and in the latter there is found the most | Cockburn, for the office of Solicitor-General; intimate acquaintance with the aspirations a statement that must be novel to that reof Lord Brougham, and minute information spected Judge, and who, so far as we can in regard to his family history. One of the see, never had any appetite for place, though notes is deserving of notice, from whose he once discusses with Horner the propriety hand soever it came :of his taking a Sheriffship. temper. Yet no one can mistake the spirit which dictated such remarks as these: It is difficult to comprehend the course of "Fully appreciating," says the writer, " as we conduct of a man whose judgment is dependdo the public and private virtues of Lord Cock-ent upon the inconstancy of his irritable burn, we could never erase from our own mind the impression that there ran a deep vein of selfishness through his nature, which he had profitably worked throughout a long life, and had not quite exhausted down to the day of his decease. He started in life as a Tory, but was soon drawn within the sparkling circle of young Whigs, who, as we have seen, towards the commencement of the century, gave their impress to the bar of Scotland."-Law Magazine, Vol. 52, p. 15. Jeffrey had given him but a moderate rank "Lord Cockburn's very indifferent life of Lord be urged against it than the want of judgment; among biographers; not that there was more to the political—that is, the party der which the book was written, formed another prejudice unground of complaint; and the same objection may certainly be taken to the work before us. Upon what this is founded the anonymous Our office keeps us from weighing all the defects author has not told, as he was bound to tell or merits of the work, unless in so far as it deals the public. There must be some obliquity with legal subjects; and we therefore shall not of moral vision in a writer who could see in stop to remark upon the favour with which it Lord Cockburn's nature the opposite of has been received by the public, and which it what it was, and who could deduce from his see a page filled with proper names; a desire so owes chiefly to the insatiable desire of readers to career a conclusion which none others have strong with some, that we have known a person arrived at. We admit that he was indolent, of great learning and eminence declare, he could and indolence is often the parent of selfish-read the Court Guide' with more interest than ness; but that Cockburn was sordidly selfish many of the books which are published." (Law for the promotion of any interests of his, is Mag., vol. 55, p. 233.) a statement that could only have been made by one who had not a proper appreciation of the force of his own language. Had he worked his "selfishness for his own inter times in the Memorials of Cockburn. We One of them occurs in reference to the best sketch that Cockburn ever drew that of Lord Eskgrove, one of the most ludicrous personages who ever sat even upon the Scottish bench ests, what promotion at the bar of Scotland with such influence as his, would have been denied him! The relative of Henry Dundas had only to ask and it would be given him. But casting upon one side the honours and delightful sense of independence of a comfortable position, he walked on in one undeviating course of political consistency, faithful to the last. He bore with patience the scowls of political opponents, the estrangement of friends, and won his way Brougham tormented him, and sat on his fairly to honour. He was not a specimen skirts, wherever he went, for above a year. The of the patriotism that is the result of calcu- Justice liked passive counsel, who let him dawlation of profit and loss,-for it was a losing dle on with culprits and juries in his own way; game from the beginning. His patriotism and consequently he hated the talent, the elowas something more than the mere effusion quence, the energy, and all the discomposing of swelling words. It is hard that having qualities of Brougham. At last it seemed as if a fought manfully, and borne, through those the poor Justice was delighting himself with the Court day was to be blessed by his absence, and long thirty years, the icy chill of exclusion prospect of being allowed to deal with things as from the honours of public life so plentifully he chose; when lo! his enemy appeared - tall, showered upon meaner men, he should in cool, and resolute. I declare,' said the Justice, his grave be refused simple justice. How How that man Broom, or Broug-ham, is the torment he worked the vein it is impossible for us of my life. His revenge, as usual, consisted in to tell. He was made a Judge because it sneering at Brougham's eloquence, by calling it was his due, and because no advocate of his did the Harangue say next? Why, it said this' or him, the Harangue. 