due acknowledgment of his learning, and tha And men kept fools to make them merry. And these fellows, abusing one another and their betters, were a regale to him. And no friendship or dearness could be so great, in private, which he would not use ill, and to an extravagant degree, in public. No one, that had any expectations from him, was safe from his public contempt and derision, which some of his minions at the bar bitterly felt. Those above, or that could hurt or benefit him, and his hands. When he was in temper, and matters indifferent came before him, he became his seat of justice better than any other I ever saw in his place. He took a pleasure in mortifying fraudulent attorneys, and would deal forth his severities with a sort of majesty. He had extraordinary natural abilities, but little acquired, beyond what practice in affairs had supplied. He talked fluently, and with spirit; and his weakness was that he could not reprehend without scolding; and in such Billingsgate language, as should not come out of the mouth of any lainted with the vices of the times. His brother-in-law, actually fearing his virtue might be visited as a libel on the court, seriously advised him to keep a mistress in his own defence; "for he understood, from very great men, that he was ill looked upon for want of doing so; because he seemed continually to reprehend them;" which notable advice was concluded by an offer, "that, if his lordship pleased, he would help him to one." His lordship's regard to virtue, as well as his usual caution, which told him, "there was no spy like a female," made him regard this proffer "His friendship and conversation lay much with a scorn, which utterly puzzled his adviser. among the good fellows and humourists; and He was, however, tremulously alive to ridicule. his delights were, accordingly, drinking, laughAware of this infirmity, Jeffries and the Earling, singing, kissing, and all the extravagancies of Sunderland took advantage of a harmless of the bottle. He had a set of banterers, for visit he made to see a rhinoceros, to circulate the most part, near him; as, in old time, great a report that he had ridden on the animal. This threw him into a state of rage and vexation truly surprising; he turned on his questioners with unexampled fury, was seriously angry with Sir Dudley North for not contradicting it with sufficient gravity, and sent for him that he might add his testimony to his own solemn denial. His biographer, who actually performs the duty of confidante, as described in The Critic, to laugh, weep, or go mad with the principal, is also in a towering pas-none else, might depend on fair quarters at sion at the charge. He calls it," an impudent buffoon lie, which Satan himself would not have owned for his legitimate issue;" and is provoked beyond measure, that "the noble Earl, with Jeffries, and others of that crew, made merry, and never blushed at the lie of their own making; but valued themselves upon it, as a very good jest." He was afflicted by no other "great calumny," notwithstanding the watchfulness of his foes. One of his last public acts was to stop the bloody proceedings of Jeffries in the West, which he did by his influence with the king. He did not long sur-man. He called it giving a lick with the rough vive the profligate prince, whom he sometimes side of his tongue. It was ordinary to hear him was able to guide and to soften. He walked say, Go, you are a filthy, lousy, nitty rascal; with in the coronation of James the Second, when much more of like elegance. Scarce a day imperfectly recovered from a fever; and, after passed that he did not chide some one, or other, a gradual decline of some months, expired at of the bar, when he sat in the Chancery; and his house at Wroxton, really hurried to the it was commonly a lecture of a quarter of an grave by the political broils and vexations at-hour long. And they used to say, This is yours; tendant on the Great Seal. "That pestiferous my turn will be_to-morrow. He seemed to lay lump of metal," as our author terms it, was nothing; of his business to heart, nor care what given to Jeffries, whom it did not save from an he did, or left undone; and spent, in the Chanend more disastrous and fearful. cery court, what time he thought fit to spare. The work before us, as we have already in- Many times, on days of causes at his house, timated, is rendered more interesting by the the company have waited five hours in a mornadmirable characters which it contains of the ing, and, after eleven, he hath come out inflamed old lawyers. These are all drawn, not only and staring like one distracted. And that visage with great and most felicitous distinctness, but he put on when he animadverted on such as he are touched in a mild, gentlemanly, and hu- took offence at, which made him a terror to real mane spirit, which it is refreshing to recog-offenders; whom also he terrified with his face nise in these days of acrimony and slander. and voice, as if the thunder of the day of judgment Even those who were most opposed in interest broke over their heads and nothing ever made and in prejudice to the author, receive ample men tremble like his vocal inflictions. He