put on. He obtained a supply of cash by the sale of his CHAP. lieutenancy on the 19th of September 1775.* As soon as it was practicable he became a pupil in the chambers of Mr. Justice Buller, with whom he afterwards acted the famous scene in the trial of the Dean of St. Asaph; and when this great special pleader was made a judge, he entered himself with another not less celebrated, George Wood, afterwards made a Baron of the Exchequer, with whom he wisely continued nearly a year after he was called to the Bar, attending to the sage counsel of Littleton to his son, which ought to be impressed on the mind of every man who wishes to succeed in the profession of the law:—“ Et sachez mon fitz que un des pluis honorables, et laudables, et profitables choses en nostre ley, est daver le sciens de uñ pleder en accions realx et personalx et pur č ieo toy conseil especialmet de mettr tout ton corage et cure ce d'apprendr.† Erskine never did become a profound jurist, but along with his lively imagination he had a logical understanding, and by severe application at this period he made the considerable progress, which several who have been pushed high in our profession have never reached, of being able thoroughly to comprehend any question of law which he had occasion to consider to collect and arrange the authorities upon it, and to argue it lucidly and scientifically. When Erskine was at Cambridge no such debating society as the "Union" had been established; but when settled in London, he was in the habit of taking part in the debates of the Robin Hood, Coachmakers' Hall, and other spouting shops, which, according to the custom of the time, were attended by shoemakers, weavers, Quakers, law students, and * I received this information, almost with the celerity of the electric telegraph from my right hon. friend the present Secretary at War, accompanied by the following note: "My dear Campbell, — In your next volume pray laud the alacrity and regularity of the W. O., which can give you in two hours information regarding the sale of a commission seventy-one years since. - Yours truly, Lit. s. 534. "F. MAULE." I have several of his commonplace books compiled at this period, showing great industry and perseverance. CLXXVI. 1774-1778. CHAP. CLXXVI. 1774-1778. His pecuniary difficulties while a law stu dent. Members of Parliament, each person paying sixpence, and being entitled to a glass of porter or a glass of punch, and in which there is said to have been often a display of great oratorical powers. During the three years which followed his retirement from the army, notwithstanding the kind assistance of some of his friends, he was in great pecuniary straits. He had an increasing family to maintain, besides defraying his own expenses as a Cambridge under-graduate and a student of law. Exercising the strictest economy and the most rigid selfdenial, he often found it a sore matter to provide for the day which was passing over him. But with a sanguine disposition and a fixed determination of purpose, these difficulties only stimulated him to greater exertions, that he might finally subdue them. "He had taken lodgings in Kentish Town, and would occasionally call for his wife at the house of a connexion who kept a glass shop in Fleet Ditch, and used to talk of him as our Tammy." * 66 - Jeremy Bentham, who had kept up an intercourse with him since the publication of his pamphlet on the Abuses of the Army, speaking of him at this time, says, "I met him sometimes at Dr. Burton's. He was so shabbily dressed as to be quite remarkable. He was astonished when I told him I did not intend to practise. I remember his calling on me, and, not finding me at home, he wrote his name with chalk on my door." Reynolds, the comic writer, in his "Life and Times," relates that at this time the villa of his father, an eminent solicitor at Bromley in Kent, was frequently visited by Erskine, of whom he gives the following lively description: "The young student resided in small lodgings near Hampstead, and openly avowed that he lived on cow-beef, because he could not afford any of a superior quality †, dressed shabbily, • Townsend's Life of Erskine, on the authority of Mr. Pensam, the friend and Secretary of Bankrupts of Lord Eldon. The Right Hon. T. Erskine says, "The connexion at whose house he is supposed (ex relatione Pensam) to have called was, I suspect, Mr. Moore, a jeweller, on Ludgate Hill." I have often heard that he used to say that at this time he lived on "cowheel and tripe." CLXXVI. expressed the greatest gratitude to Mr. Harris for occasional CHAP. free admissions to Covent Garden, and used boastingly to exclaim to my father, 'Thank fortune, out of my own family I don't know a lord.'"