'Well, gentlemen, what time could prefer a claim equal to his. (misstating it); but here, gentle-men, the Lord Brougam says that Mr. Murray waived Harangue was most plainly wrongg, and not in 1830 his own pretensions in favour of intelligibill."" The remaining anecdote told of the Harangue exhibits not his brusquerie, but a modesty offensive to his feelings. His admirers in Edinburgh gave him a public dinner in 1825, at which the chair was occupied by Cockburn. "When the waiters were clearing the tables, and the talking-time was approaching, Brougham told me that he thought the most alarming moment of life was, when the speaker, after settling himself into his chair for an important debate, paused for an instant before calling up the mover; but that he would rather endure that a hundred times, than rise and address the audience before him, which, he said, was the largest he had ever spoken to under a roof. If this was the feeling of that practised orator, I need not be ashamed to confess that I felt very uneasy. However, it was, on the whole, a successful and impressive meeting." Is it are filled with alleged inaccuracies, such as, that Principal Robertson did not speak national Scotch, as Cockburn affirms, which Brougham denies "except in the pronunciation." But who is this Daniel come to judgment? As the Spectator says, “No humour, whim, or particularity of behaviour, man ought to be tolerated in a habitual by any who do not wait on him for bread." A severe censure is pronounced upon the practice exemplified by Cockburn and by Moore, of leaving their Diaries behind them, and making statements of fact in reference to personal character, the responsibility of which they throw upon their executors. not equally reprehensible to find a man shielding himself under the anonymous, making the bold statements and giving the rude contradictions which disfigure Lord Brougham's review? Lord Braxfield, it This is not agreeable to the orator who had seems, was a wise and humane judge braved senates and bridled kings. Accor-" as every one knows." Cockburn is in dingly, he pronounces this story "of Mr. error as to him, and as to Henry Erskine, Brougham" to be entirely fancy; and he and Hermand, and Principal Robertson, and mentions that Mr. Brougham "a few days as to what took place at the trials for after the dinner had addressed (gallery in- sedition; and he colours, exaggerates, and cluded) above 700; a few weeks before, misrepresents, as every one knows," or, above 600, and on 22d June 1820, above" as was well known in Edinburgh." And 700;" and on none of these three occasions this unkind stab is given on such vague aswas he afraid. It is "ridiculous" to sup- sertion, to an old friend's memory, and pose that the difference of 100 could make what is still dearer to the world the printhe Edinburgh audience so much more for- ciples of freedom involved in these old midable. It was not the number at which trials. Lord Brougham was alarmed; it was "at speaking about nothing, speaking for mere speaking's sake, a horror of the epededeictic oratory which made Mr. Fox all his life incapable of uttering three sentences at an after-dinner discussion." It may be so; Cockburn, at least, candidly confesses that he was labouring under a nervous quivering, and he is scarcely to be condemned as an incorrect historian, if, without explanation, he attributed to the same cause the terror of his friend. In the same style the rest of Lord Brougham's article proceeds. The memorials are filled with "exaggerations." The author is a "dealer in anecdotes," and "colours his facts," and from "party prejudice" and "love of recounting anecdotes," his statements are incorrect. He is guilty of bad taste, and has repeated as sober truth what he at first coined for merriment, and what repeated narration ultimately convinced himself to be real. At every ten lines, the words "colouring and exaggeration" are charged, as if the garrulity of age had so thoroughly overtaken the writer as to leave him in his passion only one idea. Cockburn's sketches are caricatures, and where not satirical are malignant; and pages 66 Brougham was one of Lord Cockburn's contemporaries; an Edinburgh Reviewer; a Whig politician; and so far as his inconstant nature would allow him, the friend of the band of lawyers who gave an impress to the time. It is curious, however, to trace the consistency of nature between youth and age. In the lives and letters of Cranston, of Jeffrey, of Horner, of Mackintosh, of Sydney Smith, there will be found a hearty, warm, and joyous outpouring of affection to one another. Not one kindly word, however, is ever said by one of them of Brougham. He first promises Jeffrey his support; he then becomes restive, and retracts; and again, after being soothed, he returns to duty. (Horner's Life, vol. i. p. 186.) He quarrels with Horner and reduces that gentlest of mankind to despair, because, being ignorant of any reason for a quarrel, Horner can do nothing towards a reconciliation. (Horner's Life, vol. ii. p. 74.) At last the fit passes off, and after several years of cold estrangement, he relents and admits to his old familiarity a man who had, perhaps, only offended his vanity. In short, Brougham appears to have been an erratic comet that scared them all at once an object of alarm and admira. tion; and so through life he has been charac terized by the same unaccountable levity, | given, almost always possessed alone vacillation, and