A.D. 1704. a "cute lad," the father desired that he should be bred to his own profession of an attorney; but the mother, who was a rigid Presbyterian, very much opposed this plan. She expressed a strong wish "that Philip should be put apprentice to some honester trade;" and sometimes she declared her ambition to be that, breeding, him a parson in her own religious persuasion, "she might see his head wag in the pulpit." However, her consent to Philip's legal destination was at last obtained on an offer being received from Mr. Salkeld, a very eminent London attorney, who had been many years Mr. Yorke's town agent, to take the boy as articled clerk without a fee. Philip Yorke, when transferred to the metropolis, exhibited a rare instance of great natural abilities, joined with an early resolution to rise in the world, supported by acquired good habits and aided by singular good luck. A desk being assigned to him in Mr. Salkeld's office, in Brooke Street, Holborn, he applied to business with the most extraordinary assiduity, and, at the same time, he employed every leisure moment in endeavouring to supply the defects of his limited A.D. 1705 education. All lawyers' clerks were then obliged in 1706. a certain degree to understand Latin, in which many law proceedings were carried on; but he, not contented with being able to construe the "Chirograph of a fine," or to draw a "Nar," took delight in perusing Virgil and Cicero, and made himself well acquainted with the other more popular Roman classics, though he never mastered the minutiae of Latin prosody, and, from the apprehension of a false quantity, ventured with trembling on a Latin quotation. Greek he hardly affected to be acquainted with. d "By these means he gained the entire good will and esteem of his master; who, observing in him abilities and application that prognosticated his future eminence, entered him as a student in the Temple, and suffered him to dine in the Hall A.D. 1706. INTRODUCED TO PARKER. 161 during the terms. But his mistress, a notable woman, thinking she might take such liberties with a gratis clerk, used frequently to send him from his business on family errands, and to fetch in little necessaries from Covent Garden and other markets. This, when he became a favourite with his master, and intrusted with his business and cash, he thought an indignity, and got rid of it by a stratagem, which prevented complaints or expostulation. In his accounts with his master there frequently occurred, coach-hire for roots of celery and turnips from Covent Garden, and a barrel of oysters from the fishmonger's, &c., which Mr. Salkeld observing, and urging on his wife the impropriety and ill housewifery of such a practice, put an end to it." g 6 There were at the same time in Mr. Salkeld's office several young gentlemen of good family and connections, who had been sent there to be initiated in the practical part of the law —Mr. Parker, afterwards Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Mr. Jocelyn, afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and Mr. Strange, afterwards Sir John Strange, Master of the Rolls. With these Philip Yorke, though an articled clerk, associated on terms of perfect equality, and they had the merit of discovering and encouraging his good qualities. He now received from time to time Latin letters from his former preceptor, to encourage him in his career, and to give him the news of Bethnal Green. In one of these, Morland, after dwelling with complacency on the talents of his pupil, confidently predicts the youth's future celebrity, and pronounces that to have been the most auspicious day of his life when the cultivation of so happy a genius was first committed to his charge:-" Non mirandum est si futuram tui nominis celebritatem meus præsagiat animus. Quas tantopere olim vices meas dolui, eas hodie gratulor mihi plurimum, cui tale tandem contigerit ingenium excolendum. Nullum unquam diem gratiorem mihi illuxisse in perpetuum reputabo, quàm quo te pater tuus mihi tradidit in disciplinam.” But the young man still had to struggle with many difficulties, and he probably would have been obliged from penury to go upon the roll of attorneys, rising only to be clerk to the magistrates at petty sessions, or perhaps to the dignity of town clerk of Dover, had it not been for his accidental introduction to Lord Chief Justice Parker, which was the foundation of all his prosperity and greatness. This distinguished 8 Letter to Cooksey from "an old man of the law, who knew him well."-Cooksey, p. 71. VOL. VI. M 1712. Judge had a high opinion of Mr. Salkeld, who was respected by all ranks of the profession, and asked him one day, if he could tell him of a decent and intelligent person who might serve as a sort of law tutor for his sons,-to assist and direct A.D. 1707 them in their professional studies. The attorney eagerly recommended his clerk, Philip Yorke, who was immediately retained in that capacity, and giving the highest satisfaction by his assiduity and his obliging manners, gained the warm friendship of the sons, and the weighty, persevering, and unscrupulous patronage of the father. He now bade adieu to the smoky office in Brooke Street, Holborn," and he had a commodious chamber assigned him in the Chief Justice's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Released from the drudgery not only of going to Covent Garden market, but of attending captions and serving process, he devoted himself with fresh vigour to the abstruse parts of the law and to his more liberal studies. Farther, he took great pains to acquire the habit of correct composition in English-generally so much neglected by English lawyers that many of the most eminent of them will be found, in their written “ opinions," violating the rules of grammar, and without the least remorse constructing their sentences in a slovenly manner, for which a schoolboy would be whipped. The "Tatler" had done much to inspire a literary taste into all ranks. This periodical had ceased, but being now succeeded by the "Spectator," Philip Yorke gave his days and nights to the papers of Addison.' 