumber into which his servant had allowed him to drop, as he sat to be shaved in a place where there was a sharp current of air. "Sir, I durst not disturb you," answered the punctilious valet, with a lowly obeisance. Having eyed him for a few seconds, Sir Nicholas rose and said, "By your civility I lose my life." Whereupon the Lord Keeper retired to the bed from which he never rose.

Amongst Elizabethan Judges who aimed at sprightliness on the Bench, Hatton merits a place; but there is reason to think that the idlers, who crowded his court to admire the foppishness of his judicial costume, did not get one really good mot from his lips to every ten bright sayings that came from the clever barristers practising before him. One of the best things attributed to him is a pun. In a case concerning the limits of certain land, the counsel on one side having remarked with explanatory emphasis, "We lie on this side, my Lord;" and the counsel on the other side having interposed with equal vehemence, "We lie on this side, my Lord,"—the Lord Chancellor leaned backwards, and dryly observed, "If you lie on both sides, whom am I to believe?" In Elizabethan England the pun was as great a power in the jocularity of the law-courts as it is at present; the few surviving witticisms that are supposed to exemplify Egerton's lighter mood on the bench, being for the most part feeble attempts at punning. For instance, when he was asked, during his tenure of the Mastership of the Rolls, to commit a cause, i.e., to refer it to a Master in Chancery, he used to answer, "What has the cause done that it should be committed?" It is also recorded of him that, when he was asked for his signature to a petition of which he disapproved, he would tear it in pieces with both hands, saying, "You want my hand to this? You shall have it; aye, and both my hands, too."

Of Egerton's student days a story is extant, which has merits, independent of its truth or want of truth. The hostess of a Smithfield tavern had received a sum of money from three graziers, in trust for them, and on engagement to restore it to them on their joint demand. Soon after this transfer, one of the co-depositors, fraudulently representing himself to be acting as the agent of the other two, induced the old lady to give him possession of the whole of the money—and thereupon absconded. Forthwith the other two depositors brought an action against the landlady, and were on the point of gaining a decision in their favor, when young Egerton, who had been taking notes of the trial, rose as amicus curiae, and argued, "This money, by the contract, was to be returned to three, but two only sue;—where is the third? let him appear with the others; till then the money cannot be demanded from her." Nonsuit for the plaintiffs—for the young student a hum of commendation.

Many of the pungent sayings current in Westminster Hall at the present time, and attributed to eminent advocates who either are still upon the forensic stage, or have recently withdrawn from it, were common jests amongst the lawyers of the seventeenth century. What law-student now eating dinners at the Temple has not heard the story of Sergeant Wilkins, who, on drinking a pot of stout in the middle of the day, explained that, as he was about to appear in court, he thought it right to fuddle his brain down to the intellectual standard of a British jury. This merry thought, two hundred and fifty years since, was currently attributed to Sir John Millicent, of Cambridgeshire, of whom it is recorded—"being asked how he did conforme himselfe to the grave justices his brothers, when they met, 'Why, in faithe,' sayes he, 'I have no way but to drinke myself downe to the capacitie of the Bench.'"

Another witticism, currently attributed to various recent celebrities, but usually fathered upon Richard Brinsley Sheridan—on whose reputation have been heaped the brilliant mots of many a speaker whom he never heard, and the indiscretions of many a sinner whom he never knew—is certainly as old as Shaftesbury's bright and unprincipled career. When Charles II. exclaimed, "Shaftesbury, you are the most profligate man in my dominions," the reckless Chancellor answered, "Of a subject, sir, I believe I am." It is likely enough that Shaftesbury merely repeated the witticism of a previous courtier; but it is certain that Sheridan was not the first to strike out the pun.

In this place let a contradiction be given to a baseless story, which exalts Sir William Follett's reputation for intellectual readiness and argumentative ability. The story runs, that early in the January of 1845, whilst George Stephenson, Dean Buckland, and Sir William Follett were Sir Robert Peel's guests at Drayton Manor, Dean Buckland vanquished the engineer in a discussion on a geological question. The next morning, George Stephenson was walking in the gardens of Drayton Manor before breakfast, when Sir William Follett accosted him, and sitting down in an arbor asked for the facts of the argument. Having quickly 'picked up the case,' the lawyer joined Sir Robert Peel's guests at breakfast, and amused them by leading the dean back to the dispute of the previous day, and overthrowing his fallacies by a skilful use of the same arguments which the self-taught engineer had employed with such ill effect. "What do you say, Mr. Stephenson?" asked Sir Robert Peel, enjoying the dean's discomfiture. "Why," returned George Stephenson, "I only say this, that of all the powers above and under earth, there seems to me no power so great as the gift of the gab." This is the story. But there are facts which contradict it. The only visit paid by George Stephenson to Drayton Manor was made in the December of 1844, not the January of 1845. The guests (invited for Dec. 14, 1844), were Lord Talbot, Lord Aylesford, the Bishop of Lichfield, Dr. Buckland, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Professor Owen, George Stephenson, Mr. Smith of Deanston, and Professor Wheatstone. Sir William Follett was not of the party, and did not set foot within Drayton Manor during George Stephenson's visit there. Of this, Professor Wheatstone (who furnished the present writer with these particulars), is certain. Moreover, it is not to be believed that Sir William Follett, an overworked invalid (who died in the June of 1845 of the pulmonary disease under which he had suffered for years), would sit in an arbor before breakfast on a winter's morning to hold debate with a companion on any subject. The story is a revival of an anecdote first told long before George Stephenson was born.

