ESSAYS.

CALIFORNIA

LIFE OF LORD COKE.

IN inscribing "the Lives of the Chief Justices" to his son, Lord Campbell expresses the hope that his offspring may live to rescue the father from oblivion, and to do credit to their common name. The prayer is unnecessary. The remembrance of Lord Campbell will not pass away with his mortal career. Like many notable legal functionaries who have gone before him, he has worked his arduous way from the ranks to eminence, and won for himself the rich rewards of honest industry, patient perseverance, and forensic skill. Entering the world with the multitude, he owes it to no man that he quits it with the few who have reached the goal of their early ambition, and bravely scaled life's professional ladder. Future biographers of the distinguished lawyers of this age can hardly omit the achievements of the present Lord Chief Justice, and in registering his public services it will be impossible to refer without praise to the enlightened uses to which Lord Campbell has devoted

VOL. II.

B

his dignified leisure. Under any circumstances it would have been our duty to accord to the literary labours of Lord Campbell a hearty welcome. The example shown to his professional brethren in their publication is most salutary. It is not often that the lawyer in his maturity quits his narrow way to find amusement and instruction for his fellows in the broader and more common path of pleasant literature. More seldom does the public servant upon half-pay justify his pension by his pen. But the Lives of the Chief Justices has claims to consideration upon its own merits. Like the former work of its author, it is a laborious and valuable contribution to the general store. In purely literary hands it might have presented a more brilliant style, but its substantial worth the best of our living writers could scarcely have heightened.

Lord Campbell has devoted a considerable portion of his first volume to the biography of Sir Edward Coke. The theme is worthy of the space afforded it. Independently of the professional renown of this great man, there are circumstances connected with his career that render it perhaps more deeply interesting than that of any other legal functionary. He began the world with the immortal Bacon; the two were rivals during life; they fought together for distinction, and were even competitors in love. Both were devoured by a raging desire for wealth and honours, both gained the objects of their fiery ambition, and neither found happiness when these were acquired. If Bacon was more unscrupulous than Coke in the ignoble race, his fall also was more fatal and ignominious. Both represent to our minds distinct forms of undoubted

COMPARISON OF COKE AND BACON.

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greatness. The Body of the Common Law of England is the type that speaks for Coke. The glory of human wisdom shines for ever around the drooping head of Bacon. Both teach posterity how much intellectual grandeur may coexist with the most glaring moral turpitude; both pay homage to virtue by seeking in their disgrace refuge in the tranquil pursuits that have since immortalised them. Bacon, with a genius only less than angelic, condescends to paltry crime, and dies branded. Coke, with a profound contempt for the arts that Bacon loved, enraged by disappointment, takes revenge for neglect, and dies a patriot. In the days of Coke there would seem to have been a general understanding on the part of Royal sycophants to mislead the Monarch, and all became his sycophants who received his favours. Coke is no exception to the rule. It is true enough that to him we are mainly indebted for the movement which, beginning on the 30th of January, 1621, ended that very day eight-and-twenty years with the decapitation of the King; but it is likewise undeniable that the nation's difficulties would have waited some time longer for solution, had not the defender of the people's rights been inoculated with a love of liberty by the sudden application of the Royal lancet, whose sharp edge his judicious self-love would never have provoked.

Coke was born in what a Royalist of the days of Charles the First might well have called "the good old times," when Queens were gentle despots and Parliaments the most devoted of self-constituted slaves; when Mr. Speaker "upon his allegiance was commanded, if a certain bill be exhibited, not to read

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it," and when "Mr. Vice-Chamberlain, to the great comfort of the Speaker and the House, brought answer of Her Majesty's acceptance of the submission" of legislators who had presumed to speak of matters not proper and pertinent for the house to deal in." Elizabeth was on her splendid throne when Coke, having quitted the University of Cambridge, without a degree, was working like a horse at Clifford's-inn. Stony-hearted and stony-minded, he loved neither poetry nor pleasure. From the moment he began the appointed task of his life, he dreamt of nothing but fame, and of that only for the sake of the sterling recompense it brings. Friendships not convertible to cash, Coke resolutely forswore at the commencement of his career, and he was blessed with none at the close of it. Spenser yielded him no delight, Shakspeare no seduction. The study of law began at three in the morning, and, with short intervals of rest, ceased at nine in the evening, at which hour the indefatigable student at last took repose. Fortified by such discipline, and brim-full of law, Coke was called to the bar in the year 1578, being then twenty-seven years of age, and he rose in his profession as rapidly as he had all along resolved to rise.

In pursuance of his design Coke married well in 1582; the lady was young, beautiful, and accomplished; virtues thrown as it were into the bargain, since the lawyer had been well satisfied with the simple fortune by which they were accompanied. Before he was thirty years old the desperate moneyseeker had made himself master of manor upon manor, and laid the foundation of the enormous possessions which at length alarmed the Crown, lest they should