2

MINOR CORRESPONDENCE.

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon. By Horace Twiss, Esq. 3 vols.

IF there is any branch of literature which of late years has extended itself more widely, and borne richer fruit than it did of old, we think that it has been that connected with the biography of those eminent men who lived in the present age, or in that immediately preceding it. It is true that some evil has come along with the good; and that those graceful testimonials which the hand of friendship has given to departed worth and talent, have been accompanied by very heavy and tiresome commentaries on the actions and sayings of ordinary people; as every handsome and splendid procession has also an attendant mob, impairing its lustre, and impeding its way. Because we have a clever life of an orthodox and dignified clergyman, it is not necessary that we should also wade through the prolix correspondence and very ordinary sayings of a dissenting minister; or, because we delight in tracing the discoveries and watching the labours of a Watt or a Dalton, it does not follow that we must derive equal pleasure from a tedious narrative of a provincial artisan. Among, however, the most useful as well as delightful works of the kind that have appeared, we think those connected with the profession of the law are entitled to peculiar eminence; and we should consider such works as the lives of Romilly and Horner and Mackintosh, as text-books for those to study who aspire to the same honours of the profession which they reached, by the same arduous and honourable means. Such works as these are, like statues or pictures, representations of the men themselves, speaking as it were with a living voice, and in authentic words of encouragement exhorting the youthful student to labour, patience, and hope. Every succeeding page of such personal history comes on us with a lighter and brighter hue; we see as we advance difficulties disappearing, disadvantages overcome, and a new and unexpected pathway opened up the hills. Examples like these stimulate our flagging energies, they cheer us in our toilsome labours, they breathe vigour into our exhausted hopes, and bid us not despair of achieving anything, however discouraging or remote, which the genius or patience of others have accomplished before us. What is a volume of biography, but an invitation to the company of the dead, in which we listen to them, as they detail the impressive history of their past lives, confess their failures, recount their struggles, their victories and triumphs; recal the memory of the long years of painful suspense and disappointment in their youth; and the honourable records of the growing prosperity of their after-life? Thus, to the youthful candidate for legal eminence, does the voice of Mansfield and Hardwicke, of Thurlow and of Camden, appear to speak, animating him in his progress, cheering him during the long anni silentes of his early life, and appearing as friendly stars to light him during his hours of solitary study at home, or inglorious and reluctant leisure abroad, saying, or seeming to say,

"Nunc animis opus, Ænea, nunc pectore firmo."

To such works as these the present Life of Lord Eldon will prove a most valuable addition, because, in the first place, it presents an abstract of all that could be well achieved in the legal profession by united talents and industry; it gives the history of one who, from a very humble station, without any assistance from others, without a patron's help, without professional connexion, without public favour, rose to the highest honours and emoluments, to the especial friendship of two Sovereigns, to general estimation with the members of his own profession, and to the respect and esteem of the community-"Clarum et venerabile nomen:" and, secondly, it is useful, as detailing, at greater length and with more authentic materials than are usually supplied, the means by which this elevation was attained, showing, that an entire and well-grounded reliance on himself was the foundation of all Lord Eldon's future fortunes. No accident raised him to eminence, no adulation gained him patronage, no alliance procured him superiority of station. This is the history of a plain, simple man, who won his own way up the toilsome hill he had to climb and the bread he ate was earned by the painful application of mental labour, continued often through night and day, requiring truly the "mentem adamantinam"-the utmost resolution of a determined will in the conquest of great difficulties. Burke has somewhere said, that the study of the law has perhaps a greater tendency to sharpen the faculties, and give acuteness and subtilty in reasoning, and in detecting errors, than in enlarging the general powers of the understanding, and affording those comprehensive views and great resources which distinguish the philosopher and statesman; which, as in Bacon, can enlarge the empire of thought; or in Turgot, disclose a policy which may at once improve the condition and sway the destinies of mankind. This assertion is probably true, for Burke seldom spoke in vain; and, if it be so, it would not be a question surely too curious or remote to inquire, to what cause can this be referred; and may we not, in the first place, attribute something to the disadvantage naturally attending an exclusive study of any one science; for such an entire application of the time and thought the science of law, in its vast and complicated growth, seems imperiously to demand. The late ruler of France, it is said, made men of science statesmen, and found them wanting, for the same reason. Again, it may be said, that, in the various lines of argument through which the discovery of truth is sought, some are more calculated to expand the powers of the understanding, and to extend the boundaries of knowledge, than others; and if that of law depends more on the usages of antiquity, on prescriptive formularies, on foregiven decrees, on statute books, on technicalities, rather than on those large processes of induction which in other pursuits conduct through the different provinces of knowledge, through original research and distant inquiry, through analogy, experiment, and theory, through patient investigation and repeated trial, to the desired result; then we cannot hesitate to acknowledge the effect which the habitual exercise of those very opposite modes of conducting argument and arriving at truth may produce upon the mental powers; though the one may lead to the possession of subtle powers of distinction and nicety of discrimination in the use of terms, and quickness in detecting sophistry in the arguments of the opponent, yet that is not to be compared to the great and general advantage derived from the other; and further it might be said, that the very pursuits of the finished and learned lawyer, preparing for practice or engaged in it, are