incoherence, which has ren- fierce, nervous, overwhelming declamation, dered him the sport of every petty passion and close, rapid argument." * We are to of the hour. find examples of this in the collected works of the great orator. We have sometimes an opportunity of comparison between Cockburn and his reviewer as to their relative skill in portrait painting. They differ very widely in the impression which they leave. Individuality, in the sketches of Brougham, is lost. We are looking upon costume figures where a blank is left for the face, the personal identity eluding the grasp of fancy. Censure, admiration, and even personal qualifications are generalized, till they become common; and anecdotes intended to illustrate individual character, are not the best, and are often spoilt by the author's eloquence in the telling. Every quality of Mirabeau is dwelt upon but his oratory; diplomacy is scarcely mentioned in the sketch of Talleyrand; the life of Frederick the Great is a collection of the discreditable anecdotes of his private life, his great achievements and his wonderful struggles being compressed into a few passages of depreciatory narrative. The fierce outburst introduced in the life of Wilkes as to the bad demagogic arts, of which he was not guilty, and the mean practices which he is admitted not to have followed, published twenty years ago by way of abusing O'Connell, and which now read so oddly when O'Connell, and Melbourne, and Althorp, and the appropriation clause are things of history, is reproduced in the new edition. All this passionate insinuation will be unintelligible to another generation. Alas! when writers compose biographical sketches according to their passions, what tortures are laid up for the future historian! No one would wish to speak otherwise than kindly of a man who, at least for twenty-two years, has tasted few of the glories and all the disappointments of ambition. Yet one who thrusts himself upon the public attention in the spirit of a gladiator, to fight at his own hand, and bear down opposition with the dictatorial tone of a conqueror, cannot complain, if, while assailing others, he is himself judged. When Lord Brougham attacks his friend for being a relator of anecdotes, why does he forget the bulky tomes which bear his own name, and which profess to give sketches, anecdotes, and portraits of the small and great of all lands and times? The difference between the two writers is, that the one confines himself to memoirs of persons that he knew, and writes in a style bright with immortality; while the other favours mankind with anecdotes and sketches of persons of all countries, all professions, all creeds, some of whom he knew, and some of whom he did not, in a style often energetic and eloquent, but always loose, disjointed, and diffuse. He belongs to the school which seeks effect from exaggeration or suppression, and which, though sometimes producing powerful passages, more frequently evaporates in fustian and rant. While many of his figures want the freshness and vigour of sketches from the life, they are destitute of the finish of historical portraiture. And, amid all, there is ever mingling the predominant vanity of the author, whose services to mankind, if not at all times directly insisted on, are ingeniously enforced by repeated notices of the most perfect type of character a lawyer and a rhetorician. To be perfect, however, there must be the combination, in that exact measure which fills the outline with the figure of the retired statesman. The lawyer is insufficient if he be destitute of that noble rhetoric which enabled Henry Brougham to ascend without effort from the professional pleading to command the attention and applause of listening senates: the mere orator, again, is wanting if he possess not the perfect knowledge of men, and the practised aptitude for business which the contests of Nisi Prius always give. His opinion, too, of his own style, varies from that commonly received, and the light of Burke's genius pales before the brighter sun of his biographer. "The kinds of composition are various, and Burke excels in them all, with the exception of two, the very highest, given to few, and when D-9 VOL. XXVI. If, like Cobbett, Brougham is one of the most copious of writers, he is also like Cobbett one of the most inconstant that ever abused the liberty of the press. In his old age he writes the recantation of a thousand speeches. His fluctuating praise or blame of individuals or of parties, his defence or abuse of principles and systems, are all incidental to the personal feelings of the moment. For the doctrines themselves, the opinions, the measures he has alternately advocated and denounced, his pretensions to ordinary consistency are such as not to bear the hazard of a gratuitous appearance in Court. He upholds the horrors of the reign of terror in Scotland to-day, as if he were wholly unconscious of ever having written anything before. *Brougham's Works, vol. i. p. 232. Ed. 1855. Lord Cockburn's Memorials are filled with its memories might expire. Lord Cockburn sketches of the troubled politics of the Scot- might