In lists of legal facetiae the habit of punning is not more noticeable than the prevalent unamiability of the jests. Advocates are intellectual gladiators, using their tongues as soldiers of fortune use their swords; and when they speak, it is to vanquish an adversary. Antagonism is an unavoidable condition of their existence; and this incessant warfare gives a merciless asperity to their language, even when it does not infuse their hearts with bitterness. Duty enjoins the barrister to leave no word unsaid that can help his client, and encourages him to perplex by satire, baffle by ridicule, or silence by sarcasm, all who may oppose him with statements that cannot be disproved, or arguments that cannot be upset by reason. That which duty bids him do, practice enables him to do with terrible precision and completeness; and in many a case the caustic tone, assumed at the outset as a professional weapon, becomes habitual, and, without the speaker's knowledge, gives more pain within his home than in Westminster Hall.

Some of the well-known witticisms attributed to great lawyers are so brutally personal and malignant, that no man possessing any respect for human nature can read them without endeavoring to regard them as mere biographic fabrications. It is recorded of Charles Yorke that, after his election to serve as member for the University of Cambridge, he, in accordance with etiquette, made a round of calls on members of senate, giving them personal thanks for their votes; and that on coming to the presence of a supporter—an old 'fellow' known as the ugliest man in Cambridge—he addressed him thus, after smiling 'an aside' to a knot of bystanders—"Sir, I have reason to be thankful to my friends in general; but I confess myself under particular obligation to you for the very remarkable countenance you have shown me on this occasion." There is no doubt that Charles Yorke could make himself unendurably offensive; it is just credible that without a thought of their double meaning he uttered the words attributed to him; but it is not to be believed that he—an English gentleman—thus intentionally insulted a man who had rendered him a service.

A story far less offensive than the preceding anecdote, but in one point similar to it, is told of Judge Fortescue-Aland (subsequently Lord Fortescue), and a counsel. Sir John Fortescue-Aland was disfigured by a nose which was purple, and hideously misshapen by morbid growth. Having checked a ready counsel with the needlessly harsh observation, "Brother, brother, you are handling the case in a very lame manner," the angry advocate gave vent to his annoyance by saying, with a perfect appearance of sang-froid, "Pardon me, my lord; have patience with me, and I will do my best to make the case as plain as—as—the nose on your lordship's face." In this case the personality was uttered in hot blood, by a man who deemed himself to be striking the enemy of his professional reputation.

If they were not supported by incontrovertible testimony, the admirers of the great Sir Edward Coke would reject as spurious many of the overbearing rejoinders which escaped his lips in courts of justice. His tone in his memorable altercation with Bacon at the bar of the Court of Exchequer speaks ill for the courtesy of English advocates in Elizabeth's reign; and to any student who can appreciate the dignified formality and punctilious politeness that characterized English gentlemen in the old time, it is matter of perplexity how a man of Coke's learning, capacity, and standing, could have marked his contempt for 'Cowells Interpreter,' by designating the author in open court Dr. Cowheel. Scarcely in better taste were the coarse personalities with which, as Attorney General, he deluged Garnet the Jesuit, whom he described as "a Doctor of Jesuits; that is, a Doctor of six D's—as Dissimulation, Deposing of princes, Disposing of kingdoms, Daunting and Deterring of Subjects, and Destruction."

In comparatively recent times few judges surpassed Thurlow in overbearing insolence to the bar. To a few favorites, such as John Scott and Kenyon, he could be consistently indulgent, although even to them his patronage was often disagreeably contemptuous; but to those who provoked his displeasure by a perfectly independent and fearless bearing he was a malignant persecutor. For instance, in his animosity to Richard Pepper Arden (Lord Alvanley), he often forgot his duty as a judge and his manners as a gentleman. John Scott, on one occasion, rising in the Court of Chancery to address the court after Arden, who was his leader in the cause, and had made an unusually able speech, Lord Thurlow had the indecency to say, "Mr. Scott, I am glad to find that you are engaged in the cause, for I now stand some chance of knowing something about the matter." To the Chancellor's habitual incivility and insolence it is allowed that Arden always responded with dignity and self-command, humiliating his powerful and ungenerous adversary by invariable good-breeding. Once, through inadvertence, he showed disrespect to the surly Chancellor, and then he instantly gave utterance to a cordial apology, which Thurlow was not generous enough to accept with appropriate courtesy. In the excitement of professional altercation with counsel respecting the ages of certain persons concerned in a suit, he committed the indecorum of saying aloud, "I'll lay you a bottle of wine." Ever on the alert to catch his enemy tripping, Thurlow's eye brightened as his ear caught the careless words; and in another instant he assumed a look of indignant disgust. But before the irate judge could speak, Arden exclaimed, "My lord, I beg your lordship's pardon; I really forgot where I was." Had Thurlow bowed a grave acceptance of the apology, Arden would have suffered somewhat from the misadventure; but unable to keep his abusive tongue quiet, the 'Great Bear' growled out, in allusion to the offender's Welsh judgeship, "You thought you were in your own court, I presume."

More laughable, but not more courteous, was the same Chancellor's speech to a solicitor who had made a series of statements in a vain endeavor to convince his lordship of a certain person's death. "Really, my lord," at last the solicitor exclaimed, goaded into a fury by Thurlow's repeated ejaculations of "That's no proof of the man's death;" "Really, my lord, it is very hard, and it is not right that you won't believe me. I saw the man dead in his coffin. My lord, I tell you he was my client, and he is dead." "No wonder," retorted Thurlow, with a grunt and a sneer, "since he was your client. Why did you not tell me that sooner? It would kill me to have such a fellow as you for my attorney." That this great lawyer could thus address a respectable gentleman is less astonishing when it is remembered, that he once horrified a party of aristocratic visitors at a country-house by replying to a lady who pressed him to take some grapes, "Grapes, madam, grapes! Did not I say a minute ago that I had the gripes!" Once this ungentle lawyer was fairly worsted in a verbal conflict by an Irish pavier. On crossing the threshold of his Ormond Street house one morning, the Chancellor was incensed at seeing a load of paving-stones placed before his door. Singling out the tallest of a score of Irish workmen who were repairing the thoroughfare, he poured upon him one of those torrents of curses with which his most insolent speeches were usually preluded, and then told the man to move the stones away instantly. "Where shall I take them to, your honor?" the pavier inquired. From the Chancellor another volley of blasphemous abuse, ending with, "You lousy scoundrel, take them to hell!—do you hear me?" "Have a care, your honor," answered the workman, with quiet drollery, "don't you think now that if I took 'em to the other place your honor would be less likely to fall over them?"

