Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

school, and a Roman Catholic pervert. It is lection of personal sketches, and of Scotchreally a kind of comfort to laymen to find that above all, of Edinburgh society and Edinthe clergy are no better than themselves. burgh manners, by a title which bears no The infidels in the book are, we think, not so relation to the contents of the volume. The bad as many of the professedly religious author made no pretensions to, and had no pepeople. An infidel might have written a culiar qualifications for, the office of a general considerable part of the book and called it historian. He was not a Macaulay or a Gib"Hypocrisy, or the causes and consequen- bon; but in felicity of personal portraiture, ces of religious belief." We know of no and in pointed, terse, and vivid power of work, written by an enemy of Christianity, anecdote, he has few rivals, and scarcely that presents us with such unfavorable pic- any superiors. He is not the author of a tures of religious preachers and teachers. diary like Evelyn and Pepys. He is not a On the whole, we prefer Archer to Mr. Boswell, detailing with graphic fidelity the Mooney, the fashionable Evangelical, (au- opinions of other minds, nor a mere caustic thor of the Armageddon Almanac,) or to observer, like Horace Walpole, of the socieArchdeacon Morgan, and his Puseyite son. ty in which he mingled. But possessing The author goes out of his way (at least many of the qualifications which have securwe cannot see how it bears on his religious ed for these writers their enduring popularargument) to sketch commercial society in ity, he adds to them the sagacious wisdom of "Cottonham, the great metropolis of manu- a superior mind, guided by the experience factures." Here, as in many of his other he had gathered from having mingled sketches of character, he probably has hit largely and acted his part well, in the upon some of the worst characteristics of troubled times which now belong to histhe society; but the effect of his representation is entirely marred by its broad and unqualified style. Many of the men may be too much absorbed in their money-getting, and many of the women may be too slavish in their idolatry of county aristocracy, but these two characteristics do not exhaust their is evaporated, and the residuum is left. whole human capabilities; nor do they ever appear in such glaring and unrelieved colours as they do at "Mrs. Smeythe's" dinner-party at Cottonham.

An aggressive and unjust satire on human nature justifies us, we think, in expressing our opinion more strongly, than if we were dealing with a mere literary failure. But if the author of this work would, on moral grounds, temper the tone of his satire, and from a knowledge of his own literary strength and weakness abandon the field of fiction, we feel confident, from the evidence which the last half of his third volume affords, that his earnestness and zeal might yet do good service in the cause of religion, and his impressive writing make itself felt in other departments of literature.

tory.

As one reads the book in the dull cold print, how keenly we feel the absence of the speaking eye, the expressive gesture, the tone and manner which gave life to the anecdote as he used to tell it! The spirit

In

But there still remain so much of picturesque detail, and such delightful traits of sociable garrulity, that animation and grace are given to even obsolete anecdote. dealing with common things and the doings of obscure men, the author has the power of trifling without being undignified or meanHe joins in delightful union wit with wisdom; and has given us a book which, with all its imperfections, is a valuable contribu. tion to the literature of the time,—an animated delineation of those persons and that life which have just passed away; a keen, but never a malicious satire; and the reflections of an intellect which could appreciate the merits of an opponent, unbiassed by personal antipathy or party warfare; the whole being joined together in a narrative which, though it changes its hero at every page, is not disjointed, and never drags.

The book was commenced in 1821, and it treats of persons who had figured on the stage at the end of the last century. Much ART. VII.-Memorials of His Time. By of it necessarily must therefore be at second HENRY COCKBURN. Edinburgh. 1856. hand, and much of what is original must have been the result of dim and imperfect. THE title of this book is a misnomer. A recollection. To many of its statements work which refers only incidentally to the the rules of rigid evidence cannot be appublic events of the most stirring half-cen- plied. Its auther frankly tells us, that, tury in the history of mankind, can scarcely before 1821, he "had never made a single be called Memorials of the Times. Injus- note with a view to such a record." Warntice is done to the author of a delightful col-ed by this, we are not surprised at the im