not altogether favourable to the full development of the mental faculties, because they deny time for general cultivation, and press the copious and diversified stream of thought into too narrow a channel. We mean to say, that very minute inquiry into any department of knowledge, has a tendency rather to contract than to enlarge the understanding. As we proceed upwards in the stream of science, we find a thousand little channels multiplying themselves in every direction, in the pursuit of which we often suffer our attention to be so far absorbed, as to forget the ends, while we are investigating the source of things around us. We study parts rather than the whole. Even law is so extensive as to admit of much division of labour in its separate branches: and so, what we gain in our power of division, we lose in our nobler faculty of combination. What may be gained in the habit of close and laborious thinking, may be lost in the power of ready judgment and practical discrimination. These observations will surely not be thought irrelevant, when it is recollected how much it has been objected, when Lord Eldon's eminence in his profession was the subject of conversation, that he had carried the narrower views of his profession into his political life; that he did not display the same powers at the council table as at the bench; and that, even in the limits of his own profession, he was far behind some of his contemporaries in comprehensive knowledge and liberal application of the science of law; that he pertinaciously clung, like men of bounded intellect, to inflexible rules and forms; that he had rather a mechanical readiness in practical parts, and a power of threading his way through difficult and complicated questions, than that more philosophic spirit, "quæ vult rerum cognoscere causas," which likes to compare what is confirmed by practice, to the rudiments and origin of rules, to broad and fundamental truths, and to the original principles of science, till the further we advance the more clearly we perceive the scattered elements of truth combine and assume their proper form; and we are at length admitted within those sacred precincts and august abodes, where we behold the venerable monuments of ancient wisdom, and see the majestic lineaments of divine jurisprudence. The latter part of Mr. Twiss's work is occupied in the consideration, and partly in the refutation, of these opinions. We confess that we are not able to enter into such discussions for want of legal knowledge and professional experience; but we may be permitted to remark, that Lord Eldon's legal knowledge and talents have been thus severely judged, not by his contemporaries, and those who most intimately were acquainted with him when in the full possession of all his active powers; not by Lord Redesdale or Lord Erskine, his rivals, or companions of his labours, but by his successors; not by his equals, but his juniors; not by those educated with him in the same line of policy, when the country was under great restrictions of foreign intercourse, and intense dangers from foreign policy and domestic insurrection; not by those who knew him as the guardian of the law, the adviser of the Crown, and the most experienced member of the ministry during a long period, when every danger to the constitution and existence of the country was threatened, from the most powerful enemies abroad, and discontented demagogues at home. No wonder that, under the pressure of great difficulties, he was willing to hold together the reins of

* See on this subject, Rennell's Remarks on Scepticism, 1823.

discipline closer than he otherwise would; and even to fear any innovations in the practice of the law, when he thought that its very power was threatened. Objections have been made and criticisms applied to him by those who were fortunate enough to live under happier auspices and more liberal institutions than he did; when the gloomy and tempestuous clouds which hung over the fairest prospects of the country had seemed to pass away; when the liberal hand of peace had opened every long-closed port, and established throughout the world new channels of friendly connexion and commercial intercourse; when more extensive negotiations and closer intimacies knit together the nations of the globe; when progressive knowledge and accumulated experience gave rise to new thoughts and feelings; and when a larger communication of mutual ideas swept away at once many lingering prejudices, abolished many hurtful restrictions, and opened new regions of enterprize, and it is to be hoped of happiness, unknown before.

We now proceed to give a short abridgment of the contents of these volumes, and a summary of the events of Lord Eldon's life.

Lord Eldon was descended from the ancient family of the Scotts of Balweary, in Fifeshire, and the name is mentioned as far back as the year 1124. Among them appears the celebrated name of Sir Michael Scott the Wizard. He was one of the ambassadors sent to bring the Maid of Norway to Scotland on the death of Alexander III. He wrote a Commentary on Aristotle, printed at Venice in 1496. He is mentioned in the Inferno of Dante, and has appeared with great effect in later days in the romantic Lay of his descendant. This old Scottish family, somehow or other, got South, according to custom, and settled at Newcastle. The father of Lord Eldon was William Scott, a merchant and tradesman, and belonged to the fraternity of the hoastmen of the town. His principal business was that of a coal-fitter, or factor, who conducts the sales between the owner and shipper. This gentleman had two wives, the first of whom we pass over; his second was Jane Atkinson, whom he married Aug. 18, 1740. He lived to be seventy-nine, she to be ninety-one, years of age. By her he had thirteen children, of whom John Scott was the eighth, and William Lord Stowell the eldest. Lord Eldon believes that he was born 4 June, 1751, in Love Lane. He was sent to the Royal Grammar School at Newcastle, of which that fine scholar Richard Dawes had been the master from 1738 to 1749. He was succeeded by the Rev. Hugh Moises, Fellow of Peterhouse, under whose learning and good management the school flourished, which had declined under his predecessor, who was laying down recondite rules of Greek metre for scholars, when he should have been flogging the elements of that language into the boys. John Scott was a diligent boy, attached to his studies, and had the benefit of his brother William's example and instruction. His father meant him for his own business, but William thought he could do better for him. So John was sent to Oxford in May 1776, matriculated as Member of the University, and entered as a Commoner of University College, under the tuition of Sir Robert Chambers, and his brother Lord Stowell. He came up in the Newcastle coach, which had for its motto, Sat cito, si sat bene! which motto made a deep impression on him. "In short (he says) in all that I have had to do in future life, professional and judicial, I have always felt the effect of this early admonition on the panels of the vehicle which conveyed me from school, Sat cito, si sat bene.' It was the impression of this which made