justice from his hands. Hale, whose dislike loved to insult, and was bold without check to the court rendered him obnoxious to the but that only when his place was uppermost author, or, which is the same thing, to his bro-To give an instance. A city attorney was pether, is drawn at full length in all his austere titioned against for some abuse; and affidavit majesty. Even Serjeant Maynard, the ac- was made that when he was told of my lord knowledged "anti-restoration lawyer," whose chancellor, My lord chancellor, said he, I made praise was in all the conventicles, and who him; meaning his being a means to bring him was a hard rival of "his lordship," receives early into city business. When this affidavit was read, Well, said the lord chancellor, then I will lay my maker by the heels. And, with that conceit, one of his best old friends went to jail. One of these intemperances was fatal to him. There was a scrivener of Wapping brought to hearing for relief against a bummery bond; the contingency of losing all being showed, the bill was going to be dismissed. But one of the plaintiff's counsel said that he was a strange fellow, and sometimes went to church, sometimes to conventicles; and none could tell what to make of him; and it was thought he was a trimmer. At that the chancellor fired; and, A trimmer! said he; I have heard much of that monster, but never saw one. Come forth, Mr. Trimmer, turn you round, and let us see your shape: and, at that rate, talked so long that the poor fellow was ready to drop under him; but, at last the bill was dismissed with costs, and he went his way. In the hall, one of his friends asked him how he came off? Came off, said he, I am escaped from the terrors of that man's face, which I would scarce undergo again to save my life; I shall certainly have the frightful impression of it as long as I live. Afterwards, when the Prince of Orange came, and all was in confusion, this lord chancellor, being very obnoxious, disguised himself in order to go beyond sea. He was in a seaman's garb, and drinking a pot in a cellar. This scrivener came into the cellar after some of his clients and his eye caught that face, which made him start; and the chancellor seeing himself eyed, feigned a cough, and turned to the wall with his pot in his hand. But Mr. Trimmer went out, and gave notice that he was there; whereupon the mob flowed in, and he was in extreme hazard of his life; but the lord mayor saved him and lost himself. For the chancellor being hurried with such crowd and noise before him, and appearing so dismally, not only disguised, but disordered; and there having been an amity between them, as also a veneration on the lord mayor's part, ne had not spirits to sustain the shock, but fell down in a swoon; and, in not many hours after, died. But this Lord Jeffries came to the seal without any concern at the weight of duty incumbent upon him; for, at the first, being merry over a bottle with some of his old friends, one of them told him that he would find the business heavy. No, said he, I'll make it light. But, to conclude with a strange inconsistency, he would drink and be merry, kiss and slaver, with these bon companions over night, as the way of such is, and the next day fall upon them, ranting and scolding with a virulence unsufferable." But the richest portion of these volumes is the character of the Lord Chief Justice Saunders, the author of the Reports which Mr. Serjeant Williams has rendered popular by clustering about them the products of his learned industry. He has a better immortality in the memoir. What a picture is exhibited of the stoutest industry, joined with the most luxurious spirit of enjoyment-of the most intense acquaintance with nice technicalities and the most bounteous humour-of more distressing infirmities and scarcely less wit than those of Falstaff! What a singular being is herewhat a laborious, acute, happy and affectionate spirit in a loathsome frame!-But, we forget, we are indulging ourselves, when we oughi to gratify our readers. 66 The Lord Chief Justice Saunders suc ceeded in the room of Pemberton. His cha racter, and his beginning, were equally strange, He was at first no better than a poor beggar boy, if not a parish foundling, without known pa rents or relations. He had found a way to live by obsequiousness (in Clement's-Inn, as I remember) and courting the attorney's clerks for scraps. The extraordinary observance and diligence of the boy made the society willing to do him good. He appeared very ambitious to learn to write; and one of the attorneys 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 hackney writing. 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 a humorous 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 neighbours 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 carcass came upon him by continued 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 rest of his life was sitting at his desk, or piping at home; and that home was a tailor'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. His "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, was 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 Maynard. great dexterity was in the art of special pleading, and he would lay snares that often caught his superiors, 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, nor desire to be rich? And, for good nature and condescension, there was not his fellow. I have seen him, 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 encouraging 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 offence 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 infirmities. 