Thurlow's incivility to the solicitor reminds us of the cruel answer given by another great lawyer to a country attorney, who, through fussy anxiety for a client's interests, committed a grave breach of professional etiquette. Let this attorney be called Mr. Smith, and let it be known that Mr. Smith, having come up to London from a secluded district of a remote country, was present at a consultation of counsellors learned in the law upon his client's cause. At this interview, the leading counsel in the cause, the Attorney General of the time, was present and delivered his final opinion with characteristic clearness and precision. The consultation over, the country attorney retreated to the Hummums Hotel, Covent Garden, and, instead of sleeping over the statements made at the conference, passed a wretched and wakeful night, harassed by distressing fears, and agitated by a conviction that the Attorney General had overlooked the most important point of the case. Early next day, Mr. Smith, without appointment, was at the great counsellor's chambers, and by vehement importunity, as well as a liberal donation to the clerk, succeeded in forcing his way to the advocate's presence. "Well, Mis-ter Smith," observed the Attorney General to his visitor, turning away from one of his devilling juniors, who chanced to be closeted with him at the moment of the intrusion, "what may you want to say? Be quick, for I am pressed for time." Notwithstanding the urgency of his engagements, he spoke with a slowness which, no less than the suspicious rattle of his voice, indicated the fervor of displeasure. "Sir Causticus Witherett, I trust you will excuse my troubling you; but, sir, after our yesterday's interview, I went to my hotel, the Hummums, in Covent Garden, and have spent the evening and all night turning over my client's case in my mind, and the more I turn the matter over in my mind, the more reason I see to fear that you have not given one point due consideration." A pause, during which Sir Causticus steadily eyed his visitor, who began to feel strangely embarrassed under the searching scrutiny: and then—"State the point, Mis-ter Smith, but be brief." Having heard the point stated, Sir Causticus Witherett inquired, "Is that all you wish to say?" "All, sir—all," replied Mr. Smith; adding nervously, "And I trust you will excuse me for troubling you about the matter; but, sir, I could not sleep a wink last night; all through the night I was turning this matter over in my mind." A glimpse of silence. Sir Causticus rose and standing over his victim made his final speech—"Mis-ter Smith, if you take my advice, given with sincere commiseration for your state, you will without delay return to the tranquil village in which you habitually reside. In the quietude of your accustomed scenes you will have leisure to turn this matter over in what you are pleased to call your mind. And I am willing to hope that your mind will recover its usual serenity. Mr. Smith, I wish you a very good morning."

Legal biography abounds with ghastly stories that illustrate the insensibility with which the hanging judges in past generations used to don the black cap jauntily, and smile at the wretched beings whom they sentenced to death. Perhaps of all such anecdotes the most thoroughly sickening is that which describes the conduct of Jeffreys, when, as Recorder of London, he passed sentence of death on his old and familiar friend, Richard Langhorn, the Catholic barrister—one of the victims of the Popish Plot phrensy. It is recorded that Jeffreys, not content with consigning his friend to a traitor's doom, malignantly reminded him of their former intercourse, and with devilish ridicule admonished him to prepare his soul for the next world. The authority which gives us this story adds, that by thus insulting a wretched gentleman and personal associate, Jeffreys, instead of rousing the disgust of his auditors, elicited their enthusiastic applause.

In a note to a passage in one of the Waverley Novels, Scott tells a story of an old Scotch judge, who, as an enthusiastic chess-player, was much mortified by the success of an ancient friend, who invariably beat him when they tried their powers at the beloved game. After a time the humiliated chess-player had his day of triumph. His conqueror happened to commit murder, and it became the judge's not altogether painful duty to pass upon him the sentence of the law. Having in due form and with suitable solemnity commended his soul to the divine mercy, he, after a brief pause, assumed his ordinary colloquial tone of voice, and nodding humorously to his old friend, observed—"And noo, Jammie, I think ye'll alloo that I hae checkmated you for ance."

Of all the bloodthirsty wearers of the ermine, no one, since the opening of the eighteenth century, has fared worse than Sir Francis Page—the virulence of whose tongue and the cruelty of whose nature were marks for successive satirists. In one of his Imitations of Horace, Pope says—

"Slanderer, poison dread from Delia's rage, Hard words or hanging, if your judge be Page."

In the same spirit the poet penned the lines of the 'Dunciad'—

"Mortality, by her false guardians drawn, Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord, And dies, when Dulness gives her——the Sword."

Powerless to feign insensibility to the blow, Sir Francis openly fitted this black cap to his dishonored head by sending his clerk to expostulate with the poet. The ill-chosen ambassador performed his mission by showing that, in Sir Francis's opinion, the whole passage would be sheer nonsense, unless 'Page' were inserted in the vacant place. Johnson and Savage took vengeance on the judge for the judicial misconduct which branded the latter poet a murderer; and Fielding, in 'Tom Jones,' illustrating by a current story the offensive levity of the judge's demeanor at capital trials, makes him thus retort on a horse-stealer: "Ay! thou art a lucky fellow; I have traveled the circuit these forty years, and never found a horse in my life; but I'll tell thee what, friend, thou wast more lucky than thou didst know of; for thou didst not only find a horse, but a halter too, I promise thee." This scandal to his professional order was permitted to insult the humane sentiments of the nation for a long period. Born in 1661, he died in 1741, whilst he was still occupying a judicial place; and it is said of him, that in his last year he pointed the ignominious story of his existence by a speech that soon ran the round of the courts. In answer to an inquiry for his health, the octogenarian judge observed, "My dear sir—you see how it fares with me; I just manage to keep hanging on, hanging on." This story is ordinarily told as though the old man did not see the unfavorable significance of his words; but it is probable that, he uttered them wittingly and with, a sneer—in the cynicism and shamelessness of old age.

