as inconsistent, as the criticism is maudlin and superficial. The reader is astonished to find some of our raciest old poets, Lovelace, Marvell, Oldham, and others, totally omitted; and sup-. planted by the common-place crudities of Bromes and Turberviles; but his astonishment subsides into a shrug, at seeing the epithets of pathetic and sublime lavished upon men of the name of Cawthorne and William Thompson; and at hearing a poem, called the Hilliad, pronounced the most galling satire that ever was written. Mr. Chalmers is a well-meaning bookmaker, who has studied Dr. Johnson enough to imitate the level speaking of his style, and upon the strength of a few inversions and fluent sentences, thinks himself qualified, like Johnson, to substitute assertion for criticism. But Johnson's assertions, even in his most dictatorial moments, strike us as the result of strong criticism indolently kept back; whereas Mr. Chalmers talks with a most gratuitous good-nature and want of thinking, and bestows praises like a lad who has just become acquainted with Blair's Lectures. The talent of Mr. Chalmers lies in the detail of little facts. He discusses anachronisms with great impartiality, and is a lively hand at a parish-register: but he has no more right to say who, and who are not, the English Poets, than he has to tell us who are the worthiest characters in the Moon.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Inner Temple, April, 1811.

My last letter was somewhat desultory; but I am gratified by

hearing you say, that it was full of little items of information, very necessary to be known, but which nobody has hitherto con. descended to communicate. The nature of our several Courts of Justice are objects of greater notoriety; with these I must take it for granted you are well acquainted, and proceed immediately to bring to your view the present talent of the English Bar.

The brightest luminary that ever graced that hemisphere was Thomas (now Lord) Erskine, an advocate, who to an acuteness the most intuitive, and an eloquence that charmed and rivetted universal attention, added a manliness and patriotism by which

the

the diguity of the English bar, and the freedom of Englishmen, have equally benefitted. It is to Erskine, the liberty of the press is indebted, that a jury are judges both of the law and the fact of libel, and the personal safety of the public owes the downfall of the doctrine of constructive treasons; and it is from the manly spirit of Erskine, the advocate may date that independence of the bench, which I hope is not now ceasing to be asserted and maintained. Truly noble and disinterested in the discharge of his professional duties to the public, was this great lawyer; he never shrank from the defence of an alledged libeller for reasons of state, from short-sighted, political motives; he was of opinion, that the public had as much right to a defence from the bar, as to a charge from the bench, to testimony from the witness-box, or to a verdict from the jury-box; and if Er. skine had remained at the bar, the many political writers who have lately been prosecuted for libel, would not have been driven either to defend themselves in person, or to put their case in the hands of some young barrister, whose eyes the dazzling prospect of ministerial preferment had not yet blinded. Thus thought, and thus acted, Thomas Erskine: beloved by his friends, he was, for the short period of their political power, advanced to the highest judicial situation of this country; and, esteemed by the public, his name will live in their grateful remembrance as long as the li berty of the press shall be dear to them.

Sir Vicary Gibbs, the present Attorney-General and leading counsel at the bar of the Court of King's Bench, commenced his career, as it was fondly hoped, with the same professional principles as Erskine. The defence of Mr. Hardy for high treason first brought him into notice; and "the memory of the late Vicary Gibbs, Esq." is still drunk, in sad silence, at the anni. versary dinner for commemorating the acquittal of that defendant. But Sir Vicary has long preferred, to defences at the suit of the crown, a system of prosecution, which he has carried on to an extent, and with a vigilance, quite unprecedented in the annals of Attornies-General. Sir Vicary is a man of much poignant acuteness, and of very profound legal knowledge. His visage is angular, caustic, and care-worn: his smile appears a mask which sits but badly on him, but which he is nevertheless forced constantly to wear when he wishes to persuade, since otherwise he would not be able to conceal his spleen. His eloquence is painful and far-sought, and his commonest statements of facts abound with hesitations, and recommencements of his sentences in the hopes of greater fluency. He nevertheless details his cases with great perspicuity, and is particularly happy in making the conduct and language of his client's adversary appear ridiculous. He

changes

changes the tones of his voice with more effect than any man at the bar; and the fall of it, from a plain statement of his client's wrongs to a vituperative comment upon them, approaches to sublimity. In cross-examining witnesses, he never brow-beats, like Mr. Garrow, but ferrets out the truth from them in an insi nuating manner, which is much more consistent with the behaviour of a gentleman and a barrister. The character of gentleman is, indeed, so indelibly impressed upon Sir Vicary Gibbs, both by education and habit, that I do not think his most adverse witness ever left the box with any other impression of his cross-examiner. And yet Sir Vicary's temper is notoriously fretful and overbearing towards attornies and his brethren at the bar; and Mr. Topping (a brother hasty and impatient, by the bye) told him the other day, in the words of Shakspeare, that "he bestrid the bar like a Colossus," and otherwise gave him a lesson, which his corrector hoped he would remember to the longest day of his life. Sir Vicary excels in reply; he then plays at his leisure with every manageable point in the cause, and strikes out fortifications of his case which his opening never dreamt of. I have known him slur his original statement so briefly, that had not his adversary, by calling witnesses, given him a right to reply, his duty to his client would have been completely sacrificed. Then, indeed, he has risen like a giant refreshed; and has by no means been merciful in the use of that giant's strength. Lord Folkestone had, therefore, excellent reason the other day, in his motion for a return of the number of ex-officio informations filed by the present Attorney-General, to complain that that officer's right to reply in such cases, gave him the power to keep back the weight of his accusation till the defendant had no opportunity of answering it. The first sentence of Sir Vicary's reply is always elaborate and elegant, both in idea and language, sometimes too recondite and scholastic, indeed, for an address to a jury of plain men; and this circumstance proves that Sir Vicary's speeches give as great pain to him in their composition, as they do to his audience in their delivery. They are always listened to, however, with attention and without disgust, and are often enlivened by quotation, an art in which he is particularly felicitous. With all his unpopularity, I never see Sir Vicary Gibbs rise from his scat, take off his spectacles, and either look towards the bench or the jury-box with his head in a gentle tremulous motion and his lips forcibly pressed together, or look down upon his hand as he draws his glove on more tightly, without expecting, unless it be directly to speak on a criminal information for libel, to be both edified and pleased: a point of law he puts in the clearest light in the world; and his opinions will always be quoted as those