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 a 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 then 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 ne fell into an apoplexy and palsy, which numbed his parts; and he never recovered the strength of them. He out-lived 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 of the judgment, declared it to be the court accordingly, which is frequently done in like cases." Although we have been able to give but a few of the choice peculiarities of these volumes, our readers will be able to gather, from our extracts, that the profession of the law was a very different thing in the reign of Charles the Second, from what it is in the present era. There was something in it more robust and hearty than there is now. Lawyers treated on the dryest subjects, in a "full and heightened style," which now would receive merited ridicule, because it is natural no longer. When Lord Coke "wanders in the wilderness of the laws of the forest"-or stops to "recreate himself with a view of Dido's deer"—or looks on his own fourth Institute, as "the high and honourable building of the jurisdiction of the courts"-we feel that he uses the language of metaphor, merely because he thinks in it. Modern improvement has introduced a division of labour among the faculties. The regions of imagination and of reality are separated by stricter and more definite limits, than in the days of old. Our poems and orations are more wild and extravagant, and our ordinary duties more dry and laborious. Men have learned to refine on their own feelings-to analyze all their sensations-to class all their powers, feelings, and fantasies, as in a museum; and to mark and label them so that they may never be applied, except to appropriate uses. The imagination is only cultivated as a kind of exotic luxury. No one unconsciously writes in a picturesque style, or suffers the colour of his thoughts to suffuse itself over his disquisitions, without caring for the effect on the reader. The rich conceit is either suppressed, or carefully reserved to adorn some cold oration where it may be duly applauded. Our ancestors permitted the wall-flower, when it would, to spread out its sweets from the massive battlement, without thinking there was any thing extraordinary in its growth, or desiring to transplant it to a garden, where it would add little fragrance to the perfume of other flowers. The study of the law has sunk of late years. Formerly, the path of those by whom it was chosen, though steep and rugged, was clear and open before them. Destitute of adventitious aids, they were compelled to salutary and hopeful toils. They were forced to trace back every doctrine to the principle which was its germ, and to search for their precedents amidst the remotest grandeur of our history. Patient labour was required of them, but their reward was certain. In the most barren and difficult parts of their ascent, they found, at least, in the masses which they surmounted, the stains and colourings of a humanizing antiquity to soften and to dignify their labours. But abridgments, commentaries, and digests without number, have precluded the necessity of these liberal researches, while the vast accumulation of statutes and decisions have rendered them almost hopeless. Instead of a difficult mountain to ascend, there is a briary labyrinth to penetrate. Wearied out with vain attempts, the student accepts such temporary helps as he can procure, and despairs of re until accumulated reports shall lose their au thority—or the legislature shall be com pelled, by the vastness of the mischief, tc undertake the tremendous task of revising and condensing the whole statute law, and fixing the construction of the unwritten maxims within some tolerable boundaries. ducing the ever-increasing multitude of deci- | increase until it shall work its own curesions to any fixed and intelligible principles. Thus his labours are not directed to a visible goal-nor cheered by the venerableness of old time-nor crowned with that certainty of conclusion, which is the best reward of scientific researches. The lot of a superficial student of a dry science, is, of all conditions, the most harassing and fruitless. The evil must REVIEW OF THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. [EDINBURGH REVIEW.] Ir Mr. Hazlitt has not generally met with and separates it, in a moment, from all that impartial justice from his contemporaries, we would encumber or deface it. At the same must say that he has himself partly to blame. time, he exhibits to us those hidden sources of Some of the attacks of which he has been the beauty, not like an anatomist, but like a lover: object, have, no doubt, been purely brutal and he does not