perfections of several of the statements, at many years. The appointment to all the the tasty rendering of a few matters-of-fact, Scottish offices in the gift of the Crown which a fresher reollection would have pre- was in his hand. He made and unmade vented; and, what was scarcely to be ex- placemen at his pleasure; persons recompected, the failure to convey the clinch or mended by nothing but their family or their the antithesis, the epigram and the point of political zeal, destitute of abilities as of chathe joke. Whether the world has been fur-racter, were placed in offices of trust,—on nished with all that Lord Cockburn had the judgment-seat as elsewhere; and no one written, the editor has failed to tell; al- dared call in question the wisdom of the dethough it may be fairly deduced from the cree. Henry Cockburn thus entered life baldness and inconsecutiveness of various under circumstances that would have led portions of the work, that a heavy hand him, had he been a less conscientious man, has been used in pruning down severities to at an early period of his professional career, suit the conventionalities of the day, and to to all the distinctions of professional success. avoid wounding the sensibilities of living In this respect none of his contemporaries vanity. How far this has been successful could bear the least comparison. Cranston will be seen hereafter; but in judging of the and Jeffrey, and Thomson and Gillies, were, finish of the picture, we cannot overlook the besides being destitute of effective patronage, fact that a process has been resorted to by weighed down with that which, if it was not which the literary fame of the author has not a crime, was at least inconvenient-poverty. benefited. The work is incomplete, too, in The early lives of successful lawyers are reference to the time at which it closes. generally a narrative of straitened circumProfessing to be a memorial of his times, it stances overcome by self-denial bearing ulticloses with the year 1830, and the author mate fruit in the acquisition of those habits died in 1854, the interval being that during of industry and perseverance that ultimately the greater part of which Lord Cockburn lead to fortune. Thurlow's advice to a fathhad the best opportunities for digesting his er who asked his opinion as to the best edureflections upon mankind; freed by his ele- cation for his son, intended for the bar, was vation to the Bench from the jostling cares this, "Let your son spend his own fortune, and anxieties of professional labour at the marry, and spend his wife's,-then let him bar, and forbidden by his position to mingle be called to the bar; he cannot fail to sucin the public events which had previously ceed." The lesson was capable of being acengrossed him. That, during this period of quired by means less expensive. It is only comparative leisure, the busy hand had necessary to read the history of the early ceased to write, and the shrewd head had no struggles of some of the men we have just more wise imaginings, we will believe only named, to find that the virtues consequent when it is stated as a fact. Till then we upon a want and poverty that might be must live in the hope that there exists called pinching, might be acquired without another lively chronicle of the twenty-four the previous career of dissipation. The life years of his judicial career, which sketches of Thomas Thomson, the greatest antiquarian with as sparkling vivacity the virtues, the lawyer whom Scotland has known since follies, and the shams of our own day, and Lord Hailes, has recently been written by which, when this generation has followed Mr. Cosmo Innes, and printed for private him to his rest, will amuse and instruct pos- circulation, and certainly affords a lesson to terity. Meanwhile, let us partake of the the penniless lawyer of encouragement and feast before us, and not envy our successors hope. Mr. Innes' interesting biography that they perhaps may have a better. If contains letters which passed between Thomthe book wants the relish which personalities would give it, it has a point in raciness that cannot be found in the generalities of history, -not that the writer was in a condition to depone to everything he tells, but being contemporary with the events, he was also familiar with the leading actors, bore a leading part in the transactions, was a keen observer, and imbued with that feeling and knowledge that only a contemporary can possess.

Lord Cockburn began life with advantages possessed by few of his contemporaries. His mother's sister had married Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, the man who possessed a despotic sway over Scotland for

son and his father, that do honour to the memory of both. Thomson had no means of livelihood except the pittances which his father, the minister of Dailly, could afford to give him from the scanty stipend of £105 a year; and after doing all this, the minister lived respectably, and entertained his neighbours: and after educating his family, and seeing them established in life, he died without a farthing of debt. "The thing," says Mr. Innes," is still so common in the manses of Scotland, that it would be impertinent to praise the virtuous economy, the rigid selfdenial, that it requires to live like gentle folks, and educate a family on £105 a-year."

