CLXXXVII. Minister-this at a time when the Opposition are accused of CHAP. favouring America to the injury of their own country, and when Erskine himself is charged with being particularly de- 1807–1815. voted to the Americans. These are topics which are every day insisted on with the utmost malevolence in all the Ministerial newspapers, and particularly in Cobbett. If, however, the most malignant enemies of Erskine had been present, they would have admitted that nothing could be more innocent than the conversation which passed. Politics were hardly mentioned, and Mr. Pinkney's presence evidently imposed a restraint upon every body. Among the light and trifling topics of conversation after dinner, it may be worth while to mention one, as it strongly characterises Lord Erskine. He has always expressed and felt a great sympathy for animals. He has talked for years of a bill he was to bring into Parliament to prevent cruelty towards them. He has always had several favourite animals to whom he has been much attached, and of whom all his acquaintance have a number of anecdotes to relate:-a favourite dog which he used to bring, when he was at the Bar, to all his consultations, another favourite dog, which, at the time when he was Lord Chancellor, he himself rescued in the street from some boys who were about to kill under pretence of its being mad,—a favourite goose, which followed him wherever he walked about his grounds, a favourite mackaw,--and other dumb favourites without number. He told us now that he had got two favourite leeches. He had been blooded by them last autumn when he had been taken dangerously ill at Portsmouth; they had saved his life, and he had brought them with him to town,-had ever since kept them in a glass,had himself every day given them fresh water, and had formed a friendship with them. He said he was sure they both knew him, and were grateful to him. He had given them different names, HOME and CLINE (the names of two celebrated surgeons), their dispositions being quite different. After a good deal of conversation about them, he went himself, brought them out of his library, and placed them in their glass upon the table. It is impossible, however, without СНАР. CLXXXVII. 1807-1815. the vivacity, the tones, the details, and the gestures of Lord Erskine, to give an adequate idea of this singular scene." The Ex-Chancellor used (but I believe only when he exHis horti pected his friends to detect him in the act) to take a spade cultural pursuits. His manufactory of brooms. His progress in the study of agricul ture. in his hand and pretend to work in his kitchen garden. On With a view to improve this property, he began to study farming, and put himself under the celebrated agriculturist Coke of Norfolk, afterwards Earl of Leicester, observing, that "having been instructed by Coke at Westminster, he was now to be instructed by Coke, as great a man in his way, at Holkham." But the master boasted little of the pupil, relating this anecdote of his progress: "Coming to a finely Life of Romilly, ii. 233. CLXXXVII. cultivated field of wheat, the first specimen he had seen of СНАР. drill husbandry, Erskine exclaimed in a delighted tone, "What a beautiful piece of lavender ! ! !”* 1807-1815. to Westminster By way of lounge, he would not unfrequently come to His visits Westminster Hall, to chat with his old friends ever expressing regret that he had left the Bar. Once he jumped on Hall. the table in the robing-room, and said in a pitiful tone, "Here is the first day of term, and I have not a single brief in my bag."-I remember, on another occasion, when a group of us gathered round him to hear his stories, we flattered him much by asking him to introduce into his "Cruelty to Animals Bill," a clause "for the protection of JUNIORS"telling him truly, that we had suffered much bad treatment since he had left us.-Remaining a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, he often dined in the Hall, and was much more light-hearted than when he sat there with the Great Seal before him.-Yet, when pinched by returning poverty, he would occasionally think with regret of the very short period he had enjoyed his lucrative office. Captain Parry, the famous navigator, being asked at a dinner party, what he and his crew had lived upon when they were frozen up in the Polar Sea, said, "they lived upon Seals." "And very good living too," exclaimed Erskine, "if you keep them long enough." SEALS good living, if kept long. Soon after his resignation, he was invited to a fête at Honour Oatlands, where the Duchess of York had upon the lawn due to the Dignitary a number of rare animals, and, among others, a remarkable who wears his wig for black monkey with a long white hairy mantle flowing grace- life. fully over his head and shoulders. Erskine was late in appearing; but, at last, while the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and other royal personages, were standing in a group near the entrance to the court-yard, he arrived in a very mean-looking one-horse chaise. He immediately alighted; but, instead of paying his duty to the "Royalties before him, he suddenly stepped up to the monkey; and, taking off his hat in a very dignified manner, and making three congées, he addressed the animal in these words, amidst I once puzzled a legal friend of mine, who said he should certainly know oats from wheat if he saw them growing together, by asking him if he should know barley from malt if he saw them growing together? He said he thought he should, but he was not quite so sure. CHAP. the hearty laugh of all present: "Sir, I sincerely wish you CLXXXVII. joy You wear your wig for life."