A man of finer stuff and of various merits, but still famous as a 'hanging judge,' was Sir Francis Buller, who also made himself odious to the gentler sex by maintaining that husbands might flog their wives, if the chastisement were administered with a stick not thicker than the operator's thumb. But the severity to criminals, which gave him a place amongst hanging judges, was not a consequence of natural cruelty. Inability to devise a satisfactory system of secondary punishments, and a genuine conviction that ninety-nine out of every hundred culprits were incorrigible, caused him to maintain that the gallows-tree was the most efficacious as well as the cheapest instrument that could be invented for protecting society against malefactors. Another of his stern dicta was, that previous good character was a reason for increasing rather than a reason for lessening a culprit's punishment; "For," he argued, "the longer a prisoner has enjoyed the good opinion of the world, the less are the excuses for his misdeeds, and the more injurious is his conduct to public morality."

In contrast to these odious stories of hanging judges are some anecdotes of great men, who abhorred the atrocities of our penal system, long before the worst of them were swept away by reform. Lord Mansfield has never been credited with lively sensibilities, but his humanity was so shocked by the bare thought of killing a man for committing a trifling theft, that he on one occasion ordered a jury to find that a stolen trinket was of less value than forty shillings—in order that the thief might escape the capital sentence. The prosecutor, a dealer in jewelry, was so mortified by the judge's leniency, that he exclaimed, "What, my lord, my golden trinket not worth forty shillings? Why, the fashion alone cost me twice the money!" Removing his glance from the vindictive tradesman, Lord Mansfield turned towards the jury, and said, with solemn gravity, "As we stand in need of God's mercy, gentlemen, let us not hang a man for fashion's sake."

Tenderness of heart was even less notable in Kenyon than in Murray; but Lord Mansfield's successor was at least on one occasion stirred by apathetic consequence of the bloody law against persons found guilty of trivial theft. On the Home Circuit, having passed sentence of death on a poor woman who had stolen property to the value of forty shillings in a dwelling-house, Lord Kenyon saw the prisoner drop lifeless in the dock, just as he ceased to speak. Instantly the Chief Justice sprang to his feet, and screamed in a shrill tone, "I don't mean to hang you—do you hear!—don't you hear?—Good——will nobody tell her that I don't mean to hang her?"

One of the humorous aspects of a repulsive subject is seen in the curiosity and fastidiousness of prisoners on trial for capital offences with regard to the professional status of the judges who try them. A sheep-stealer of the old bloody days liked that sentence should be passed upon him by a Chief Justice; and in our own time murderers awaiting execution, sometimes grumble at the unfairness of their trials, because they have been tried by judges of inferior degree. Lord Campbell mentions the case of a sergeant, who, whilst acting as Chief Justice Abbott's deputy, on the Oxford circuit, was reminded that he was 'merely a temporary' by the prisoner in the dock. Being asked in the usual way if he had aught to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, the prisoner answered—"Yes; I have been tried before a journeyman judge."



CHAPTER XL.

HUMOROUS STORIES.

Alike commendable for its subtlety and inoffensive humor was the pleasantry with which young Philip Yorke (afterwards Lord Hardwicke), answered Sir Lyttleton Powys's banter on the Western Circuit. An amiable and upright, but far from brilliant judge, Sir Lyttleton had a few pet phrases—-amongst them, "I humbly conceive," and "Look, do you see"—which he sprinkled over his judgments and colloquial talk with ridiculous profuseness. Surprised at Yorke's sudden rise into lucrative practice, this most gentlemanlike worthy was pleased to account for the unusual success by maintaining that young Mr. Yorke must have written a law-book, which had brought him early into favor with the inferior branch of the profession. "Mr. Yorke," said the venerable justice, whilst the barristers were sitting over their wine at a 'judges' dinner,' "I cannot well account for your having so much business, considering how short a time you have been at the bar: I humbly conceive you must have published something; for look you, do you see, there is scarcely a cause in court but you are employed in it on one side or the other. I should therefore be glad to know, Mr. Yorke, do you see, whether this be the case." Playfully denying that he possessed any celebrity as a writer on legal matters, Yorke, with an assumption of candor, admitted that he had some thoughts of lightening the labors of law-students by turning Coke upon Littleton into verse. Indeed, he confessed that he had already begun the work of versification. Not seeing the nature of the reply, Sir Lyttleton Powys treated the droll fancy as a serious project, and insisted that the author should give a specimen of the style of his contemplated work. Whereupon the young barrister—not pausing to remind a company of lawyers of the words of the original. "Tenant in fee simple is he which hath lands or tenements to hold to him and his heirs for ever"—recited the lines—

"He that holdeth his lands in fee Need neither to quake nor quiver, I humbly conceive: for look, do you see They are his and his heirs' forever."

The mimicry of voice being not less perfect than the verbal imitation, Yorke's hearers were convulsed with laughter, but so unconscious was Sir Lyttleton of the ridicule which he had incurred, that on subsequently encountering Yorke in London, he asked how "that translation of Coke upon Littleton was getting on." Sir Lyttleton died in 1732, and exactly ten years afterwards appeared the first edition of 'The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, Knt., in Verse'—a work which its author may have been inspired to undertake by Philip Yorke's proposal to versify 'Coke on Littleton.'

Had Yorke's project been carried out, lawyers would have a large supply of that comic but sound literature of which Sir James Burrow's Reports contain a specimen in the following poetical version of Chief Justice Pratt's memorable decision with regard to a woman of English birth, who was the widow of a foreigner:

"A woman having settlement Married a man with none, The question was, he being dead, If what she had was gone.

