have commenced before the memory of man.' We were beaten in the committee by one vote. After this speech, Mansfield, afterwards Sir James Mansfield, came up to me in Westminster Hall, and said he heard that I was going to leave London, but strongly advised me to remain in London. I told him that I could not, that I had taken a house in Newcastle, that I had an increasing family, in short, that I was compelled to quit London. Afterwards Wilson came to me and pressed me in the same manner to remain in London, adding, what was very kind, that he would insure me 400/. the next year.' I gave him the same answer as I had given Mansfield. However, I did remain in London, and lived to make Mansfield Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Wilson a Puisne Judge."*

This narrative is chargeable with several inaccuracies, which show that Lord Eldon's senile reminiscences of his youth are to be taken with grains of allowance. How the counsel should have allowed the committee to encroach on the privileges of the Bar, and dictate who should reply, is rather incredible; and I cannot help suspecting that the argument to prove the antiquity of the borough of Clitheroe had been premeditated, instead of being improvised. But if he asserted to Sir James Mansfield and Mr. Wilson that a house was then taken for him at Newcastle, this was "a white lye." His supposed determination then to retire from London, on account of professional disappointments and pecuniary embarrassment, must have been pure invention, as his fortune had been made, more than a year before, by Akroyd v. Smithson, and (best of all!) Wilson,-having been created a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas by Lord Thurlow,-died in the year 1793, eight years before Lord Eldon was Chancellor!

It is likewise said, that he first got into the lead of civil causes on the circuit by lucky hits. I am glad that the account very generally circulated of his earliest triumph in the North is not in the "ANECDOTE Book," as it must be fabulous. "He was retained as junior counsel in an action of assault by a Mr. Fermor against a Miss Saustern, an elderly maiden lady. His leader was absent; and, having addressed the jury, he proved by witnesses, that, the parties playing at whist, high words arose between them,--whereupon the defendant threw her cards at the plaintiff, which knocked him down. The defendant's counsel argued, 'that there was a fatal variance between the allegata and probata, the declaration stating that the defendant assaulted the plaintiff with her hand,-whereas the assault was committed by pieces of pasteboard converted into missiles. The plaintiff was about to be nonsuited, when Mr. Scott insisted that the proofs substantially supported the averment in the declaration of an assault committed with the hand; for that, in the common parlance of the card table, which alone ought to be regarded in such a case, the hand' means the hand of cards,'—and therefore that Miss Saustern, having thrown her cards in Mr. Fermor's face, had clearly assaulted the plaintiff with her hand.

* Twiss, i. 87.

The Judge then overruled the objection, and the jury found a verdict for the plaintiff, with large damages."*

At times he would himself ascribe his success on the circuit to his [1777, 1782.] the summing up of Buller. having gained a verdict in a great mining cause against "When I went to the ball, that evening," he would boast, "I was received with open arms by every one. Oh! my fame was established; I really think I might have married half the pretty girls in the room that night. Never was a man so courted!"

Then he would relate how, after going seven years to Carlisle without any business, he had a guinea brief delivered to him by accident, for the defendant in an assault case, where, the plaintiff's attorney's name being Hobson, he made a very obvious and bad joke about "Hobson's choice," and induced the jury to give one penny damages. Thus he concluded his narrative: "When I record that, at the same assizes, I received seventy guineas for this joke-for briefs came in rapidly-I record a fact, which proves that a lawyer may begin to acquire wealth by a little pleasantry, who might long wait before professional knowledge introduced him into notice.'

But he would assert, that he was "first brought into notice on the circuit by breaking the Ten Commandments,"-thus explaining the enigma :—“I was counsel in a cause, the fate of which depended on our being able to make out who was the founder of an ancient chapel. I went to view it. There was nothing to be observed that gave any indication of its date or history. However, I observed that the Ten Commandments were written on some old plaster, which, from its position, I conjectured might cover an arch. Acting on this, I bribed the clerk with five shillings, to allow me to chip away a part of the plaster; and, after two or three attempts, I found the key-stone of an [1776, 1786.] arch, on which were engraved the arms of an ancestor of one of the parties. This evidence decided the cause; and I ever afterwards had reason to remember with much satisfaction my having, on that occasion, broken the Ten Commandments."

