.. Captain Beechey's Narrative of his Voyage to the Pacific able Poem, by a Mechanic 385, 541 THE writer of the following sketch had meditated a very modest preface, in which it was his purpose to have enlarged upon the inadequacy of his own powers, and to have particularly deprecated any comparison with the masterly sketches of the Irish Bar, which some time ago adorned the pages of the New Monthly; but upon second thoughts, it occurred to him that such a prefatory discourse might seem to the many no more than presumption in disguise, and therefore he will at once, after the manner of Homer, and other persons celebrated for the dispatch of affairs, plunge into his subject; and if those who have read the former sketches alluded to will give to his labours the description applied to Salius in the race, as compared with Euryalus "Proximus huic, longo sed proximus intervallo," he will rest satisfied. I sing (or rather say) of Mr. Brougham, now Lord Brougham and Vaux, and High Chancellor of the Kingdom:-by the by, it may be necessary to offer to all but our Hibernian readers some apology for commencing Sketches of the English Bar with one who has so recently taken farewell of that body, upon his elevation to the woolsack; but we trust we shall be pardoned for making our first view of the Bar a retrospective one, and while the memory of Lord Brougham's career as a barrister is yet fresh upon every one's mind, attempting to preserve in our pages a faithful description of the man whose name and fame were conspicuous over Europe while he practised daily in the courts at Westminster Hall. For the present, then, we have to do with Henry Brougham the Commoner, whom we will not scruple to designate as the most remarkable man of his time-he is one whom no title of yesterday can elevate, and happy will he be if the new position in which his title places him, and the new circumstances with which it causes him to be surrounded, do not so alter the man, as to make Brougham the lord inferior to Brougham the commoner. It would be injustice to the subject of our sketch to consider him merely as a lawyer; he was an advocate, in the largest sense-in the courts for his professional reward; in Parliament for fame and Jan. 1831.-VOL. XXXI. NO. CXXI. B influence; everywhere for the popular cause, he was first in energy, and force, and industry, and eloquence. His it was "To scorn delights, and live laborious days;" and he has not been disappointed of the "fair guerdon,” which, if it do not always attend great talent and unwearied industry, is never so surely to be found as by their assistance. It were, perhaps, to inquire too curiously, if we should ask whether pure philanthropy or personal ambition had the greater share in the impetuous exertion which bore Mr. Brougham through so many and such various toils; but even the inferior of these motives has nobleness in it, and is far above the sordid desire of gain, the pitiful craving after distinction, merely for the sake of the pounds, shillings, and pence it will bring in, which other eminent lawyers have so palpably evinced, but which Mr. Brougham evidently despised. Ambition, Lord Bacon says, is like choler, "which is an humour that maketh men active, earnest, full of alacrity, and stirring:" all these was Mr. Brougham, and so far the circumstantial evidence is on the side of his ambition; but as men in the world commonly act upon mixed motives, we may perhaps give him credit for an honest anxiety to serve the people, combined with an ardent desire to elevate himself. There is no place in which eminent lawyers are accustomed to appear which was not occasionally the scene of Mr. Brougham's professional labours. I have seen him plead in the House of Lords-at the Privy Council-in the Court of Chancery-in all the common-law courts, and before the lunacy commissioners assembled in the Gray'sinn Coffee-house; indeed, the last of these places was that in which his last great professional effort was made. It was in the case of Mr. Davis, the City Tea-dealer, who would now probably be a lunatic according to law, but for the extraordinary power displayed in his behalf by his counsel, Mr. Brougham. But the peculiar professional home of the subject of our sketch was the Court of King's Bench. There might he be found at an early hour every morning during term-time, and, with brief intervals, throughout the whole of the day, with no very remarkable share of business, but waiting upon his turn to address the judges, and no doubt revolving in his mind many things of higher import than those contained in his brief. Mr. Brougham was at all times accustomed to speak with pride of his profession, even when he held only a subordinate rank in it; but I confess I have felt it to be a mortifying subject of contemplation, when at the very moment that the whole country was ringing with his name, I have seen him sitting in his stuff gown behind the bar, or rising up to be foiled by adversaries more skilful than himself in the minute learning and subtleties of the law, yet so far inferior to him in general knowledge, in intellect, and in eloquence, that language affords no term whereby to make the comparison. Certainly all his adversaries were not of this stamp-there was no humiliation in seeing even Brougham vanquished by the serious logic of Mr. Pollock, or his arguments good-humouredly overset by the ingenuity and extensive knowledge of his friend, Mr. Alderson. The heavy learning, slow but sure, of Mr. Tyndal, made him a respectable adversary, and the acute knowledge of Mr. James Park was something |