"Quoth Sir John Pratt, 'The settlement Suspended did remain, Living the husband; but him dead It doth revive again.'

(Chorus of Puisne Judges.)

"Living the husband; but him dead It doth revive again."

Chief Justice Pratt's decision on this point having been reversed by his successor, Chief Justice Ryder's judgment was thus reported:

"A woman having a settlement, Married a man with none, He flies and leaves her destitute; What then is to be done?

"Quoth Ryder, the Chief Justice, 'In spite of Sir John Pratt, You'll send her to the parish In which she was a brat.

"'Suspension of a settlement Is not to be maintained; That which she had by birth subsists Until another's gained.'

(Chorus of Puisne Judges.)

"That which she had by birth subsists Until another's gained."

In the early months of his married life, whilst playing the part of an Oxford don, Lord Eldon was required to decide in an important action brought by two undergraduates against the cook of University College. The plaintiffs declared that the cook had "sent to their rooms an apple-pie that could not be eaten." The defendant pleaded that he had a remarkably fine fillet of veal in the kitchen. Having set aside this plea on grounds obvious to the legal mind, and not otherwise then manifest to unlearned laymen, Mr. John Scott ordered the apple-pie to be brought in court; but the messenger, dispatched to do the judge's bidding, returned with the astounding intelligence that during the progress of the litigation a party of undergraduates had actually devoured the pie—fruit and crust. Nothing but the pan was left. Judgment: "The charge here is, that the cook has sent up an apple-pie that cannot be eaten. Now that cannot be said to have been uneatable which has been eaten; and as this apple-pie has been eaten, it was eatable. Let the cook be absolved."

But of all the judicial decisions on record, none was delivered with more comical effect than Lord Loughborough's decision not to hear a cause brought on a wager about a point in the game of 'Hazard.' A constant frequenter of Brookes's and White's, Lord Loughborough was well known by men of fashion to be fairly versed in the mysteries of gambling, though no evidence has ever been found in support of the charge that he was an habitual dicer. That he ever lost much by play is improbable; but the scandal-mongers of Westminster had some plausible reasons for laughing at the virtuous indignation of the spotless Alexander Wedderburn, who, whilst sitting at Nisi Prius, exclaimed, "Do not swear the jury in this case, but let it be struck out of the paper. I will not try it. The administration of justice is insulted by the proposal that I should try it. To my astonishment I find that the action is brought on a wager as to the mode of playing an illegal, disreputable, and mischievous game called 'Hazard;' whether, allowing seven to be the main, and eleven to be a nick to seven, there are more ways than six of nicking seven on the dice? Courts of justice are constituted to try rights and redress injuries, not to solve the problems of the gamesters. The gentlemen of the jury and I may have heard of 'Hazard' as a mode of dicing by which sharpers live, and young men of family and fortune are ruined; but what do any of us know of 'seven being the main,' or 'eleven being the nick to seven?' Do we come here to be instructed in this lore, and are the unusual crowds (drawn hither, I suppose, by the novelty of the expected entertainment) to take a lesson with us in these unholy mysteries, which they are to practice in the evening in the low gaming-houses in St. James Street, pithily called by a name which should inspire a salutary terror of entering them? Again, I say, let the cause be struck out of the paper. Move the court, if you please, that it may be restored, and if my brethren think that I do wrong in the course that I now take, I hope that one of them will officiate for me here, and save me from the degradation of trying 'whether there be more than six ways of nicking seven on the dice, allowing seven to be the main and eleven to be a nick to seven'—a question, after all, admitting of no doubt, and capable of mathematical demonstration."

With equal fervor Lord Kenyon inveighed against the pernicious usage of gambling, urging that the hells of St. James's should, be indicted as common nuisances. The 'legal monk,' as Lord Carlisle stigmatized him for his violent denunciations of an amusement countenanced by women of the highest fashion, even went so far as to exclaim—"If any such prosecutions are fairly brought before me, and the guilty parties are convicted, whatever may be their rank or station in the country, though they may be the first ladies in the land, they shall certainly exhibit themselves in the pillory."

The same considerations, which decided Lord Loughborough not to try an action brought by a wager concerning chicken-hazard, made Lord Ellenborough decline to hear a cause where the plaintiff sought to recover money wagered on a cock-fight. "There is likewise," said Lord Ellenborough, "another principle on which I think an action on such wagers cannot be maintained. They tend to the degradation of courts of justice. It is impossible to be engaged in ludicrous inquiries of this sort consistently with that dignity which it is essential to the public welfare that a court of justice should always preserve. I will not try the plaintiff's right to recover the four guineas, which might involve questions on the weight of the cocks and the construction of their steel spurs."

It has already been remarked that in all ages the wits of Westminster Hall have delighted in puns; and it may be here added, with the exception of some twenty happy verbal freaks, the puns of lawyers have not been remarkable for their excellence. L'Estrange records that when a stone was hurled by a convict from the dock at Charles I.'s Chief Justice Richardson, and passed just over the head of the judge, who happened to be sitting at ease and lolling on his elbow, the learned man smiled, and observed to those who congratulated him on his escape, "You see now, if I had been an upright judge I had been slaine." Under George III. Joseph Jekyll[30] was at the same time the brightest wit and most shameless punster of Westminster Hall; and such pride did he take in his reputation as a punster, that after the fashion of the wits of an earlier period he was often at considerable pains to give a pun a well-wrought epigrammatic setting. Bored with the long-winded speech of a prosy sergeant, he wrote on a slip of paper, which was in due course passed along the barristers' benches in the court where he was sitting—

"The sergeants are a grateful race, Their dress and language show it; Their purple garments come from Tyre, Their arguments go to it."

When Garrow, by a more skilful than successful cross-examination, was endeavoring to lure a witness (an unmarried lady of advanced years) into an acknowledgment that payment of certain money in dispute had been tendered, Jekyll threw him this couplet—

"Garrow, forbear; that tough old jade Will never prove a tender maid."