* 1807-1815. How he cut "the Stakes." A legal opinion by Erskine when at the Bar. His change of hours. Spots on the sun. He used to dine occasionally at the "Stakes"-saying, that he had once consulted a Bishop, whether it was lawful for him, an Ex-Chancellor, to do so, and received this oracular answer, "Cut them," which he thought himself bound to take in mitiori sensu. He frequently presided at the ceremony of laying the foundation stone of buildings for literary institutions, and at the aniversary dinners of societies of all sorts — when he used to make very amusing speeches, which the audience were not sorry to find often embellished with anecdotes of himself. I remember being present at an address from him to the members of the Law Life Insurance Society, at the Free Masons' Tavern, when he gave us this account of one of his earliest opinions: "A case was laid before me by my veteran friend the Duke of Queensberry — better known as 'old Q.'-- as to whether he could sue a tradesman for a breach of contract about the painting of his house? and all the evidence he had to adduce was detailed — which was wholly insufficient: - Whereupon I wrote, " I am of opinion, that this action will not lie, unless the witnesses do." He was at all fashionable breakfasts and balls of peculiar éclat; and whereas formerly he had risen at five in the morning to sit down to his briefs, before the ladies of his family had returned from such parties, it was now sometimes later before he went to bed, and at any hour next day he might have adopted the excuse of Thomson the poet, "Why should I get up when I have nothing to do?" "Idleness of mind," says Burton in his ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, "is the nurse of naughtiness, the step-mother of discipline, the cushion upon which the devil reposes, and a great cause of melancholy." Erskine's present mode of life, I am afraid, was no exception to the general rule — but his frailties were never obtruded on the world, and I am not On the authority of a gentleman still alive, who was present. The Oatlands Monkey was a specimen of the Simia Rosalia --"small red feet — hair very fine, soft, long, of bright yellow colour, resembling yellow silk,- round the face hair much longer than in other parts, so as to form a large mane like that of a lion native of Guiana the Marikina of Buffon." CHAP. CLXXXVII. bound to pry into them. When they were alluded to,—as he still displayed so many fine qualities, mankind were disposed to repeat the words of Lord Kenyon, applied to him in 1807-1815. former times," Spots on the sun!-spots on the sun!" although, as it has been observed in no unfriendly tone, "as the lustre of the luminary became more dim, the spots did not contract in their dimensions." * "ARMA TA." Erskine now sought to relieve his ennui, and to recover his Erskine's consequence, by becoming an author, and he published an octavo volume under the title of "ARMATA." This is a close imitation of "Utopia" and "Gulliver's Travels,” but is very inferior to those immortal productions, though by no means without cleverness. The narrator is supposed to have been shipwrecked, and getting somehow into another planet, to have reached a very distant region called "ARMATA" (England), with a neighbouring island under the same government, called "PATRICIA" (Ireland) - having for its great rival in power another state, called "CAPETIA" (France). There are two Parts, - one historical and political,— the other describing manners and customs. I will copy a few extracts from it, to convey a notion of its contents, as the book is now very scarce. In an attempt to show that if the French revolution had been treated differently by foreign nations, its excesses would not have been provoked, and war might have been avoided, he thus introduces the great patriot of "ARMATA "who is no other than Charles James Fox: My confidence in this opinion," says the personage who is His chagiving us an insight into Armatan politics, "is the more unshaken from the recollection that I held it, at any time, in common with a man whom to have known as I did would have repaid all the toils and perils you have undergone. I look upon you, indeed, as a benighted traveller, to have been cast upon our shores after this great light was set. Never was a being gifted with an understanding so perfect. He was never known to omit any thing which, in the slightest degree, could affect the matter to be considered, nor to confound things at all distinguishable, however apparently the same; and his conclusions were always so luminous and con 66 *Lord Brougham's Statesmen, i. 244. racter of Fox. |