CXCII. He officiates at Oxford as cipal of New Inn Hall. on "men running maidens." CHAP. in the East Indies, and the job had been arranged that he should retain these appointments during his absence, perA. D. 1773. forming their duties by deputy. Accordingly John Scott was named Vice Principal of New Inn Hall, having rooms for his family in the Lodge, and Vice Law Professor with a salary of 60l. a year, being merely to read the lectures written Vice Prin- by his superior. He himself gave the following amusing account of his début in this line. "The law professor sent His lecture me the first lecture which I had to read immediately to the students, and which I began without knowing a single word away with that was in it. It was upon the statute (4 & 5 P. & M. c. 8.) Of young men running away with maidens.' Fancy me reading with about 140 boys and young men all giggling at the professor! Such a tittering audience no one ever had!" He likewise eked out his income by private pupils sent to him from University College; and with the aid of a quarterly present from his brother William, and of strict good management, he and his wife could make the two ends meet. parties were the only entertainments they could venture to give to their friends. At these symposia they sometimes had a no less distinguished guest than Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Mrs. John Scott used to relate that she herself helped him one evening to fifteen cups of his favourite beverage. He takes pupils. His anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. Tea Lord Eldon does not seem, like his brother Sir William Scott, to have cultivated literary society on removing to London; but he watched the great Lexicographer with much attention, and was eager to get into his company during his visits to Alma Mater. "The Doctor was so absent," he would say, “that I have seen him standing for a long time without movingwith a foot on each side of the kennel, which was then in the middle of the High Street, Oxford, with his eyes fixed on the running water." He related, that "in the common room of University College, a controversialist having frequently interrupted Johnson during a narrative of what had fallen. under his own observation, saying, 'I deny that,' he at last vociferated, Sir, Sir, you must have forgot that an author has said, Plus negabit unus asinus in unâ horâ, quam centum philosophi probaverint in centum annis.' -But the following is his best Johnsonian anecdote. "I had a walk in New Inn Hall Garden with Dr. Johnson, Sir Robert Chambers, CHAP. CXCII. and some other gentlemen. Sir Robert was gathering snails and throwing them over the wall into his neighbour's garden. A. D. 1773. The Doctor reproached him very roughly, asserting that this was unmannerly and unneighbourly. Sir,' said Sir Robert, 'my neighbour is a dissenter.' 'Oh,' said the Doctor, if so, Chambers, toss away, toss away, as hard as you can.' "The real good humour here displayed makes us forget the apparent bigotry. At this time Lord Eldon gave the first specimen of his His first judgment. judicial powers--which must be allowed to have been very promising, although as yet he had a very slender store of jurisprudential lore. Being senior resident fellow of University College, two under-graduates came to complain to him that "the cook had sent them up an apple-pie that could not be eaten." The defendant being summoned, said, “I have a remarkably fine fillet of veal in the kitchen." The Judge immediately overruled this plea as tendering an immaterial issue, and ordered a profert in curiam of the apple-pie. The messenger sent to execute this order brought intelligence that the other undergraduates, taking advantage of the absence of the two plaintiffs, had eaten up the whole of the apple-pie. Thereupon, judgment was thus pronounced: "The charge here is, that the cook has sent up an apple-pie that cannot be eaten. Now that cannot be said to be uneatable which has been eaten; and as this apple-pie has been eaten, it was eatable. Let the cook be absolved." He used to say, in telling the story, "I often wished, in after life, that all the causes I had to decide had been apple-pie causes, and then no one could have complained of my doubts or delays. But he was now, by gigantic efforts, laying the foundation of the unrivalled reputation as a great magistrate, which he acquired when presiding on the woolsack. Having taken his Master's degree, on the 13th of February, 1773, — he began the study of the law with the most devoted resolution to conquer all its difficulties. There was but little chance of a college living falling in during his year of grace, and on the 19th of November following, the anniversary of His vigorous study of the law. CHAP. A. D. 1774. He falls into ill health. - his Blackshiels marriage, -he actually gave up his fellowship. His efforts were now redoubled, as his new profession afforded the only chance of his being able to maintain himself and his family. He rose in the morning at four - took little exercisemade short and abstemious meals, and sat up studying late at night with a wet towel round his head to drive away drowsiness. I am grieved to hear that the reading of "Coke upon Littleton" is going out of fashion among law students. When I was commencing my legal curriculum, I was told this anecdote:- A young student asked Sir Vicary Gibbs how he should learn his profession. - Sir Vicary. "Read Coke upon Littleton."- Student. "I have read Coke upon Littleton." Sir Vicary. "Read Coke upon Littleton over again."- Student. "I have read it twice over."— Sir Vicary. "Thrice?"