66 Although he never approached the excellence of his model, he was so far pleased with his own proficiency that he aspired to the honour of writing a "Spectator." Accordingly, with great pains, he composed the well-known Letter, signed PHILIP HOMEBRED," and dropped it into the Lion's mouth. To his inexpressible delight, on Monday, April 12, 1712, it came out as No. 364, with the motto added by Steele : 66 "Navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere." As a lawyer desirous of upholding our craft by all fair means, I should have been proud to have warmly praised this h" Three years he sat his smoky room in Pens, paper, ink, and pounce consumin'." i This undoubted fact shows strikingly the difference between speaking and writing; for some of those who did not at all know the division of a discourse into sentences, or the grammatical construction of a sentence, have been listened to with great and just admiration when addressing a jury,-without their inaccuracies and inelegancies being discovered. Erskine could compose with accuracy and elegance, but this could be said of very few of his contemporaries. A.D. 1712. HIS PAPER IN THE "SPECTATOR." k 163 performance, but I am sorry to acknowledge that I cannot honestly object to the terms in which it was "vilipended" by Dr. Johnson. I will, however, select one or two of the best passages, in the hope that the reader may form a more favourable judgment of it. Having described a foolish mother, who is persuaded that "to chain her son down to the ordinary methods of education with others of his age, would be to cramp his faculties, and do an irreparable injury to his wonderful capacity," Mr. Philip Homebred, trying to imitate the manner of Addison, thus proceeds :-" I happened to visit at the house last week, and missing the young gentleman at the tea-table, where he seldom fails to officiate, could not, upon so extraordinary a circumstance, avoid inquiring after him. My Lady told me he was gone with his woman, in order to make some preparations for their equipage; for that she intended very speedily to carry him to travel. The oddness of the expression shocked me a little; however, I soon recovered myself enough to let her know that all I was willing to understand by it was, that she designed this summer to show her son his estate in a distant county in which he had never yet been. But she soon took care to rob me of that agreeable mistake, and let me into the whole affair." When I came 66 to reflect at night, as my custom is, upon the circumstances of the day, I could not but believe that this humour of carrying a boy to travel in his mother's lap, and that upon pretence of learning men and things, is a case of an extraordinary nature, and carries on it a particular stamp of folly. I did not remember to have met with its parallel within the compass of my observation, though I could call to mind some not extremely unlike it. From hence my thoughts took occasion to ramble into the general notion of travelling, as it is now made a part of education. Nothing is more frequent than to take a lad from grammar and taw, and under the tuition of some poor scholar, who is willing to be banished for thirty pounds a year and a little victuals, send him crying and snivelling into foreign countries. Thus he spends his time as children do at puppetshows, and with much the same advantage, in staring and gaping at an amazing variety of strange things; strange, indeed, to one who is not prepared to comprehend the reasons and meaning of them; whilst he should be laying the solid k "He would not allow that the paper (No. 364) on carrying a boy to travel, signed Philip Homebred, which was reported to be written by the Ld. Ch. Hardwicke, had merit. He said, 'it was quite vulgar, and had nothing in it luminous.'"-Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. vi. p. 152. 66 foundations of knowledge in his mind, and furnishing it with just rules to direct his future progress in life, under some skilful master of the art of instruction."-Here we have good sense and grammatical language, but does the writer give us "" thoughts that breathe, and words that burn?"—has he succeeded in attaining an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious?" Had he taken to literature as a trade, he would have had poor encouragement from Lintot and Cave, and he would hardly have risen to the distinction of being one of the heroes of the Dunciad. I fear me it will be said that a great lawyer is made ex quovis ligno, and that he who would starve in Grub Street from his dulness, if he takes to Westminster Hall, may become "the most illustrious of Chancellors.' This paper, though not of the highest excellence, is said to A.D. 1712 have gained for the writer the notice of Lord Somers; 1715. and there is now at Wimpole a pocket Virgil on the flyleaf of which are the following words, in the handwriting of Lord Somers, "Sum Johannis Dryden, 1685,"-supposed to have been given to him by the great poet, and on this occasion presented to Mr. Yorke as an incentive to literary exertion. It was rumoured that our law student wrote another, which was published in a subsequent volume, but it probably had less applause, for he did not distinctly own it, and his family could never identify it. He wisely adhered to juridical studies, and laboured more and more assiduously to qualify himself for his profession. He now regularly attended the courts in term time, taking notes of the arguments and judgments,-which in the evening he revised and digested. He likewise devoted himself to oratory, and acquired that close and self-possessed manner of speaking before the public by which he was afterwards distinguished. I do not find any thing expressly said about his politics in early life, but, from his father's connection with the Dissenters, he was probably bred in the Low Church party. He, no doubt, was a zealous Whig when patronised by Lord Parker; and I do not find any charge of inconsistency ever brought against him. The house of Brunswick was actually on the throne prior to his appearance in public life. He was called to the bar in Easter Term, 1715, being then in his twenty-third year." m "Parliament. tent. 6o die Maij, 1715.Mr Simpson T. proposed by Mr Jauncy, Mr York P. proposed by Mr Mulso, Mr fforster |