coolly dissect the form to show the malignant; but others have, in a great measure, springs whence the blood flows all eloquent, arisen from feelings of which he has himself and the divine expression is kindled; but set the example. His seeming carelessness of makes us feel it in the sparkling or softened that public opinion which he would influence eye, the wreathed smile, and the tender bloom. -his love of startling paradoxes-and his in- In a word, he at once analyzes and describes, trusion of political virulence, at seasons when so that our enjoyments of loveliness are not the mind is prepared only for the delicate in- chilled, but brightened, by our acquaintance vestigations of taste, have naturally provoked with their inward sources. The knowledge a good deal of asperity, and prevented the due communicated in his lectures, breaks no sweet appreciation of his powers. We shall strive, enchantment, nor chills one feeling of youthhowever, to divest ourselves of all preposses-ful joy. His criticisms, while they extend our sions, and calmly to estimate those talents and feelings which he has here brought to the contemplation of such beauty and grandeur, as none of the low passions of this "ignorant present time" should ever be permitted to overcloud. insight into the causes of poetical excellence, teach us, at the same time, more keenly to enjoy, and more fondly to revere it. contemplation of genius. But we apprehend that there are other causes which have diminished the influence of Mr. Hazlitt's faculties, originating in his mind itself; and these we shall endeavour briefly to specify. It must seem, at first sight, strange, that powers like these should have failed to excite universal sympathy. Much, doubtless, of the Those who regard Mr. Hazlitt as an ordinary coldness and misrepresentation cast on them, writer, have little right to accuse him of suf- has arisen from causes at which we have fering antipathies in philosophy or politics to already hinted-from the apparent readiness influence his critical decisions. He possesses of the author to "give up to party what was one excellent quality, at least, for the office meant for mankind”—and from the occasional which he has chosen, in the intense admira- breaking in of personal animosities on that tion and love which he feels for the great au-deep harmony which should attend the reverent thors on whose excellences he chiefly dwells. His relish for their beauties is so keen, that while he describes them, the pleasures which they impart become almost palpable to the sense; and we seem, scarcely in a figure, to feast and banquet on their "nectared sweets." He introduces us almost corporally into the divine presence of the Great of old time-arrangement, and of harmony, in his powers. enables us to hear the living oracles of wisdom drop from their lips-and makes us partakers, not only of those joys which they diffused, but of those which they felt in the inmost recesses of their souls. He draws aside the veil of Time with a hand tremulous with mingled delight and reverence; and descants, with kindling enthusiasm, on all the delicacies of that picture of genius which he discloses. His intense admiration of intellectual beauty seems always to sharpen his critical faculties. He perceives it, by a kind of intuitive power, how deeply soever it may be buried in rubbish; The chief of these may, we think, be ascribed primarily to the want of proportion, of His mind resembles the "rich stronde" which Spencer has so nobly described, and to which he has himself likened the age of Elizabeth, where treasures of every description lie, without order, in inexhaustible profusion. Noble masses of exquisite marble are there, which might be fashioned to support a glorious temple; and gems of peerless lustre, which would adorn the holiest shrine. He has no lack of the deepest feelings, the profoundest sentiments of humanity, or the loftiest aspirations after ideal good. But there are no great leading principles of taste to give singleness to his held its current in his productions, sometimes in open day, and sometimes beneath the soil which it fertilized, though occasionally dashed and thrown back in its course by the obstacles of prejudice and of passion. The first of these lectures consists of a general view of the subject, expressed in terms of the deepest veneration and of the most pas sionate eulogy. After eloquently censuring the gross prejudice, that genius and beauty are things of modern discovery, or that in old time a few amazing spirits shone forth amidst general darkness, as the harbingers of brighter days, the author proceeds to combat the notion that Shakspeare was a sort of monster of poetical genius, and all his contemporaries of an aims, nor any central points in his mind, around | has had its dash of the early sweets, which no which his feelings may revolve, and his im- changes of opinion could entirely destroy. Sti aginations cluster. There is no sufficient dis- his audiences and his readers had ample tinction between his intellectual and his ima- ground of complaint for the intrusion of perginative faculties. He confounds the truths of sonal feelings, in inquiries which should be