Shakespeare. His house is warmed and lighted by steam. He is one of those who prefer the artificial to the natural in most things, and think the mind of man omnipotent. He has a great contempt for out-of-door prospects, for green fields and trees, and is for referring everything to utility. There is a little narrowness in this,

for if all the sources of satisfaction are taken away, what is to become of utility itself? It is, indeed, the great fault of this able and extraordinary man, that he has concentrated his faculties and feelings too entirely on one subject and pursuit, and has not "looked enough abroad into universality."*

THE Honourable Thomas Erskine, the third and youngest son of Henry David, tenth Earl of Buchan, in Scotland, was born in Edinburgh in the year 1750. At a very early age he selected the navy as his profession, for which he is said to have manifested a decided predilection, and went to sea with Sir John Lindsay, the nephew of the celebrated Lord Mansfield. He did not remain in the service a sufficient period to obtain a commission of lieutenant, though, by the friendship of his commander, he acted for some time in that capacity. In the eighteenth year of his age, having few hopes of promotion in the naval service, he entered the army as an ensign in the Royals, or first regiment of foot, and immediately afterwards accompanied his regiment to Minorca, where he remained three years. At this early period of his life, while labouring under the inconveniences of a very restricted fortune, he yet ventured. with that want of forethought which was unhappily a distinguishing feature of his private conduct, to unite himself to a young lady, who accompanied him to Minorca. In the year 1772, on his return from that island, he appears to have resided for some time in London, where the brilliancy of his talents speedily made him known in society. Amongst the distinguished persons who assembled at the house of Mrs Montague, where Dr Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Bishop of St Asaph, Dr Burney, and others of the most celebrated scholars of the day, were in the habit of meeting, Mr Erskine was not unfrequently seen.* "He talked," says Boswell, who met him in society at this time, "with a vivacity, fluency, and precision so uncommon, that he attracted particular attention."+ "He told us," adds the biographer, "that, when he was in Minorca, he not only read prayers but preached two sermons to the regiment."

Of the motives which first led Mr Erskine to the study of the law little is known, but it has been said that he was induced by the advice of his

• Wraxall's "Memoirs," vol. i., p. 152.

↑ "Life of Johnson," vol. ii., p. 170, ed. 1799.

mother, a lady of uncommon acquirements and great penetration, to relinquish his commission, and to enter his name on the books of Lincoln's Inn. At the same time he also became a fellowcommoner of Trinity College, Cambridge, where one of his declamations, the subject of which is the Revolution of 1688, is still extant, and is said to display in some of its passages the traces of that eloquence by which he was subsequently so much distinguished. In his speech on the trial of Paine, for the publication of the second part of the "Rights of Man," Mr Erskine mentions with complacency this youthful effort. "I was formerly called upon, under the discipline of a college, to maintain these truths, and was rewarded for being thought to have successfully maintained that our present constitution was by no means a remnant of Saxon liberty, nor any other institution of liberty, but the pure consequence of the oppression of the Norman tenures, which spreading the spirit of freedom from one end of the kingdom to another, enabled our brave fathers, inch by inch, not to reconquer, but which for the first time to obtain those privileges are the inalienable inheritance of all mankind."

The object of Mr Erskine in becoming a member of the university was, that by taking the degree to which, as the son of a nobleman, he was entitled, he might save the term of two years, during which his name must otherwise have remained on the books of Lincoln's Inn. He did not therefore apply himself to the usual course of academical study, but devoted his time to the acquisition of the learning essential to his new profession, in the chambers of Mr Buller, one of the most eminent special pleaders of that day. While thus studying the rudiments of the law, Mr Erskine is said to have exhibited much diligence; and on the promotion of Mr Buller to the bench, he became a pupil, of Mr Wood, of whose instructions he availed himself for some time after he was called to the bar, an event which took place in Trinity term, 1778.

