of the bar mess. On one occasion, at Guildford, I sat between Serjeant Shee and Mr. Montague Chambers. The latter gave us "The British Grenadiers," with its refrain of "Tow, row, row," in grand style. Edwin James sang The Fine Old English Gentleman" more beautifully than I ever heard it sung. Mr. Hawkins has a voice like a bell, and inexpressively sweet. Relieved from the dry duties of the court, my learned hosts were like boys just let out of school, and were as playful as colts, and the evening was a very brilliant

one.

One of the company informed me, that on a recent occasion a learned gentleman began a story, but before he had proceeded far he was interrupted by "Swear him." Accordingly a bottle was presented to him, on which he was to be sworn. To this he objected, on the ground that it was empty. The objection The objection was gravely argued, and finally pronounced to be valid, and the gentleman was accordingly sworn upon a full bottle.

SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK, LORD CHIEF BARON.

My introduction to this distinguished scholar and judge was in this wise. I had gone down to Croydon to spend the day and dine with Patrick Colquhoun, then on the Home Circuit, and was taken by him into the Civil Court then sitting. It was much crowded, and not being able to find me a comfortable seat, he sent up a slip of paper to the judge, the Lord Chief Baron, with a request that "his friend might be raised to the bench." A bright smile passed over the face of the judge as he nodded assent, and I was accordingly presented to his lordship by my friend. Sir Frederick rose from the bench, and meeting me

at the end of it, said, "Colquhoun is coming to dine with me to-day, will you come too?" I said I should be very proud indeed to do so, but that I had no evening dress with me, only a frock-coat. "Never mind your frock-coat; come." Accordingly, accompanied by my friend, on the breaking up of the court, I repaired to the "Judges' lodgings,' a fine house and lovely grounds a short distance out of the town; and on entering the drawing room, was received by the Chief Baron, who presented me to his daughter, Miss Mary Pollock, as a gentleman who wished to apologise for coming in a frock-coat; adding, "If it will put him more at his ease, I will put on a frock-coat too." It was a small but very charming party, consisting, I think, of eight, includ ing the judge and his daughter, Serjeant Channell, who was assisting as judge pro hac vice in the Crown Court, a barrister of the name of Clarke, Colquhoun, and myself. After dinner the judge, apropos of the subject of conversation, quoted twenty lines from Pope with wonderful feeling and effect. This led to quotations from others of the company, myself included, and then the Chief Baron quoted a long passage from Hudibras, in which he ran the lines so into one another as to disguise the rhyme and give it the semblance of blank heroic verse.

The next time I had the pleasure of seeing Sir Frederick was at the Guildford Assizes, I think in the following summer, when I was again "raised to the bench," and as soon as I had taken my seat, was invited to dinner on that day. It was a very lovely day, and the "judges' lodgings" were the rectory about half a mile out of Guildford, in very beautiful grounds. Instead of going into the drawing room we were received on the lawn. The guests were the

Rev. Mr. and Lady Maria Bender, the daughter of the Earl of Waldegrave, Mr. Willes (afterwards Justice of the Court of Common Pleas), the same Mr. Clarke whom I had met at Croydon, Colquhoun, and two sons of the Chief Baron. The colleague of the latter, Justice Sir William Erle was there in his own right. I think I have now before me the dear old Chief Baron pacing up and down the lawn with Lady Maria on his arm, a picture of venerable age and graceful youth. and graceful youth. The lady sat in the middle of the table, with a judge on each side of her. The Chief Baron had wonderful tact, invaluable in a host, of drawing out his guests; and before the soup was removed he asked me a question which he knew by some sort of instinct that I could talk upon. Apropos of the soup, which was real turtle, the Chief Baron inquired of Sir William (who was going to the Old Bailey Sessions, or had recently been there) whether the turtle soup served to the judges there was as good. "Well," said Erle, I never enjoy the turtle soup at the Old Bailey; it seems to be flavoured with the sighs and groans of the condemned prisoners.'