have been indulged in the retrospect tish reign of terror. He recurs to the sub- of sufferings borne and of triumphs achieved; ject at almost every page, as one that had but his ancient friend will have it otherwise, much occupied his mind; and truly the and he probes the old sore so that its rankworld has never had such a striking picture ling pains leave no rest to the sufferer. He of it. Life was certainly not pleasant in seems to have a horror of the waters of those days, when not merely freedom of Lethe, and will only bathe in Phlegethon. speech, but almost freedom of thought was We live in an age of fresh ideas. The a crime. There have been three periods in things which interested the youth of CockScottish history more peculiarly unfortunate; burn and Brougham, have become to us and to have lived in them must have been a wearisome and unprofitable. The old party trial, times like those under which the shibboleths have lost their significance, and Italians are now living, when at every step, the faith which once could remove mountains, the air is tainted with the trail of a police is, in the breast of a new generation, chilled spy. Over the fair fields of the Lombardo- and dead. A feeble reflection of that ancient Venetian kingdom, men of foreign language spirit is exhibited by Cockburn, when proand of foreign mien bear down a sensitive fessing to act as its historian, and by his race, proud of their traditions and their his- friend when subjecting him to criticism. tory. The materialities of life, though pos- The political trials of 1792-96 constitute sessed in ample abundance, are no compen- the text for an elaborate commentary and sation for the want of that which gives to moral. According to Lord Cockburn, the life its charm. So, when Baliol surrendered persons then condemned were guilty of no the independence of his country to Edward, crime; and assuming them to be guilty of and foreign legions spread from the Solway sedition, of which they were accused, the to the Shetland Isles, and the calm of despair punishment was illegal. Upon both these settled upon a prostrate people, Scotland for points we have the shock of a point-blank a time felt in all its agony the miseries of contradiction; as we have also upon the conquest. So, when during the twenty- merits and virtues of the Judge who tried eight sad years which constituted the reign them. of the last Stuarts, all that was great and All who die are honoured with tears! true-hearted was hunted from valley to The friend is lamented by his friend, the mountain, and the scaffolds were deluged husband by his wife, the father by his childwith the blood of martyrs, the people had ren, and the apostle of liberty carries with another taste of the horrors of a scientific him the regrets of mankind. Even Braxdespotism. These were times when sus- field has now a coronach of wailing over his picion became proof, and when law was op- tomb. He was not a cruel magistrate, who pression. But the life of a nation outlives abused power, and bent the laws to the opthe life of man, and in its circuit compre- pression and misery of the land. He was hends that retributive or compensating not a brutal judge, coarse in his manners, award which is denied to individuals. The inhuman in his treatment of the feeble; overpowerful oppressor is often followed to the bearing and insolent to serve his party or to grave with honour, and monuments are reared gratify his passions; and whom no scruples to his memory, and the good and the brave are of conscience kept back an instant from his cast upon the hill side, and receive justice object. If he has hitherto received a preonly from history. To them the right re-eminent renown in infamy, he now deserves ward comes too late; but a nation endures a more lasting one in our gratitude and comfor ages; it creates a future for itself, and miseration. The world has hitherto been colours that future with its own character. in error. His name ought not to be linked The blood of martyrs is the seed of religion. From their tombs they speak a lesson of heroism and magnanimity to posterity; and the Scotland of this day is all the better that they lived and suffered. It is not a pleasant duty to rake up the smouldering embers of ancient controversies -Ignes suppositos cineri doloso. A more agreeable duty would it have been to have dwelt upon many of the cheering pictures of old manners and times, and of modern improvement and civilisation, which Cockburn's Memorials afford us. The war is over and with Lauderdale and Mackenzie. He be longs to the category of which Duncan Forbes was the chief. He exhibits to mankind the splendid spectacle of great talents long exercised with difficulties, and high principles never tainted with guilt. Such is the sketch by this new historian who is to blot from our minds the fixed traditions and the burning memories of half a century. The world sometimes admires the chivalrous devotion that runs counter to the current of history and the prejudices of the mass. It may arise from moral courage and real convic tion; more frequently from Quixotism of dis-1 "As Mr. Muir has brought many