Thomson, preparing to come to the bar, change situations.

does so in this spirit:

When we parted,

you, like myself, had formed no resolutions about your future schemes in life; indeed every profes"If, for a few years at first, I should be unable sion is, to us poor men, beset with so many and to support myself completely, I hope a moderate so insurmountable difficulties, that it is almost additional assistance would be sufficient. Except impossible to determine. As for myself, I believe in the article of dress, no extraordinary expense I shall never come to a resolution; but as you is necessary, as there is no rank to support; and are confined within narrower bounds than me, (I it will be very difficult to starve a man who can mean there are fewer lines which you can have in live on bread and milk." view,) therefore it will be more easy for you to make a choice."

The minister asks him kindly,

"How are ye provided for victuals? clothes enow? Have ye good fire?

Have ye
Do you

Jeffrey was the son of a Deputy-Clerk of Session, and had the advantage of Thomson in an Edinburgh connexion and an Edinburgh take care to change your shoes when they are home. Yet at the time he married he had wet? Your finances will, I think, from your ac- only an income of £100, derived from busicount of unavoidable expenses, need some supply. ness obtained through his father, and all of Acquaint me freely. You know my willingness. My stock is not yet exhausted. I have sent ten which, as he pathetically states in one of his guineas. Though I have entire confidence in letters, would have disappeared if one or you, I shall be glad to see a state of what you two persons had died, or gone mad, or if he call the national debt; chiefly that I may be able had the misfortune to offend them by his to conjecture what may be necessary for the ser- frivolity, or a difference of opinion. In 1794, vice of the year. I can suppose that your money he says, in one of his letters to his broaffairs make you uneasy; but I hope to relieve you from all this distress, and I hope we shall all be so wise as to use every wise and prudent precaution of avoiding what may be avoided."

The stately Cranston interests himself largely in Thomson's domestic concerns. Lord Cockburn's portrait of Cranston is not flattering; it leaves the impression of a stilted and artificial personage, whose blood was torpid, and heart cold to all the ordinary infirmities of humanity. If such was his character (which we do not admit) in his later life, the few letters of his early days that we possess, which are printed in this Biography of Thomson, have a pleasant freshness about them. A joyous letter to

Thomson thus concludes:

"Erskine is engaged, but I have seen him and Clerk, and they send you their love. Mrs. May has hired a lass for you, a decent sober woman, and an excellent cook. She was last with Mr. Cleghorn, the coachmaker, and had been sixteen years in the family. Wages £5 per annum, and £1, 10s. for tea. She is very anxious that there should be a girl in the house, not to assist her, for she thinks herself up to all the work, but because it is dangerous to live in a house alone with you young men! Eight strikes. Yours for ever, G. C."

Cranston's circumstances are described by himself as by no means flourishing. In a letter to Thomson of 5th of June 1789, he

says:-
:-

ther

"I will tell you truly that my prospects of success are not very flattering. I have been considering very seriously, since I came last here, the probability of my success at the bar, and have but little comfort at my prospect; for all the employment I have has come entirely from my father, or those with whom I am otherwise connected." He dreams of some other occupation where he might have some prospect of employment. Being "determined," he says, "that I will not linger away the years of my youth and activity in an unprofitable and hopeless hanging on about our Courts as I see not a few doing every day."

He adds with great truth, as many who have come after him can sadly testify, who have paced the weary boards of the Parliament House waiting for that employment which never came,-"Besides the waste of that time which can never be replaced, the mind becomes at once humiliated and enfeebled in such a situation, and loses all that energy which alone can lead it to enterprise and success."

Yet there is a delightful buoyancy in Jeffrey's heart, marrying, as he did, on his £100 a-year.

"Life went a-maying, With nature, hope, and poesy, When he was young."

"You would not marry," he says to his brother, "in this situation, and neither would I, if I saw any likelihood of its growing better before I was too old to marry at all, or did not feel the desolation of being in solitude or something worse than any of the in

"You are now enjoying in perfection the otium cum dignitate, otium, walking, fishing, lounging, chattering, love making, eating and sleeping, conveniences of poverty. Besides, we trust cum dignitate, with a master of arts cap! What to providence, and have hope of dying before a happy man are you; what would I give to ex- we get into prison."

at the time; not from any poverty of thought or deficiency of vigour in expression,-but, because along with those, he possessed the power of a great actor, who could transpose his whole soul into the scene, and by a look or a change of tone, deepen the impression of his declamation or his argument.