The trial and acquittal of the woman (formerly a nurse of the Queen) for the murder of her six children had just taken place, the ground of acquittal being, as is well known, the insanity of the prisoner. The judge who tried her (Sir William) had summed up against the plea, and he repeated at table his opinion that she was of sound mind when she committed the act. The presumption, however, is that he was wrong, for the woman subsequently destroyed herself while under confinement in the asylum to which she had been consigned for her life. I asked Sir William his opinion of the new law of evidence in civil cases which had just come into operation, under

which the evidence of both plaintiff and defendant was taken. He said he thought the change a great improvement, adding that he wished that it had been extended to criminal cases; and in support of his view, he told us that he had once tried two men for highway robbery, the evidence of which appeared to be perfect, and they were found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years transportation. An exclamation from one of the prisoners, as he was removed by the turnkey, struck Sir William as being remarkable, and to point to a fact which had not come out in the course of trial. Upon this the judge sent to the prisoners' attorney and the counsel who defended them, desiring them to come up to his lodgings in the evening, and bring the papers with them. The result of this and further investigation was that it was shown that, although the stolen property was found upon them, and that they were in company with the thieves at the time, they did not actually commit the robbery. Sir William was therefore rewarded for his benevolent sagacity by the pleasure of reducing the term of imprisonment to a year or two. I was much fascinated by his manner and conversation; there was benevolence in his voice and look; and I never met with anyone on whom he had not made a like impression. He was a bachelor, delighting in horse exercise, and very fond of his horses. Indeed, the Court was no sooner up than he might be seen taking his anteprandial ride; and often, when the Courts were sitting in London, have I met him, about nine in the morning, on horseback in the neighbourhood of the obelisk, with his groom behind him. He rode heavily, and leaned over his horse's neck, so as to render the

least false step of his steed very dangerous.

I sat next to the Chief Baron in the course of the evening, and had some very interesting talk with him. He told me that he was at Trinity (Cambridge) with Porson and Lord Byron, and added that the former, when Pollock came out senior wrangler of his year, urged him to embrace literature as a profession. "But," said the Chief Baron, "I had no money, and must adopt a less precarious means of living."

The Chief Baron must at that time have been verging upon eighty; but Time did not seem to have told upon either his mental or physical powers. The brilliancy and originality of his remarks, and his personal activity, were wonderful. In the course of that evening a lawyer's clerk arrived to say that a cause which was the last on the list, and had been set down for the next day, and was likely to last three or four, had been settled out of course, thus at once releasing the Chief Baron from his labours; and his lordship manifested his delight by "polkaing" three times round the drawing room until he was nearly out of breath.

Before we parted for the evening the Chief Baron was so kind as to stipulate with me, as he graciously termed it, that, whenever he was on the Home Summer Circuit, I should come down and dine with

66

him, and help him to try causes;" and many a pleasant day have I passed on the bench by his side, enjoying his sotto voce remarks, and admiring his wonderful sagacity. I remember, in a particular cause, there was a fact which, although strongly suspected, did not come out in evidence. "Hand me up that order book," said the judge. After turning over about two

thirds of the leaves, he put his finger upon one, and said, "There was a letter about that; where is it ?" After some search and conference among the barristers and attorneys, a letter was produced which supplied the missing link in the evidence. When the trial was over, I asked Sir Frederick how he knew about that letter. 66 Well," he replied, "I did not know about it; but I had a shrewd guess at its existence." Again, there was a cause which involved a question of the direction of a drain, which one of the witnesses was attempting to describe. The Chief Baron took a sheet of foolscap, and, with a broad-nibbed quill pen, made a diagram, and held it up to the witness. "Is that the sort of thing?" inquired the judge. "Not quite," said the witness; "there were curves in it." With two dashes of his pen, the judge held it up again to the witness, who exclaimed at once, Exactly, my lord." I expressed to Sir Frederick my surprise at the readiness with which he had made the diagram, when he said, "Oh, it is quite in my way," and, taking another sheet of paper, he drew, without any instrument, a series of circles, intersected by straight lines, as accurately as many would have done them with rule and compasses.

Once, at the end of an unusually long and tedious trial, I expressed to my kind friend my wonder at the patience with which he had listened to the "damnable iteration of counsel and witness. "Ah, my friend," said the judge, "you don't know the pleasure of eliciting truth, which it is the business of some of these gentlemen (pointing to the bar) to distort or conceal." On another occasion, while one of the counsel was pooh-poohing the entire of certain evidence adduced, the Chief

Baron said, in an aside to me, “But that is the point, though!" and so it proved.

It happened on one occasion of my dining with Sir Frederick I had been repeating to one of his daughters in the drawing room a story which Sir Henry Ellis had recently related to me regarding a matrimonial quarrel between a nobleman and his wife, the result being a separation by deed. It

was a subject of much gossip in the fashionable circles at the time, and I asked Sir Henry if he knew what was the casus belli. His explanation was that his lordship, being subject to cold feet, took a bottle of water to bed with him, and her ladyship kicked the cork out. Miss Pollock laughed heartily at the story, when the Chief Baron, turning round, inquired, "What's the joke?" I repeated the tale, and then put it to his lordship as a judge whether it was a legitimate cause for the separation. Frederick, after reflecting with a very judicial countenance for a few seconds, replied that on mature consideration, and speaking as a judge, he thought it was.