witnesses to position, soured by disappointment and embit- prove his general good behaviour, and his recomtered by personal antipathy. The proud mending peaceable measures and petitions to Pareagle does not here soar in his own meridian.liament, it is your business to judge how far this He enters into a sphere where he has no evidence on the other side. Mr. Muir might have should operate in his favour, in opposition to the superiority over others. Of the merits and known that no attention could be paid to such a character of Lord Braxfield, and of the merits rabble. What right had they to representation? and demerits of those proceedings which He could have told them that the Parliament ended in the banishment of Thomas Muir and would never listen to their petition. How could his unhappy compatriots, there are thousands they think of it? A government in every counas capable of judging and pronouncing an try should be just like a corporation; and in this country it is made up of the landed interest, which opinion as Lord Brougham. Lord Cockburn says, "that no impartial rabble, who have nothing but personal property, alone has a right to be represented. As for the censor can avoid detecting throughout the what hold has the nation of them? What sewhole course of the trials not mere casual curity for the payment of their taxes? They may indications of bias, but absolute straining for bundle up all their property on their backs and convictions.. In every case sentiments leave the country in the twinkling of an eye, but were avowed (from the Bench) implying landed property cannot be removed."-(State Trials.) the adoption of the worst current intemperance. If, instead of a supreme Court of justice sitting for the trial of guilt or of innocence, it had been an ancient commission appointed by the Crown to procure convictions, little of its judicial manner would have required to be changed. . . . In order to find a match for the judicial spirit of this Court at this period we must go back to the days of Lauderdale and Dalziel." What in the captain's but a choleric word, is in the soldier flat blasphemy. It was the right of a land-owner to exercise his privilege of freedom of speech; it was sedition in the landless or poverty-stricken yeoman. This was the view also of Dr. Samuel Horsley, a bishop of Pitt's creation, who at the same time gave it as his opinion in Parliament,-“ that he did not know what the mass of the peoAll this is contradicted, and Braxfield, it ple in any country had to do with the laws, now seems, was not blasphemous and arbi- but to obey them." And the conclusion of trary. When he damned a lady who was the charge belongs to this school. "The tenplaying with him at whist, he did not, as dency," said Braxfield, "of the panel's conCockburn says, apologize to her by saying duct was plainly to promote a spirit of revolt, that he mistook her for his wife. He did and if what was demanded was not given, not say, of course, to Horner's father, one of to take it by force. His Lordship had not the jurors who tried Muir, "Come awa', Maister Horner, come awa', and help us to hang ane o' thae damned scoondrels." Nor, when Gerald pleaded that our Saviour was a Reformer, did Braxfield retort, "Muckle he made o' that, he was hanget." So far too, from wishing convictions, he rather aided the accused, as is plainly seen from the State trials to which Cockburn refers. the smallest doubt that the Jury were like himself convinced of the panel's guilt, and desired them to return such a verdict as would do them honour."-(Robertson's Report.) Lord Braxfield may, in quieting discontent and allaying sedition, have intended to interpose the mediation of kind offices and temperate words. His object may have been to stop the descent of the iron flail, and It were well, when censure is thus so satisfy even unreasoning and inconsiderate liberally administered, that the censor him- passion. His heart may have beat with the self should be correct. So far from refer- patriotic aspiration of merely discountering to the State trials as an authority, Cock-nancing the untimely fervour which only burn says that the proceedings "are very gave to an affrightened Government a prefaintly given" there. They do not exhibit text and an arm of vengeance; and on the the interruptions by Braxfield to the prisoner, judgment-seat he might have only wished and they give no account of the whole tone to curb, by the humanity of the law, that and spirit of the trial. Yet they tell how he relentless vindictiveness which, though it was reprimanded and commanded to sit punished, also brutalized a people. If so, down, and how his witnesses were bullied, his charge does not do him justice; and he and how he was told more than once to has received hard mercy from posterity, make an end of his evidence, and, lastly, which has sat in stern judgment on his they give a summing up which, if it had been tomb. attributed to Jeffreys, would have found no one to dispute its origin. This is the charge of the impartial Judge: "This old Judge, With one foot in the grave; with dim eyes, strange To tears, save drops of dotage; with long white |