Gigoux, an historical painter of merit. The artist has consciously or unconsciously supplied the very expression which the ladies declare to be wanting in the living poet. But is not this a mistake? or is it well to sanction the popular (and essentially feminine) error, that genius, like the liver of the Strasbourg goose, can only be brought to its highest perfection by disease and suffering? or that every buoyant, joyous, and elastic temperament must be alien and averse from poetry?

382

LORD ELDON,

AND THE CHANCES OF THE BAR.

(FROM THE EDInburgh Review, JULY 1844.)

The Public and Private Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon : with Selections from his Correspondence. By HORACE TWISS, Esq., one of Her Majesty's Counsel. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1844.

THIS is not only a valuable but a very agreeable book; much more so than we thought a Life of Lord Eldon, in three thick octavos, could be made. The announcement, we own, rather appalled than gladdened us. We saw, in our mind's eye, Mr. Twiss's copying-clerk unceasingly at work. We anticipated whole chapters of debates on Catholic Emancipation, Chancery Reform, Reform in Parliament, and other great public questions; and we internally vowed that no human consideration should induce us to recommence a series of exhausted controversies. We have been pleasantly disappointed. Mr. Twiss is evidently as tired of such matters as ourselves. He has given us just so much of them as are necessary to prevent chasms in the narrative; but the staple of the work consists of letters (many from royal personages) supplied by the family; the curious biographical details which have appeared in the "Law Magazine1;" a manuscript book of anecdotes and observations dotted down by Lord Eldon himself for his grandson, (new "Tales of a Grandfather;") and notes of conversations with the old Lord shortly

(1) Reprinted in Townshend's "Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges."

before his death, made by Mr. Farrer and two members of the family. No biographer could possess richer materials, and few biographers would have made so good a use of them. Some of the old stories might have been omitted, and some of the letters thrown into an appendix; but without being hypercritical, it would be difficult to suggest any fresh distribution of parts, any cuttings-out or fillings-up, by which the publication would be essentially improved; and it is generally allowed that those passages where Mr. Twiss comes forward in his own person, such as his political portraits, are judiciously interspersed and extremely well written.

Of course the book is a partial book. What life or memoir of a public man is not? Of course Mr. Twiss, a Tory though a Canningite, is occasionally unjust to Whigs; for even the truth-loving Dr. Johnson, when he wrote the debates of the House of Commons, always took care, he says, that the Whig dogs should have the worst of it. But it is beside our present purpose to undertake an examination of the work under its political aspects. Neither is it our intention to compose a fresh abstract or abridgement of the narrative, though this is both the easiest and pleasantest way of dealing with volumes of biography. It is one, however, which can only be employed effectively by first-comers; and owing to the pressure of other subjects and engagements, we happen to be among the last. Indeed, little or nothing seems left for us but to point the moral and adorn the tale; and our more peculiar object in this article will be, to compare Lord Eldon's career with that of other great lawyers; to form a precise estimate of his talents and opportunities; to ascertain what he owed to merit and what to fortune; and pronounce where his example should be followed, as well as when (for this will sometimes happen) it should be shunned.

In analysing the causes of his rise, we shall necessarily be led to take a view of the general qualifications for success at the bar, and the difficulties which beset the aspirant to forensic honours. But we do not think this will prove the most uninteresting or unacceptable part of this article. There is hardly a family among the educated classes that has not a relative, connection, or intimate acquaintance, embarked in the struggle: all these will be glad to learn what expectations they are justified in forming, and how they may best advance the fortunes of their favourites; while some will not be sorry to repair an involuntary injustice when they find, that, in this as well as in every other walk of life, it is one thing to merit, and another to command, prosperity.

We are the more anxious to take this opportunity for explaining the true nature of the forensic career, with the circumstances that influence it, because no subject is so little understood. One popular fallacy meets us at the very threshold. Lord Eldon, the son of a wealthy trader, is said to have done wonders in overcoming the disadvantages of birth; and no longer ago than the last session, Sir Robert Peel, in justifying the re-appointment of Lord Lyndhurst to the Great Seal, dwelt much less on his great experience, sagacity, and fine judicial understanding, than on his having risen by his own exertions from (what the Premier was pleased to term) comparative obscurity to the highest civic station next the throne. When such notions are sanctioned by such authority, it is time to probe them to the root.

A little book was published recently, entitled "The Grandeur of the Law," by Mr. Foss, from which it appears that more than seventy British peerages have been founded by successful lawyers, the dukedoms of Norfolk and Devonshire being of the number. Sir William Howard, a judge in the reigns of Edward

the First and Edward the Second, was the founder of the Howard family; Sir John de Cavendish, Lord Chief-Justice in the reigns of Edward the Third and Richard the Second, of the Cavendishes. But the church in those days was the only profession which afforded the lowly-born a chance; judgeships were conferred by the Plantagenets without much regard to judicial qualities; and it will be found, upon nice inquiry, that the majority of those who rose to eminence, through the law, prior to the seventeenth century, were men of good family, or connected with the great. There is an ordinance, signed by Bacon, closing the Inns of Court against all but gentlemen entitled to coat armour. Indeed, it was not until the beginning of the eighteenth that the lists were thrown open to all comers, and the prizes fairly distributed; but, dating from that period, the selfdependent competitors have had their full share of

them.

Lord Somers' father was an attorney at Worcester; Lord Hardwicke's, an attorney at Dover; Lord King's, a grocer at Exeter; the late Lord Gifford's (by an odd coincidence), a grocer in the same city; Lord Thurlow's, a poor country clergyman *; Lord Kenyon's, a gentleman of small estate in Wales; Dunning's, an attorney at Ashburton; Sir Vicary Gibbs', a surgeon and apothecary at Exeter †; Sir Samuel Romilly's, a jeweller, though of a good refugee family; Sir Samuel Shepherd's (as we learn from a memoir by his son), a goldsmith; Lord Tenterden's, a barber at Canterbury, described as "a little, erect, primitive

* When Thurlow was Chancellor, some one, wishing to flatter him, suggested that he was descended from Thurlow, the Secretary of Cromwell. "No, sir," was the gruff reply; "there were two Thurlows in our county in those days, Thurlow the secretary and Thurlow the carrier. I am descended from the carrier."

†The air of this city seems congenial to forensic talents. Sir William Follett was born in the immediate neighbourhood.