Certainly ideas have altered much since efforts as an advocate read tamely in the Jeffrey's day, perhaps not to the increase recollection of the impression they created of happiness. There was one virtue in the public opinion of fifty years ago, when it allowed a professional man, having the social status of an advocate, to marry upon an income so limited, and to preserve his position and his independence, though he took himself and his wife to the airy altitude of a third story, and furnished his rooms for £40. When all this is admitted in reference to Of Cockburn's own pecuniary circum- Cockburn, we have admitted all which can stances we are told nothing in any of the be considered remarkable in his qualificapublications which bear his name. That he tions as a lawyer. Unfortunately he was inwas exempt from the miserable pinching fected with that same indolent and careless which gave many an uneasy hour to Thom- love of enjoyment by which Thomson threw son and Jeffrey, and, indeed, was in a posi-away his powers, and which in the case of tion that may be considered affluent, may Cockburn left him at no high place as a be well believed, when it is remembered lawyer either at the bar or on the bench. that his father was one of the Barons of the While his employment was extensive and Court of Exchequer. This, of course, was a varied in all matters of fact requiring to be disadvantage according to Thurlow's view; determined by a jury, it was otherwise in but if there was any delay in the attainment reference to questions which involved mereby Cockburn of independence, it cannot be ly points of law to be argued before the easily traced to this source. It indicates courts. In such practice he was surpassed great modesty to find so little about him- by men far his inferiors in natural talent, self, in works which speak so much about but who had the industry to acquire that others. His powers in the field of literature professional knowledge of the law which were only exhibited to the public as his Cockburn never did. The drudgery was career was about to close. To the general too much for one who gave up study when world he was known as the successful advo- he entered life. This was a great misforcate, and the famous Whig politician, who tune on his own account, and on that of in evil times had fought the battle of free-suitors. Had he resigned the habits of dom unawed by opposition, unseduced by indolent indulgence, consequent upon the the ties of relationship or the temptations keen enjoyment of external nature, he might of office. As an advocate he never had his have taken as high a place in forensic legal equal at the Scotch bar in addressing juries. discussion with judges as with juries., Logic, Though he lived in daily competition with clear and connected; expression homely but Clerk and Cranston, and Moncreiff, and Jef- nervous and emphatic, would have rendered frey, there was not one of them all who a legal argument in his hands a formidable united in himself the same forensic power. weapon. He was contented, however, with He was a man of note even among the Anakim. Much of this was due to the natural qualities of the man, apart from anything acquired by study or experience. He had a homely, apparently unstudied mode of expression; he delivered himself in a tone so modulated, as to appear to jurymen not to use the trained oratory of a hired advocate intent to lead them to his own conclusion irrespective of the truth, but to state the conscientious suggestions of a man like themselves, who put the case in a way so simple that they could not misunderstand it, or avoid yielding their conviction to the speaker. He knew intimately the Scottish character. He identified himself with the feelings and prejudices of his hearers. He was never hurried by the ambition of eloquence, into soaring above their heads, and yet his homely and apparently artless but artful touches, had all the effect of the most brilliant and successful oratory. Some of his

his enjoyment, for which he was willing to
pay the price of moderate employment and
modified fame. The same defect accompa-
nied him to the bench, and if possible be-
came intensified there. Not urged on by
the spur of opposition, and the anxieties of
clients, his duty seemed rather a plaything
than the serious business of life. The law,
the parties, the counsel, the agents, the mis-
erable litigants, were puppets in a raree-
show, out of which might be got the amuse-
ment of a smile. The great object of his
horror was a lengthy bore. He set an ex-
ample of a virtue which he wished others to
practise, in being short in his orations.
must have studied Tacitus, and avoided
Alison. At all events, there was no in-
fliction so painful to his temper or his
patience, as the oratory of an over-zealous
and loquacious counsel. Thus it happened,
that cases being impatiently heard, were im-
perfectly understood. The judgments that

he delivered were unsatisfactory and frequently reversed; and men forgot in the imperfections of the judge many of the invaluable qualities that endeared him as a

man.