IRISH SPARKS.

Sir

I remember a Trinity College (Dublin) story of a student, who having to translate Cæsar, rendered the first sentence, Omnis Gallia divisa est in partes tres," ""All Gaui is quartered into three halves." At the same time I was told of one of the undergraduates of the same college amusing himself with a mirror, by throwing the reflection of the sun's rays on the heads of the Dons as they crossed the quod, for which he was summoned before the authorities, who, however, were puzzled to find a name for the offence, until one of them suggested casting reflections on the heads of the college."

66

66

SCOTTISH HEROISM. Jerdan related to me that he one day witnessed at Haslar Hospital the operation of extracting a ball from a sailor, who had received it in an attempt to cut out some vessels from a French port. During the painful process, the poor fellow never uttered a groan, but once exclaimed to the surgeon, Saftly, saftly over the stanes." When the ball was extracted he asked to look at it. Taking it in his hand he gazed at it wistfully for a few moments, and then said, "Nae sma' dust of a ba' this! but it shall gang back to them.” A quarter of an hour afterwards the poor fellow was a corpse.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

I never saw him but on one occasion, when he called at the house of a friend with whom I had been

dining. I was much struck by his appearance, and perfectly charmed by the unstudied eloquence of his talk. I could have listened to him for hours. John Knox was among the subjects discussed, and was highly eulogised by Carlyle. I admitted that he was a great man in his time, but alleged that he was rejoinder, "he persecuted the devil a persecutor. "Yes, sir," was the and all his servants." "True," I said, Mr. Carlyle, "and sometimes mistook the livery." Either my reply was so stupid that he did not see the point, or there was no point to see, or he did not like the contradiction.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

Jerdan told me that he was once at the printing office of the Literary Gazette, where Mr. Rogers's "Jacqueline" was being printed. Glancing through some sheets Jerdan noticed some imperfect rhymes, and pointed them out to

the printer, who, in turn, mentioned them to Rogers. The poet cancelled every page in which they occurred. He was a wonderful polisher, as was Basil Hall, whose printer told me that the corrections of his proofs cost more than the composition of the type. A gentleman of great literary celebrity, and who was a frequent guest at Rogers's breakfasts, told me that on one occasion the poet referred to the following lines as the best he had ever written:

"Long," he exclaimed, "long may such goodness live,

'Twas all he gave-'twas all he had to give."

"I was in bed," added Rogers, "when I made them, and I put my hands outside on the counterpane and treated myself to three rounds of applause. Rogers had a reputation for saying disagreeable saying disagreeable things; and, I am told, alleged in defence of the practice, that if he said clever things in society no one listened to him, whereas if he said bitter things, the company was all attention. I heard of an instance in point. He was dining at Holland House when Lady Holland remarked to him, that "there was nothing worth living for in the world." "Did you ever try to do any good in it, Lady Holland ?" rejoined Rogers. I was never at his house, but his breakfast gatherings must have been charming. I have heard that his dinners were showy and splendid, but I believe not frequent. It is said that Moore and other guests complained of paucity of wine, and that they adjourned to a tavern to finish the evening; but when the anacreonism of the bard is taken into account, the complaint is very likely to have originated in the fact that the host knew when his guests had had enough and they did not. It was also said of him that he was close in money matters, an assertion

which is somewhat contradicted by the fact which came under my personal knowledge, of his having advanced to a poor author to set him up in a business, three hundred pounds, which he must have known he should never see again. Rogers had a singularly formed head, and a memento mori expression of countenance; and it is reported of him that when he visited the catacombs at Paris, the janitor, as the poet was going out, exclaimed in a tone of pathetic remonstrance, "You are not going to leave us?" I saw him at the Royal Academy a short time before the accident which crippled him for the remainder of his life, and was much struck by his light step and almost jaunty air. His exquisite taste was in no instance more distinguished than in the illustrations from Turner and Stothard, of his "Italy," and "Poems," engraved with a care and delicacy never surpassed in the history of the art.

ROBERT BELL,

Novelist, dramatist, critic, and journalist, a very extraordinary, though much underrated man. His

Wayside Pictures" is one of the most charming books I ever met with. I read it long before I made his acquaintance. The committee of the Literary Fund had been for a series of years attacked, at their annual meetings, by a party of which Mr. Charles Wentworth Dilke, grandfather of Citizen Dilke, was the head. At last, on the eve of the annual meeting of the 10th March, 1858, there was circulated among the members of the corporation at large, a pamphlet entitled "The Case of the Reformers in the Literary Fund, stated by Charles W. Dilke, Charles Dickens, and John Forster," in which was a string of grave charges against the