So also, when Lord Eldon and Sir Arthur Pigott each made a stand in court for his favorite pronunciation of the word 'lien;' Lord Eldon calling the word lion and Sir Arthur maintaining that it was to be pronounced like lean, Jekyll, with an allusion to the parsimonious arrangements of the Chancellor's kitchen, perpetrated the jeu d'esprit—

"Sir Arthur, Sir Arthur, why what do you mean By saying the Chancellor's lion is lean? D'ye think that his kitchen's so bad as all that, That nothing within it can ever get fat?"

By this difference concerning the pronunciation of a word the present writer is reminded of an amicable contest that occurred in Westminster Hall between Lord Campbell and a Q.C. who is still in the front rank of court-advocates. In an action brought to recover for damages done to a carriage, the learned counsel repeatedly called, the vehicle in question a broug-ham, pronouncing both syllables of the word brougham. Whereupon, Lord Campbell with considerable pomposity observed, "Broom is the more usual pronunciation; a carriage of the kind you mean is generally and not incorrectly called a broom—that pronunciation is open to no grave objection, and it has the great advantage of saving the time consumed by uttering an extra syllable." Half an hour later in the same trial Lord Campbell, alluding to a decision given in a similar action, said, "In that case the carriage which had sustained injury was an omnibus——" "Pardon me, my lord," interposed the Queen's Counsel, with such promptitude that his lordship was startled into silence, "a carriage of the kind, to which you draw attention is usually termed 'bus;' that pronunciation is open to no grave objection, and it has the great advantage of saving the time consumed by uttering two extra syllables." The interruption was followed by a roar of laughter, in which Lord Campbell joined more heartily than any one else.

One of Jekyll's happy sayings was spoken at Exeter, when he defended several needlemen who were charged with raising a riot for the purpose of forcing the master-tailors to give higher wages. Whilst Jekyll was examining a witness as to the number of tailors present at the alleged riot, Lord Eldon—then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas—reminded him that three persons can make that which the law regards as a riot; whereupon the witty advocate answered, "Yes, my lord, Hale and Hawkins lay down the law as your lordship states it, and I rely on their authority; for if there must be three men to make a riot, the rioters being tailors, there must be nine times three present, and unless the prosecutor make out that there were twenty-seven joining in this breach of the peace, my clients are entitled to an acquittal." On Lord Eldon enquiring whether he relied on common-law or statute-law, the counsel for the defence answered firmly, "My lord, I rely on a well-known maxim, as old as Magna Charta, Nine Tailors make a Man." Finding themselves unable to reward a lawyer for so excellent a jest with an adverse verdict, the jury acquitted the prisoners. Towards the close of his career Eldon made a still better jest than this of Jekyll's concerning tailors. In 1829, when Lyndhurst was occupying the woolsack for the first time, and Eldon was longing to recover the seals, the latter presented a petition from the Tailors' Company at Glasgow against Catholic Belief.

"What!" asked Lord Lyndhurst from the woolsack, in a low voice, "do the tailors trouble themselves about such measures?" Whereto, with unaccustomed quickness, the old Tory of the Tories retorted, "No wonder; you can't suppose that tailors like turncoats."

As specimens of a kind of pleasantry becoming more scarce every year, some of Sir George Rose's court witticisms are excellent. When Mr. Beams, the reporter, defended himself against the friction of passing barristers by a wooden bar, the flimsiness of which was pointed out to Sir George (then Mr. Rose), the wit answered—

"Yes—the partition is certainly thin— Yet thick enough, truly, the Beams within."

The same originator of happy sayings pointed to Eldon's characteristic weakness in the lines—

"Mr. Leach made a speech, Pithy, clear, and strong; Mr. Hart, on the other part, Was prosy, dull, and long; Mr. Parker made that darker Which was dark enough without; Mr. Bell spoke so well, That the Chancellor said—'I doubt.'"

Far from being offended by this allusion to his notorious mental infirmity, Lord Eldon, shortly after the verses had floated into circulation, concluded one of his decisions by saying, with a significant smile, "And here the Chancellor does not doubt."

Not less remarkable for precipitancy than Eldon for procrastination, Sir John Leach, Vice-Chancellor, was said to have done more mischief by excessive haste in a single term than Eldon in his whole life wrought through extreme caution. The holders of this opinion delighted to repeat the poor and not perspicuous lines—

"In equity's high court there are Two sad extremes, 'tis clear; Excessive slowness strikes us there, Excessive quickness here.

"Their source, 'twixt good and evil, brings A difficulty nice; The first from Eldon's virtue, springs, The latter from his vice."

It is needless to remark that this attempt to gloss the Chancellor's shortcomings is an illustration of the readiness with which censors apologize for the misdeeds of eminently fortunate offenders. Whilst Eldon's procrastination and Leach's haste were thus put in contrast, an epigram also placed the Chancellor's frailty in comparison with the tedious prolixity of the Master of the Rolls—

"To cause delay in Lincoln's Inn Two diff'rent methods tend: His lordship's judgments ne'er begin, His honors never end."