By a happy accident, the genius of Erskine

* Lord Bacon's "Advancement of Learning."

was not doomed to languish in that obscurity which so generally involves the early fortunes of those who devote themselves to his profession. Captain Baillie, the lieutenant-governor of Greenwich Hospital, having observed various abuses in the administration of that charity, presented several petitions to the directors, the governors, and, lastly, to the Lords of the Admiralty, praying for inquiry and redress. Not being successful in his object, he printed a statement of the case, and distributed it amongst the general governors of the hospital. In this paper he animadverted with much severity on the introduction of landsmen into the hospital, insinuating that they had been placed there to serve the election purposes of Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty. On the circulation of this pamphlet, Captain Baillie was suspended by the directions of the Admiralty, and certain of the officers of the establishment, whose conduct had been the subject of his remarks, applied, in Trinity term, 1778, to the Court of King's Bench, for a criminal information. Amongst the counsel employed by Captain Baillie to show cause against this rule was Mr Erskine, with whom he had become accidentally acquainted, and who had only been called to the bar in the same term in which the rule for the information had been granted. On the 23d of November, cause was shown against the rule by Captain Baillie's leading counsel, and on the following day Mr Erskine addressed to the court, from one of the back benches, that animated and brilliant argument which at once established his reputation-a reputation without an equal in the annals of English forensic eloquence. The speech was as remarkable for the judgment it displayed in the selection of the topics, and for the orderly method of its arrangement, as for the energy of its language, and the tone of high feeling by which it was characterised.

In the course of the year 1779, Mr Erskine was employed as one of the counsel for Admiral Keppel, at the suggestion, it is said, of Mr Dunning, who, finding himself embarrassed by his ignorance of nautical phrases and affairs, was desirous of availing himself of the superior technical information of Mr Erskine.

In the spring of 1779 the reputation of Mr Erskine was further advanced by the delivery, at the Bar of the Commons, of a speech on a subject closely connected with the interests of literature. From the reign of James I. the Stationers' Company and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge had claimed, under a grant from the Crown, the exclusive right of printing almanacs, until at length Mr Carnan, a bookseller in St Paul's Churchyard, resolving to dispute the legality of this monopoly, published a variety of almanacs, which, in consequence of their superiority over the prerogative editions, obtained an extensive circulation. Legal proceedings were immediately instituted; but ulti

mately the Court of Exchequer decided that the grant from the Crown could not be sustained. In consequence of this decision, the Prime Minister, Lord North, at that time chancellor of the university of Cambridge, introduced a bill into Parliament, to vest the right in the parties who had so long usurped it; upon which Mr Carnan petitioned to be heard against the bill at the Bar of the Commons, where Mr Erskine appeared as his advocate. Although, perhaps, in the strict line of his duty, he would have been confined to the arguments immediately arising from his client's situation, he took a higher ground, and contended with great ability and eloquence against the principle of the proposed measure, pointing out the impolicy, and enlarging upon the injustice, of fettering, in any particular, the freedom of the press, for the individual benefit of any body of men. Notwithstanding the strong interest which the bill possessed in the support of the minister and of the members for the universities, it was rejected by a majority of forty-five votes, immediately on Mr Erskine's retiring from the bar. It has been mentioned, as a circumstance much to the credit of the then Lord Elliott, the brother-in-law of Lord North, that though he came, at the desire of his noble relative, from Cornwall, to support the bill, yet, having heard Mr Erskine's speech, he divided against it, saying publicly in the lobby, that he found it impossible to vote otherwise.

But, signal as had been the success which attended his exertions, the extraordinary powers of Mr Erskine's eloquence had not yet been fully developed. He had not hitherto enjoyed the opportunity, in any important case, of addressing to the feelings of a jury that fine union of argument and passion which constituted the character of his oratory. A noble occasion, which might seem expressly designed for the display of his peculiar powers, soon occurred in the trial of Lord George Gordon for high treason. That young nobleman, as it is well known, having been elected the president of the Protestant Association, proceeded, at the head of upwards of forty thousand persons, to the House of Commons, to present the petition of the associated Protestants. This meeting was unfortunately the origin of the fatal riots which for so many days desolated the metropolis, and shook for a time even the foundations of the Government. Shocked at these outrages, Lord George Gordon tendered his services to suppress them, and accompanied the Sheriff of London into the city for that purpose; but, notwithstanding this disavowal of any illegal intent, he was afterwards committed to the Tower, and indicted for high treason, in levying war against the king. The trial took place on the 5th February 1781, when Mr Kenyon and Mr Erskine appeared as counsel for the prisoner. The evidence for the Crown having been concluded, Mr Kenyon, as senior counsel for Lord George, addressed the jury,