[ocr errors]

It

every question, and to put a bridle upon the rapidity of extemporaneous judgment. In the midst of the chaos of English, American, and Scottish judicial opinions, (for all are quoted daily,) those of Cockburn He complains in his Memorials, that in are remarkable for one peculiarity. They the old rough days at the end of the last are always short, pointed, and intelligible. century, when Braxfield and Eskgrove, and If their brevity is sometimes unsatisfactory, that race of judges were on the Bench, that as indicating imperfect attention to the case, there were no published reports of the opin- yet, when he did enter into details, they ions of the judges. The Court was a mob; never encumbered the lucidity of his expres their deliberations a wrangle; and the ulti- sion. In matters of fact he was almost mate decision depended upon the whim or always, and in questions of law, he was the caprice of the moment. Opinions, so sometimes right. Even when he erred, he formed and so delivered, would not have is deserving of perusal from the faculty he been of much service to posterity, and we possessed of placing before the mind some cannot mourn for them as for the Decades striking view or illustration, which threw of Livy. A gentleman of the name of Mr. an illumination upon all around, and either Robert Bell was, however, desirous of per-pointed the way to conviction, or served as petuating what wisdom there might be de- the means for discovering the fallacy. No livered from the Bench; and he commenced one can appreciate the merit of such an to publish a set of reports on the principle opinion so much as the miserable beings of giving the judicial dicta in detail. The who, in the silent watches of the night, have proposal was revolutionary and Jacobinical, to pore over numberless authorities for the and received with alarm by the Bench. morning's debate, and who,-wandering up The reporter" was actually called into the and down through long opinions that, like Robing Room and admonished to beware." the passages in some ancient tenement exEskgrove's objection was-" The fellow taks haust the victim by their endless maze,—at doon ma very words -a great injury to last, when driven nearly to insanity or dehis Lordship certainly. Time wore on, and spair, find a haven of rest in the short and a new spirit has animated the scene. Year clear statement in Cockburn's opinion. after year there appear bulky tomes from was this simplicity of diction and clearness London, New York, and Edinburgh, contain- of style, this intelligibility of statement, in ing more printed matter than was sufficient itself a power, which rendered his judgment, previously for centuries of legislation, in if reversed by the Inner Courts in Scotland, which, in the smallest possible type, the bit a most formidable thing to struggle with in of gold is beaten so very fine that sometimes it becomes invisible. Of course the only escape from this ponderous mass is that of passing it by. Except the unhappy reporters, there was never yet a human creature who travelled it through. A slave, convicted of murder, was offered the alternative of either reading from beginning to end Guicciardini's History of the Wars in Italy, or the galleys. He stood in suspense only for a moment-he took the latter. An alternative equally frightful might have been put to him had the modern publication of legal reports been at the time in existence. In the number for August last of the It is not merely the length, but the number English Law Magazine and Law Review, and variety of judicial opinions-the result there appeared an article which has been of the crudest as of the maturest thought,- publicly attributed to Lord Brougham, and which unsettle the law and imperil every which bears undeniable traces of that fine decision when it afterwards comes to be re- Roman hand. In a previous number of the viewed. By express act of the American same Magazine, which has not Lord CockCongress, every judgment of the Supreme burn for his text, but Lord Brougham himCourts of the United States must be pro- self, there are several characteristic notes nounced in writing, and cannot be delivered written by a hand different from that which on the same day on which the case was produced the text, and whose labours are debated by counsel,-an admirable regula- in a different style. The text sometimes tion, calculated to bring out the merits of censures and hints a fault, the notes never;

the House of Lords. The utterly untechnical character of his mind made his judgments read in the eyes of a foreign lawyer with a force not due to their intrinsic merits; and hence it happened that decrees which had been reversed by his brethren in Scotland, were returned to in the House of Lords, and mainly in consequence of his argument.

On the bench his demeanour was always conciliatory and forbearing, and only a harmless jest indicated the misery he suffered when subjected to the peine forte et dure, of interminable loquacity.

« PoprzedniaDalej »