A mirth-loving judge, Justice Powell, could be as thoroughly humorous in private life as he was fearless and just upon the bench. Swift describes him as a surpassingly merry old gentleman, laughing heartily at all comic things, and his own droll stories more than aught else. In court he could not always refrain from jocularity. For instance, when he tried Jane Wenham for witch-craft, and she assured him that she could fly, his eye twinkled as he answered, "Well, then you may; there is no law against flying." When Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester—a thorough believer in what is now-a-days called spiritualism—was persecuting his acquaintance with silly stories about ghosts, Powell gave him a telling reproof for his credulity by describing a horrible apparition which was represented as having disturbed the narrator's rest on the previous night. At the hour of midnight, as the clocks were striking twelve, the judge was roused from his first slumber by a hideous sound. Starting up, he saw at the foot of his uncompanioned bed a figure—dark, gloomy, terrible, holding before its grim and repulsive visage a lamp that shed an uncertain light. "May Heaven have mercy on us!" tremulously ejaculated the bishop at this point of the story. The judge continued his story: "Be calm, my lord bishop; be calm. The awful part of this mysterious interview has still to be told. Nerving myself to fashion the words of inquiry, I addressed the nocturnal visitor thus—'Strange being, why hast thou come at this still hour to perturb a sinful mortal?' You understand, my lord, I said this in hollow tones—in what I may almost term a sepulchral voice." "Ay—ay," responded the bishop, with intense excitement; "go on—I implore you to go on. What did it answer?" "It answered in a voice not greatly different from the voice of a human creature—'Please, sir, I am the watchman on beat, and your street-door is open.'" Readers will remember the use which Barham has made of this story in the Ingoldsby Legends.

As a Justice of the King's Bench, Powell had in Chief Justice Holt an associate who could not only appreciate the wit of others, but could himself say smart things. When Lacy, the fanatic, forced his way into Holt's house in Bedford Row, the Chief Justice was equal to the occasion. "I come to you," said Lacy, "a prophet from the Lord God, who has sent me to thee and would have thee grant a nolle prosequi for John Atkins, his servant, whom thou hast sent to prison." Whereto the judge answered, with proper emphasis, "Thou art a false prophet and a lying knave. If the Lord God had sent thee, it would have been to the Attorney General, for the Lord God knows that it belongeth not to the Chief Justice, to grant a nolle prosequi; but I, as Chief Justice, can grant a warrant to commit thee to John Atkins's company." Whereupon the false prophet, sharing the fate of many a true one, was forthwith clapped in prison.

Now that so much has been said of Thurlow's brutal sarcasms, justice demands for his memory an acknowledgment that he possessed a vein of genuine humor that could make itself felt without wounding. In his undergraduate days at Cambridge he is said to have worried the tutors of Caius with a series of disorderly pranks and impudent escapades, but on one occasion he unquestionably displayed at the university the quick wit that in after life rescued him from many an embarrassing position. "Sir," observed a tutor, giving the unruly undergraduate a look of disapproval, "I never come to the window without seeing you idling in the court." "Sir," replied young Thurlow, imitating the don's tone, "I never come into the court without seeing you idling at the window." Years later, when he had become a great man, and John Scott was paying him assiduous court, Thurlow said, in ridicule of the mechanical awkwardness of many successful equity draughtsmen, "Jack Scott, don't you think we could invent a machine to draw bills and answers in Chancery?" Having laughed at the suggestion when it was made, Scott put away the droll thought in his memory; and when he had risen to be Attorney General reminded Lord Thurlow of it under rather awkward circumstances. Macnamara, the conveyancer, being concerned as one of the principals in a Chancery suit, Lord Thurlow advised him to submit the answer to the bill filed against him to the Attorney General. In due course the answer came under Scott's notice, when he found it so wretchedly drawn, that he advised Macnamara to have another answer drawn by some one who understood pleading. On the same day he was engaged at the bar of the House of Lords, when Lord Thurlow came to him, and said, "So I understand you don't think my friend Mac's answer will do?" "Do!" Scott replied, contemptuously. "My Lord, it won't do at all! it must have been drawn by that wooden machine which you once told me might be invented to draw bills and answers." "That's very unlucky," answered Thurlow, "and impudent too, if you had known—that I drew the answer myself."

Lord Lyndhurst used to maintain that it was one of the chief duties of a judge to render it disagreeable to counsel to talk nonsense. Jeffreys in his milder moments no doubt salved his conscience with the same doctrine, when he recalled how, after elating him with a compliment, he struck down the rising junior with "Lord, sir! you must be cackling too. We told you, Mr. Bradbury, your objection was very ingenious; that must not make you troublesome: you cannot lay an egg, but you must be cackling over it." Doubtless, also, he felt it one of the chief duties of a judge to restrain attorneys from talking nonsense when—on hearing that the solicitor from whom he received his first brief had boastfully remarked, in allusion to past services, "My Lord Chancellor! I made him!"—he exclaimed, "Well, then, I'll lay my maker by the heels," and forthwith committed his former client and patron to the Fleet prison. If this bully of the bench actually, as he is said to have done, interrupted the venerable Maynard by saying, "You have lost your knowledge of law; your memory, I tell you, is failing through old age," how must every hearer of the speech have exulted when Maynard quietly answered, "Yes, Sir George, I have forgotten more law than you ever learned; but allow me to say, I have not forgotten much."

On the other hand it should be remembered that Maynard was a man eminently qualified to sow violent animosities, and that he was a perpetual thorn in the flesh of the political barristers, whose principles he abhorred. A subtle and tricky man, he was constantly misleading judges by citing fictitious authorities, and then smiling at their professional ignorance when they had swallowed his audacious fabrications. Moreover, the manner of his speech was sometimes as offensive as its substance was dishonest. Strafford spoke a bitter criticism not only with regard to Maynard and Glyn, but with regard to the prevailing tone of the bar, when, describing the conduct of the advocates who managed his prosecution, he said: "Glynne and Maynard used me like advocates, but Palmer and Whitelock like gentlemen; and yet the latter left out nothing against me that was material to be urged against me." As a Devonshire man Maynard is one of the many cases which may be cited against the smart saying of Sergeant Davy, who used to observe: "The further I journey toward the West, the more convinced I am that the wise men come from the East." But shrewd, observant, liberal though he was in most respects, he was on one matter so far behind the spirit of the age that, blinded and ruled by an unwise sentiment, he gave his parliamentary support to an abortive measure "to prevent further building in London and the neighborhood." In support of this measure he observed, "This building is the ruin of the gentry and ruin of religion, as leaving many good people without churches to go to. This enlarging of London makes it filled with lacqueys and pages. In St. Giles's parish scarce the fifth part come to church, and we shall have no religion at last."