I may now safely dismiss the notion of his having made his fortune by any one great speech. Erskine certainly was miraculously, as were, raised at once to the very top of his profession by his defence of Captain Baillie; but I can testify that there has been no such case for the last forty years, I believe there have been very few such instances in any age, and it is quite certain that Scott got on by the gradual discovery of his learning, ability, and usefulness.

While he attended most diligently to the interests of his clients, he entered with much spirit into all the gamesome proceedings of his brethren at the Bar. In the Grand Courts held for the trial of mock offences "against the peace of our Lord the Junior," he acted a distinguished part,-insomuch that, in 1780, he was appointed Solicitor General, and in 1781 Attorney General of the circuit,-being a terror to

* Last edition of Joe Miller's "Jest Book."

evil doers, while he held these high offices,-and giving a foretaste of the activity with which he prosecuted traitors and libellers when he became a law officer of the Crown.*

Northern Circuit stories, according to the custom of Northern Circuit men (in former times,) constituted the staple of Lord Eldon's jocular talk as long as he lived. I will mention a few of those which he most frequently repeated. "While Sir Thomas Davenport, a very dull orator, was making a long speech at the York Assizes, a chimneysweeper's boy, who had climbed up to a dangerous place in front of a high gallery, having been put to sleep by him, fell down, and was killed. Whereupon 1, being then Attorney General of the circuit, indicted Sir Thomas in our Grand Courtt for the murder of the boy; and the indictment (according to the rule of law which requires that the weapon shall be described, and that there shall be an averment of its value, or that it is of no value)‡ alleged that the murder was committed with ‘a certain blunt instrument of no value called a LONG SPEECH.'

"When I first went the Northern Circuit, I employed my time, having no business of my own, in attending to the manner in which the leading counsel did their business. I left Lancaster at the end of a circuit, with my friend Jack Lee, at that period a leader upon the circuit. We supped and slept at Kirby Lonsdale, or Kirby Stephen. After supper I said to him, 'I have observed that throughout circuit, in all causes in which you are concerned, good, bad, indifferent, whatever their nature was, you equally exerted yourself to the uttermost to gain verdicts, stating evidence and quoting cases, as such statement and quotation should give you a chance of success, the evidence and the cases not being stated clearly, or quoted with a strict attention to accuracy and to fair and just representation. Can that,' said I, 'Lee, be right? Can it be justified?'-'Oh, yes,' he said, 'undoubtedly. Dr. Johnson has said that counsel were at liberty to state, as the parties themselves would state, what it was most for their interest to state." After some interval, and when he had his evening bowl of milk punch and two or three pipes of tobacco, he suddenly said, 'Come, Master Scott, let us go to bed. I have been thinking upon the question that you asked me, and I am not quite so sure that the conduct you represented will bring a man peace at the last.””

"Jack Lee, though a Yorkshireman, had attended the York Assizes

* There was a corresponding field of ambition open on my circuit-the Oxford; but, according to the obscurity of my career, I only reached the dignity of Cryer, -holding a fire-shovel in my hand as the emblem of my office. An epitaph was made for me, in the natural expectation that I should die in this office,-thus charitably concluding:

"He of the Circuit long was Cryer,

But now we hope he's somewhat higher."

†The Grand Court is holden with a view to the discipline of the Bar, but chiefly in the High-Jinks fashion, to bring mock charges against the members.

This was with a view to the deodand, and continued to be law, till, by a bill which I had the honour to introduce and carry through Parliament in the year 1846, all deodands were abolished.

several years without a brief. One day after dinner he said, 'I find a prophet has no honour in his own country, and as I have never yet received a single guinea at this place, I will shake the dust off my feet -leave it this very night, and never be seen in this room again. Davenport and Wedderburn thereupon drew up a brief which they entitled REX v. INHABITANTS OF HUM-TOWN, and which in due form gave instructions in a prosecution for not repairing a road within the parish. leading from Goose-green to Crackskull-common.' This they sent to Lee's lodgings, with a guinea as the fee. In the evening the barristers assembled as usual in the circuit-room to sup and play at cards, and the discontented Yorkshireman appearing among them, Wedderburn said, ‘Bless me, Lee, I thought you were gone!' 'Well,' said Jack, ‘it is very extraordinary: I was just going, I was shaking the dust of this place off my feet as an abominable place that I never would see again, when, lo and behold, a brief is brought to me and I must stay.' Well,' said Davenport, in what cause may it be?' Lee answered, 'In the King v. Hum-town.' 'Oh dear,' cried Davenport, they brought me a brief in that case with a bad guinea, and I would not take it. I dare say they have given you the bad guinea.' 'I have it in my pocket,' said Lee, here it is.' Davenport, looking at it, said, 'Yes, the very same guinea,' and put it in his pocket. They then told him the joke they had practised upon him, that they might not lose the pleasure of his company. Although a good-natured man, he never forgave this joke, although it kept him at York, where, in a few years after, he led every cause.