imagination with those of fact-the processes sacred from all discordant emotions. We reof argument with those of feeling-the immu-joice to observe, that this blemish is now nities of intellect with those of virtue. Hence effaced; and that full and free course is at last the seeming inconsistency of many of his doc-given to that deep humanity which has ever trines. Hence the want of all continuity in his style. Hence his failure in producing one single, harmonious, and lasting impression on the hearts of his hearers. He never waits to consider whether a sentiment or an image is in place so it be in itself striking. The keen sense of pleasure in intellectual beauty, which is the best charm of his writings, is also his chief deluder. He cannot resist a powerful image, an exquisite quotation, or a pregnant remark, however it may dissipate, or even subvert, the general feeling which his theme should inspire. Thus, on one occasion, in the midst of a violent political invective, he represents the objects of his scorn as "having been beguiled, like Miss Clarissa Harlowe, into a house of ill-fame, and, like her, defending them-order far below him. selves to the last;" as if the reader's whole current of feeling would not be diverted from all political disputes, by the remembrance thus awakened of one of the sublimest scenes of romance ever imbodied by human power. He will never be contented to touch that most strange and curious instrument, the human heart, with a steady aim, but throws his hand rapidly over the chords, mingling strange discord with "most eloquent music." Instead of conducting us onward to a given object, he opens so many delicious prospects by the wayside, and suffers us to gaze at them so long, that we forget the end of our journey. He is perpetually dazzled among the sunbeams of his fancy, and plays with them in elegant fan-species. His age was necessary to him; nor tasy, when he should point them to the spots where they might fall on truth and beauty, and render them visible by a clearer and lovelier radiance than had yet revealed them. "He, indeed, overlooks and commands the admiration of posterity; but he does it from the table land of the age in which he lived. He towered above his fellows in shade and gesture proudly eminent;' but he was but one of a race of giants, the tallest, the strongest, the most graceful and beautiful of them; but it was a common and noble brood. He was not something sacred and aloof from the vulgar herd of men, but shook hands with Nature and the circumstances of the time; and is distinguished from his immediate contemporaries, not in kind, but in degree, and greater variety of excellence. He did not form a class or species by himself, but belonged to a class or could he have been wrenched from his place in the edifice, of which he was so conspicuous a part, without equal injury to himself and it. Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, that his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.' This cannot be said with any propriety of Shakspeare, who certainly moved in a constellation of bright luminaries, and drew after him the third part of the heavens."" Pp. 12, 13. The author then proceeds to investigate the general causes of that sudden and rich development of poetical feeling which forms his theme. He attributes it chiefly to the mighty impulse given to thought by the Reformation The work before us is not the best verification of these remarks; for it has more of continuity, and less of paradox, than any of his previous writings. With the exception of some strong political allusions in the account of the Sejanus of Ben Jonson, it is entirely free from those expressions of party feeling which respect for an audience, consisting of men of all parties, and men of no party, ought always to restrain. There is also none of that personal bitterness towards Messrs. Words-to the disclosure of all the marvellous stores worth, Coleridge, and Southey, which disfigured his former lectures. His hostility towards these poets, the associates of his early days, has always, indeed, been mingled with some redeeming feelings which have heightened the regret occasioned by its public disclosure. While he has pursued them with all possible severity of invective, and acuteness of sarcasm, he has protected their intellectual character with a chivalrous zeal. He has spoken as if "his only hate had sprung from his only love;" and his thoughts of its objects, deep rooted in old affection, could not lose all traces of their "primal sympathy." His bitterest language of sacred antiquity, by the translation of the Scriptures-and to the infinite sweetness, breathing from the divine character of the Messiah, with which he seems to imagine that the people were not familiar in darker ages. We are far from insensible to the exquisite beauty with which this last subject is treated; and fully agree with our author, that "there is something in the character of Christ, of more sweetness and majesty, and more likely to work a change in the mind of man, than any to be found in history, whether actual or feigned." But we cannot think that the gentle influences which that character shed upon the |