Whilst justice has suffered something in respect of dignity from the overbearing temper of judges to counsel, from collisions of the bench with the bar, and from the mutual hostility of rival advocates, she has at times sustained even greater injury from the jealousies and altercations of judges. Too often wearers of the ermine, sitting on the same bench, nominally for the purpose of assisting each other, have roused the laughter of the bar, and the indignation of suitors, by their petty squabbles. "It now comes to my turn," an Irish judge observed, when it devolved on him to support the decision of one or the other of two learned coadjutors, who had stated with more fervor than courtesy altogether irreconcilable opinions—"It now comes to my turn to declare my view of the case, and fortunately I can be brief. I agree with my brother A, from the irresistible force of my brother B's arguments." Extravagant as this case may appear, the King's Bench of Westminster Hall, under Mansfield and Kenyon, witnessed several not less scandalous and comical differences. Taking thorough pleasure in his work, Lord Mansfield was not less industrious than impartial in the discharge of his judicial functions; so long as there was anything for him to learn with regard to a cause, he not only sought for it with pains but with a manifest pleasure similar to that delight in judicial work which caused the French Advocate, Cottu, to say of Mr. Justice Bayley: "Il s'amuse a juger:" but notwithstanding these good qualities, he was often culpably deficient in respect for the opinions of his subordinate coadjutors. At times a vain desire to impress on the minds of spectators that his intellect was the paramount power of the bench; at other times a personal dislike to one of his puisnes caused him to derogate from the dignity of his court, in cases where he was especially careful to protect the interests of suitors. With silence more disdainful than any words could have been, he used to turn away from Mr. Justice Willes, at the moment when the latter expected his chief to ask his opinion; and on such occasions the indignant puisne seldom had the prudence and nerve to conceal his mortification. "I have not been consulted, and I will be heard!" he once shrieked forth in a paroxysm of rage caused by Mansfield's contemptuous treatment; and forty years afterwards Jeremy Bentham, who was a witness of the insult and its effect, observed: "At this distance of time—five-and-thirty or forty years—the feminine scream issuing out of his manly frame still tingles in my ears." Mansfield's overbearing demeanor to his puisnes was reproduced with less dignity by his successor; but Buller, the judge who wore ermine whilst he was still in his thirty-third year, and who confessed that his "idea of heaven was to sit at Nisi Prius all day, and to play whist all night," seized the first opportunity to give Taffy Kenyon a lesson in good manners by stating, with impressive self-possession and convincing logic, the reasons which induced him to think the judgment delivered by his chief to be altogether bad in law and argument.

[30] One of Jekyll's best displays of brilliant impudence was perpetrated on a Welsh judge, who was alike notorious for his greed of office and his want of personal cleanliness. "My dear sir," Jekyll observed in his most amiable manner to this most unamiable personage, "you have asked the minister for almost everything else, why don't you ask him for a piece of soap and a nail-brush?"



CHAPTER XLI.

WITS IN 'SILK' AND PUNSTERS IN 'ERMINE.'

Whilst Lord Camden held the chiefship of the Common Pleas, he was walking with his friend Lord Dacre on the outskirts of an Essex village, when they passed the parish stocks. "I wonder," said the Chief Justice, "whether a man in the stocks endures a punishment that is physically painful? I am inclined to think that, apart from the sense of humiliation and other mental anguish, the prisoner suffers nothing, unless the populace express their satisfaction at his fate by pelting him with brick-bats." "Suppose you settle your doubts by putting your feet into the holes," rejoined Lord Dacre, carelessly. In a trice the Chief Justice was sitting on the ground with his feet some fifteen inches above the level of his seat, and his ankles encircled by hard wood. "Now, Dacre!" he exclaimed, enthusiastically, "fasten the bolts, and leave me for ten minutes." Like a courteous host Lord Dacre complied with the whim of his guest, and having placed it beyond his power to liberate himself bade him 'farewell' for ten minutes. Intending to saunter along the lane and return at the expiration of the stated period, Lord Dacre moved away, and falling into one of his customary fits of reverie, soon forgot all about the stocks, his friend's freak, and his friend. In the meantime the Chief Justice went through every torture of an agonizing punishment—acute shootings along the confined limbs, aching in the feet, angry pulsations under the toes, violent cramps in the muscles and thighs, gnawing pain at the point where his person came in immediate contact with the cold ground, pins-and-needles everywhere. Amongst the various forms of his physical discomfort, faintness, fever, giddiness, and raging thirst may be mentioned. He implored a peasant to liberate him, and the fellow answered with a shout of derision; he hailed a passing clergyman, and explained that he was not a culprit, but Lord Camden, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and one of Lord Dacre's guests. "Ah!" observed the man of cloth, not so much answering the wretched culprit as passing judgment on his case, "mad with liquor. Yes, drunkenness is sadly on the increase; 'tis droll, though, for a drunkard in the stocks to imagine himself a Chief Justice!" and on he passed. A farmer's wife jogged by on her pillion, and hearing the wretched man exclaim that he should die of thirst, the good creature gave him a juicy apple, and hoped that his punishment would prove for the good of his soul. Not ten minutes, but ten hours did the Chief Justice sit in the stocks, and when at length he was carried into Lord Dacre's house, he was in no humor to laugh at his own miserable plight. Not long afterwards he presided at a trial in which a workman brought an action against a magistrate who had wrongfully placed him in the stocks. The counsel for the defence happening to laugh at the statement of the plaintiff, who maintained that he had suffered intense pain during his confinement, Lord Camden leaned forwards and inquired in a whisper, "Brother were you ever in the stocks?" "Never, my lord," answered the advocate, with a look of lively astonishment "I have been," was the whispered reply; "and let me assure you that the agony inflicted by the stocks is—awful!"