* But suddenly he was to be the idol of all ranks of the community, and to wallow in riches. Such a quick transition from misery to splendour is only equalled in the Arabian Nights, when the genii of the wonderful lamp appeared to do the bidding of Aladdin. A sunrise within the tropics displays some fleeting crepuscular tints between utter darkness and the full solar blaze, and therefore cannot be used to give a just notion of Erskine's first appearance to the dazzled eyes of the British public. This speech is very characteristic of the vanity which, under the guise of humility, he was accustomed to exhibit. A. D. 1778. His sudden from pe transition nury to wealth. CHAPTER CLXXVII. CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF ERSKINE TILL HE ENTERED THE CHAP. CLXXVII. Erskine's Bar. ERSKINE was called to the Bar by the honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn on the 3d day of July, 1778, in the end of Trinity Term *; but not having completed his special pleading call to the discipline, he continued working in the chambers of Baron Wood, and he might be considered as in statu pupillari till near the end of Michaelmas Term following. The 24th of November in that term was the critical day in his life, and exhibited the most remarkable scene ever witnessed in Westminster-Hall. His indifferent prospects. His retainer in Rex v. Baillie. Notwithstanding his agreeable manners, he seems to have made no connexions to be of use to him. No attorney or attorney's clerk was as yet aware of his merit. But he had one retainer which came to him by an accident much like Thurlow's in the Douglas cause. Captain Baillie, a veteran seaman of great worth, having for his services been appointed Lieutenant Governor of Greenwich Hospital, discovered in that establishment gross abuses by which those entitled to its advantages were defrauded. He presented successively petitions to the Directors, to the Governors, and to the Lords of the Admiralty, praying for inquiry and redress. Meeting with no attention from any of them, he printed and "Lincoln's Inn. - At a Council there held the 3d day of July, in the eighteenth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King George the Third, and in the year of our Lord 1778,- Ordered, That the Honourable Thomas Erskine, one of the Fellows of this Society, having been regularly admitted to the Degree of Master of Arts in the University of Cambridge, and being thereby of full standing of this Society, according to the order of the 30th of June, 1762, and having kept twelve terms' commons, and conformed himself to the rules of this Society, be called to the Bar, on paying all his arrears and duties, and that he be published at the next Exercise in the Hall." He was made a Bencher in 1785; and Treasurer of the Society in 1795. CLXXVII. A. D. 1778. circulated a statement of the case, detailing the real facts CHAP. of it without any exaggeration, and reflecting with great but just severity upon Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, who, for electioneering purposes, had placed in the Hospital a great number of landsmen. Captain Baillic was immediately suspended by the Board of Admiralty; and several of the inferior agents, likewise animadverted upon, although in much less severe terms, being prompted by Lord Sandwich, who himself hung back, in the end of Trinity Term applied for and obtained from the Court of King's Bench, a rule to show cause, in Michaelmas Term following, why a criminal information should not be filed against the author for a libel upon them. During the long vacation, Captain Baillie and Erskine, who had never seen each other before, met at a large dinner party. The Greenwich Hospital case, which had excited great public interest, being mentioned, Erskine, not knowing that Captain Baillie was at table, entered upon it with glee, and fired with the indignation which he really felt, inveighed with much eloquence against the corrupt and tyrannical conduct of Lord Sandwich. Captain Baillie, finding out that he was a young lawyer just called to the Bar, who himself had been a sailor, swore that he would have him for one of his counsel. parted without being introduced to each other; but the next day, while Erskine was sitting in his chambers in a fit of depression, and thinking that all his labour and sacrifices might be vain, as there seemed so little prospect of his They *The Right Hon. Thomas Erskine sends me the following account of his casually becoming acquainted with his first client: "The circumstance that led to his meeting Capt. Baillie was strikingly illustrative of the observation, that the slightest incidents are often providentially made the instruments of important results. My father had been engaged to spend the day with Mrs. Moore, the mother of his friend Charles Moore and of Sir John Moore, and was proceeding with his friend C. M. across Spa Fields on foot, where a wide ditch tempted my father to prove his activity by leaping over it, which he accomplished; but, slipping on the other side, sprained his ankle, and was carried home. In the evening he was so much recovered that he determined to join a dinner party, to which he found an invitation on his return home. Capt. Baillie was one of the party. If he had dined with Mrs. Moore, he might have waited for years before such an opportunity of showing what was in him might have presented itself." |