and, according to the usual course, would have been followed by his junior, Mr Erskine. He, however, insisted upon reserving his address till the conclusion of the evidence on both sides, which, he said, was matter of great privilege to the prisoner, and for which, he stated, there was a precedent, the authority of which he should insist upon for his client. This being assented to, the witnesses for the defence were examined, and at the close of that evidence, about midnight, Mr Erskine rose, and addressed to the jury a speech which, in powerful argument, animated oratory, and successful effect, has, perhaps, never been equalled in this country. After a most argumentative and energetic attack on the dangerous doctrine of constructive treason, he applied himself to the evidence in a manner so singularly skilful, judicious, and masterly, that even in reading the speech, deprived of all the powerful auxiliaries of the presence, the voice, and the action of the speaker, the reader is irresistibly impelled to regard the prisoner as a man who, whatever might have been his imprudence, stood, in heart and intention, wholly free from offence. The two leading principles which pervaded the speech were the unconstitutional nature of the doctrine of constructive treason, and the blameless intentions of the prisoner; and to the enforcing of these two arguments the whole of the speaker's powers were, with the most skilful art, directed. Satisfied that on the establishment of these arguments his client's acquittal would necessarily follow, the advocate never for a single instant lost sight of them, but to their enforcement and illustration devoted every effort of his art.

So rapidly did the reputation and practice of Mr Erskine increase, that, on the suggestion of Lord Mansfield, as it is said, it was thought proper, in the year 1783, when he had scarcely been five years at the bar, to confer upon him a patent of precedence.

Talents so extraordinary and eloquence so powerful as Mr Erskine's, are, in this country, speedily engaged in the public service. His political predilections had already led him to associate himself with those celebrated men, who, during the administration of Lord North, headed the opposition, and whose characters and genius were then in their highest meridian. Fox, Burke, and Sheridan, the three most splendid names in the modern political history of England, had hitherto preserved unblemished the fair and brilliant reputation with which they entered into public life. The "coalition" had not yet dimmed the splendour of Fox's name; the purity of Burke's principles had not yet departed from him; nor had the fatal web of pecuniary embarrassment been wound round the soul of Sheridan. To associate with men like these was worthy of Erskine; but it was not until after the formation of the coalition ministry that he became the public coadjutor of this dis

tinguished phalanx. When the ill-judged and unfortunate measure of the India Bill had been introduced, it became evident that ministers would require every assistance to carry it, opposed as it was by so many and such various interests. The fame and the genius of Erskine at once pointed him out as an invaluable ally; and it was determined to bring him without delay into the House of Commons. Sir William Gordon, the member for Portsmouth, was therefore prevailed upon, for an adequate consideration, to resign his seat, to which Mr Erskine immediately succeeded.

It has not unfrequently happened, that men of the most distinguished reputation at the bar, when introduced into the House of Commons, have failed to realise the high expectations of their admirers. Such appears to have been the case with regard to Mr Erskine, who never acquired any considerable accession of fame by his parliamentary exertions. His first speech was delivered during the debate on the first reading of the East India Bill, and, as reported, bears few marks of those extraordinary talents which distinguished his forensic efforts. The opinion of a person, opposed in principle to Mr Erskine, who was at that time a member of the House, and who heard the speech, has been preserved. "Mr Erskine, who, like Mr Scott, has since attained to the highest honours and dignities of the bar, first spoke as a member of the House of Commons in support of this obnoxious measure. His enemies pronounced the performance tame, and destitute of the animation which so powerfully characterised his speeches in Westminster Hall. They maintained that, however resplendent he appeared as an advocate while addressing a jury, he fell to the level of an ordinary man, if not below it, when seated on the ministerial bench, where another species of oratory was demanded to impress conviction or to extort admiration. То me, who, having never witnessed his jurisprudential talents, could not make any such comparison, he appeared to exhibit shining powers of declamation." On the second reading of the India Bill, Mr Erskine spoke at greater length, and concluded with calling on Mr Fox to perse. vere in the measure. "Let my right honourable friend," said he, "go on with firmness, and risk his office at every step he takes, and I will combat, as I now do, by his side, at the hazard of every prospect of ambition. Let him stand upon his own manly, superior understanding, and the integrity of his heart, which I know is ever ready to guide him in the course of his duty, and I will stand for ever by him, and be ready to sink with him in his fall."

Mr Fox did proceed, risked his office, and lost it; and in the struggles which subsequently took place, Mr Erskine redeemed his promise of faithfully combating by the side of his leader. The India Bill having been rejected in the House of

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