made the society willing to do him good. He appeared very ambitious to learn to write, and one of the attornies got a board knocked up at a window on the top of a staircase, and that was his desk, where he sat and wrote after-copies of court and other hands the clerks gave him. He made himself so expert a writer, that he took in business, and earned some pence by hackneywriting; and thus, by degrees, he pushed his faculties, and fell to forms, and, by books that were lent him, became an exquisite entering clerk; and by the same course of improvement of himself, an able counsel, first in special pleading, then at large; and, after he was called to the bar, had practice in the King's Bench Court, equal with any there. As to his person, he was very corpulent and beastly, a mere lump of morbid flesh. He used to say, "by his troggs, (such an humourous way of talking he affected,). none could say he wanted issue of his body, for he had nine in his back." He was a fetid mass, that offended his neighbour at the bar in the sharpest degree. Those whose ill fortune it was to stand near him, were confessors, and, in summer-time, almost martyrs. This hateful decay of his carcase came upon him by continual sottishness; for, to say nothing of brandy, he was seldom without a pot of ale at his nose, or near him; that exercise was all he used; the

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rest of his life was sitting at his desk, or piping at home and that home was a taylor's house in Butcher-Row, called his lodging, and the man's wife was his nurse, or worse; but, by virtue of his money, of which he made little account, though he got a great deal, he soon became master of the family; and, being no changeling, he never removed, but was true to his friends, and they to him, to the last hour of his life.

So much for his person and education. As for his parts, none had them more lively than he wit and repartee, in an affected rusticity, were natural to him. He was ever ready, and never at a loss; and none came so near as he to be a match for Serjeant Mainard. His great dexterity was in the art of special pleading; and he would lay snares that often caught his supe riors, who were not aware of his traps. And he was so fond of success for his clients, that, rather than fail, he would set the court hard with a trick, for which he met sometimes with a reprimand, which he would wittily ward off, so that no one was much offended with him. But Hales could not bear his irregularity of life; and for that, and suspicion of his tricks, used to bear hard upon him in the Court. But no ill-usage from the bench was too hard, for his hold of business being such, as scarce any could do but himself. With all this, he had a goodness of nature

and disposition in so great a degree, that he may be deservedly styled a philanthrope. He was a very Silenus to the boys, as, in this place, I may term the students of the law, to make them merry whenever they had a mind to it. He had nothing of rigid or austere in him. If any near him at the bar grumbled at his stench, he ever converted the complaint into content and laughing with the abundance of his wit. As to his ordinary dealing, he was as honest as the driven snow was white; and why not, having no regard for money, or desire to be rich? and, for good-nature and condescension, there was not his fellow. I have seen him, for hours and halfhours together, before the court sat, stand at the bar, with an audience of students overagainst him, putting off 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.

It will be readily conceived, that this man was never cut out to be a Presbyter, or any thing that is severe and crabbed. In no time did he lean to faction, but did his business without of fence to any. He put off officious talk of government or politics with jests, and so made his wit a catholicon, or shield, to cover all his weak places and infirinities. When the Court fell

into a steady course of using the law against all kinds of offenders, this man was taken into the King's business, and had the part of drawing, and perusal of almost all indictments and informations that were then to be prosecuted, with the pleadings thereon, if any were special; and he had the settling of the large pleadings in the quo warranto against London. His Lordship had no sort of conversation with him but in the way of business and at the bar; but once, after he was in the King's business, he dined with his Lordship, and no more. And there he showed another qualification he had acquired, and that was, to play jigs upon an harpsichord, having taught himself, with the opportunity of an old virginal of his landlady's, but in such a manner, (not for defect, but figure,) as to see him were a jest. The King, observing him to be of a free disposition, loyal, friendly, and without greediness or guile, thought of him to be the Chief Justice of the King's Bench at that nice time: and the ministry could not but approve of it. So

great a weight was there at stake, as could not be trusted to men of doubtful principles, or such as any thing might tempt to desert them. While he sat in the Court of King's Bench, he gave the rule to the general satisfaction of the lawyers. But his course of life was so different from what it had been, his business incessant,

and, withal, crabbed, and his diet and exercise changed, that the constitution of his body, or head rather, could not sustain it, and he fell into an apoplexy and palsy, which numbed his parts, and he never recovered the strength of them. He outlived the judgment in the quo warranto, but was not present, otherwise than by sending his opinion by one of the Judges to be for the King, who, at the pronouncing the judgment, declared it to the Court accordingly, which is frequently done in like cases.

Lord Chief Justice Jeffries.

The worst parts of the character of Jeffries are well known. The following character takes notice only of the most disgusting. It is remarkable, that in the same page we find him censured for taking part, on two occasions, in Court, with persons of the popular party, as a sort of ingratitude to the Duke of York: as if it was the first duty of a judge to show his gratitude to his patron, and as if Jeffries was not an instrument sufficiently servile!

"This, to conclude, is the summary character of the Lord Chief Justice Jeffries, and needs no interpreter. And, since nothing historical is amiss in a design like this, I will subjoin what I have personally noted of that man, and some things of indubitable report concerning him.