- Student. Yes, three times over very carefully. Sir Vicary. "You may now sit down and make an abstract of it." If my opinion is of any value, I would heartily join in the same advice. The book contains much that is obsolete, and much that is altered by statutable enactment; but no man can thoroughly understand the law as it now is without knowing the changes it has undergone, and no man can be acquainted with its history without being familiar with the writings of Lord Coke. Nor is he by any means so dry and forbidding as is generally supposed. He is certainly immethodical, but he is singularly perspicuous, he fixes the attention, his quaintness is often most amusing, and he excites our admiration by the inexhaustible stores of erudition, which, without any effort, he seems spontaneously to pour forth. Thus were our genuine lawyers trained. Lord Eldon read Coke upon Littleton once, twice, and thrice, and made an abstract of the whole work as a useful exercise — obeying the wise injunction, "Legere multum non multa." On the 8th of March, 1774, he had a fresh incentive to industry, in the birth of a son. Soon after, his health suffering, he consulted a physician, who seriously advised him to be more moderate in his application: but he answered, "It is no matter-I must either do as I am now doing, or starve." He had a little relaxation in going for a CHAP. CXCII. few days, four times a year, to keep his terms in the Middle Temple, and during the general election in 1774, he paid a visit to his native place, when he took up his freedom, as the 1773-1775son of a "hoastman," and voted for Sir Walter Blackett and Sir Matthew White Ridley. It is said that in this journey, coming late at night to the Hen and Chickens, at Birmingham, the house he used to frequent in travelling between Newcastle and Oxford, the landlady, seeing him look so dreadfully ill, insisted on dressing something hot for his supper, saying, "she was sure she should never see him again." While residing in New Inn Hall, his brother Henry married, and he wrote a number of letters to his new sisterin-law and to his other relations at Newcastle, which are preserved; but they are dreadfully stiff and dull, and indicate an utter loss of his ante-nuptial sprightliness. * He removes from London. Oxford to His "first perch," and It was full time that he should be transferred to a livelier scene, and the approach of his call to the Bar rendered his residence in London indispensable. Accordingly, in the long vacation of 1775, he bade Oxford a final adieu, and he moved, with his family, to a small house in Cursitor Street, near Chancery Lane. This house he would point out to his bought friends late in life, saying, "There was my first perch: sprats for many a time have I run down from Cursitor Street to Fleet Fleet Market to buy sixpenn'orth of sprats for our supper." how he supper in Market. of Lord He now diligently attended the Courts in Westminster His dislike Hall, with his note-book in his hand. Lord Bathurst pre- Mansfield. siding in the Court of Chancery, from whom little was to be learned, he took his place in the students' box in the Court of King's Bench, where Lord Mansfield shone in the zenith of his fame; but he never would acknowledge the extraordinary merits of this great Judge, and was always disposed to sneer at him. One source of prejudice was the marked predilection of the Christ Church man for his college, and the slighting manner in which he would talk of " University" along with all other colleges and halls at Oxford. This we shall find was the ostensible ground for Mr. Scott afterwards quitting the Common Law for Equity. * Twiss, ch. iv. CHAP. His dia Serjeant Hill. He seems to have been less struck by the learning of the Judges, than by that of Serjeant Hill-supposed to be the greatest black-letter lawyer since Maynard's time, and as much celebrated for his eccentricity as his learning, insomuch that on his wedding-night, going to his chambers in the Temple, and continuing there reading cases till next morning, he • Thought of the 'Year Books' and forgot his bride.” Lord Eldon related that, at their first interview in Westlogue with minster Hall, being entire strangers, the following dialogue took place between them:-Hill, stopping Scott. "Pray, young gentleman, do you think herbage and pannage rateable to the poor's rate?"-Scott. "Sir, 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." -Hill. "Upon my word, 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 custom being now pretty general for law students to become pupils of a special pleader, or of an equity draughtsman, Mr. Scott would have been very glad to have conformed to it, if the state of his finances would have enabled him to pay the usual fee of a hundred guineas; but this he could not do without borrowing, a habit he ever held in abhorrence; and he would have been without any preliminary discipline of this sort, if Mr. Duane, an eminent Catholic conveyancer†, had not agreed to let him have "the run of his chambers," for six months, without a fee. He was particularly anxious The first day I dined in Lincoln's Inn Hall, a brother student, whose name I had not before heard of. -but who has since deservedly reached high professional distinction 1 after a long silence in our mess, thus addressed me: “Pray, Sir, what is your opinion of the scintilla juris?" I entered into a discussion with him about the feeding of uses - but I am afraid I never could get him to think me "an extraordinary sensible young gentleman." † At this time conveyancing was chiefly in the hands of Roman Catholics. Being long disqualified by their religion from being called to the Bar, they practised successfully in chambers; and being employed at first by their co-religionists, their industry and learning forced them into general business. Charles Butler, whom I well knew, may be considered the last of this race. |