of

of an experienced and acute practitioner of his sublime * fession.

pro

In or

Wide of the talents of Sir Vicary Gibbs, as are the poles asunder, are those of Mr. Garrow, second in command at the same bar. This gentleman owes his popularity solely to a talent for intimidating and confounding false-witnesses, which every gentle. man at the bar would much rather admire than possess. der to screw out something like truth from the low and the profligate, Mr. Garrow puts himself upon a level with them at once, just as we give our servant a shilling to drink with our inferiors, from whom we wish to derive some information, which only they can give. The contrast is truly striking, when, after the Attorney-General, or any other gentleman at the bar, has been examining a witness with all his natural dignity, Mr. Garrow leans familiarly across the table, and begins, "So, Master Thompson; how long did this bit of a row happen after the plaintiff was tried for stealing that bay mare?"-thus artfully introducing any new matter he may have picked up, in order to prejudice his adverse party. Mr. Garrow never fails to talk to his witnesses in their own way, to meet them upon their own ground, to give them slang for slang. This at once frightens those who come prepared with a false story; the truth drops out involuntarily ; and the witness goes away with the conviction how impossible it is to deceive that Garrow, for he's up to snuff. Of all the advantages which result from the viva voce examination of witnesses in our courts of law, there is none so great as that opportunity which the practice gives of letting a jury hear the tone of voice, and manner, of the witness, which are often far more important than the matter. To be convinced of this, we have only to attend to the different impressions which the same evidence produces upon the mind, when given directly from the witness-box, and when recapitulated or summed up from the judge's notes, or when drily repeated immediately after the witness by the examining counsel, as the custom is. Mr. Garrow has observed this; and, as far as the barrister's repetitions of the witness's answers go, how do you think he has remedied the evil? Why, by exactly imitating the witness's tone and manner, looking towards the jury as he does it, and perhaps over-colouring it to serve his purpose. The Attorney-General, Mr. Serjeant Best, and Mr. Topping, sometimes adopt this method, but nobody is so happy at it as Mr. Garrow. Mr. Serjeant Shepherd's deafness totally pre

VOL. I. NO. II.

CC

vents

* I do not use this epithet unadvisedly, and for the mere sake of rounding a period it is my intention, in a future letter, to hazard a few ideas on the sublimity and poctical justice of the laws of England,

vents his having recourse to it; and junior counsel want courage to attempt it. As for Mr. Garrow, he is fearless of every failure; and is himself as bold as he intimidates others, his courage, like that of a bully, being, perhaps, partly to be attributed to that proportionate cause. He rises from his seat or resumes it,-addresses the jury or the witness,-talks to his brethren at the bar or to the attornies,-precisely as if the whole justice-room were his own apartment, and seems to think himself lord of all but the "noble and learned judge upon the bench," and, perhaps, the Attorney-General. The former he addresses, and of the latter he speaks, with a very proper sense of both their official and legal superiority to him; and, to do Mr. Garrow justice, he never ventures upon a point of law, of which not only he himself is completely master, but of which he does not make his hearers completely master, and very readily leaves special-pleading points to his junior counsel. As far as he goes, he is certainly a clearheaded man; and with the law of evidence he is thoroughly acquainted. But, with all Mr. Garrow's utility in dirty actions, I congratulate the bar, that that gentleman has carried his style to an extreme, which has given his brethren a distaste for imitating it: I know nobody who attempts to do so but Mr. Park, and he has too much of the gentleman in his nature to succeed. The unwarrantable liberties, which Mr. Garrow has taken with male and even female witnesses of character, have pained many an honourable feeling, and have induced an aversion from becoming a public witness which must be very prejudicial to the cause of justice. With all my desire to succeed in my profession, I would not have Mr. Garrow's talents for the world. I have lately observed in him, too, a contempt for every thing serious, a trifling with the misfortunes of others, and a disregard for their religious persuasions, which has by no means met with the approbation of his earthly judge, but which will, I hope, be looked upon with more compassion by his heavenly judge.

In speech-making, Mr. Garrow is happy only upon the lowest occasions, such as that of a horse-cause or an assault. He then "fights all the battles" of his cross-examinations “o'er again,” with undiminished skill and vigour; and the eloquence of Billingsgate is incontestibly his. He always amuses the jury, and often obtains their verdict. The scholar and the man of taste, however, are seldom gratified by the speeches of this "learned counsel:" in transactions of high life, he is as greatly out of his element, as Munden the actor would be in the character of Lord Townley: and I do believe, as the advocate was indeed himself conscious, that there is scarcely a man at the bar who could have stated the plaintiff's case, in the late crim. con. action of Doherty v. Wyatt, worse than Mr. Garrow did.

Mr.