6

"At an

As a pendant to this, Lord Eldon used to relate a story which he has actually thus recorded in his "Anecdote Book," but for which I think there could only have been a slight foundation of fact. assizes at Lancaster we found Dr. Johnson's friend, Jemmy Boswell, lying upon the pavement-inebriated. We subscribed at supper a guinea for him, and half a crown for his clerk, and sent him, when he waked next morning, a brief with instructions to move for what we denominated the writ of Quare adhæsit pavimento,' with observations duly calculated to induce him to think that it required great learning to explain the necessity of granting it, to the Judge before whom he was to move. Boswell sent all round the town to attorneys for books that might enable him to distinguish himself-but in vain. He moved, however, for the writ, making the best use he could of the observations in the brief. The Judge was perfectly astonished, [A. D. 1781.] and the audience amazed. The Judge said, 'I never heard of such a writ-what can it be that adheres pavimento?-Are any of you gentlemen at the Bar able to explain this?" The Bar laughed. At last one of them said, 'My Lord, Mr. Boswell last night adhæsit pavimento. There was no moving him for some time. At last he was carried to bed, and he has been dreaming about himself and the pavement, ""*-But Jemmy Boswell, who has written one of the

* Twiss, vol. i. ch. vi.

most entertaining and instructive books in the English language, and had often pleaded causes of great importance in the Court of Session, and at the bar of the House of Lords, could not by possibility have been taken in by such a palpable hoax. The scene here described could not have been acted before the King's Judges, but must be a reminiscence of something which had taken place in the Grand Court when the barristers were sitting in HIGH JINKS foribus clausis.

6

6

Lord Eldon is said to have given this amusing account of a trial at York, arising out of a horse-race: "One of the conditions was, that each horse should be ridden by a gentleman.' In an action for the stakes, the question arose, whether the plaintiff was a gentleman or not?' After much evidence and oratory on both sides, the Judge thus summed up: Gentlemen of the Jury, when I see you in that box I call you gentlemen, for I know you are such there; but out of that box I do not know what may be the requisites that constitute a gentleman; therefore I can give you no direction, except that you will consider of your verdict. The jury found for the defendant. Next morning the plaintiff challenged both Law and me, who were conducting the cause against him, for having said that he was no gentleWe sent him this answer, that we could not think of fighting one who had been found no gentleman by the solemn verdict of twelve of his countrymen.'

man.

6

He once had a narrow escape from a watery grave. From Ulverstone to Lancaster there is a short but very dangerous cut across the sands, and, being in a hurry, he was going to take it at the time of greatest peril,-when the tide was beginning to

flow. But as he was setting off he asked the [A. D. 1776–1782.] landlord whether any persons were ever lost in going to Lancaster by the sea-shore. 66 No, no," was the answer, "I think nobody has ever been lost-they have all been found at low water."+ To illustrate the unreasonable complaints against public functionaries,

* Twiss, (vol. i. ch. vi.) on the authority of Mrs. Foster. An article in the "Law Review" (No. II. p. 279,) attributed to Lord Brougham, says,-" This is a great mistake. The person in question blustered and talked big, and threatened to call out Mr. Law, who led the cause, and could alone have said the offensive words. That gallant individual put off his journey to Durham for half a day, and walked about, booted and spurred, before the coffee-house, the most public place in York, ready to repel force, if offered, by force-because personal chastisement had also been threatened. No message was sent, and no attempt was made to provoke a breach of the peace. It is very possible Lord Eldon may have said, and Lord Ellenborough too, that they were not bound to treat one in such a predicament as a gentleman, and hence the story has arisen in the lady's mind. The fact was as well known on the Northern Circuit, as was the answer of a witness to a question, whether the party had a right by his circumstances to keep a pack of fox-hounds: 'No more right than I to keep a pack of archbishops.'

† There is an ancient office of "Guide across Ulverstone Sands," which is in the gift of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and to which, upon a. vacancy, I have lately appointed; so that I hope to hear no more of "bodies being found at low water.