took not a penny for himself. Such instances are rare, and no wonder, for in our days, the like would fail of due applause, and be despised as a foolish weakness. It was observed, that all those persons who were in his conversation or acquaintance, as well as employment, were not only loyal, but in all other respects very worthy men, and such as adhered to him to the last hour of his life, and after he was gone, kept their integrity and resolution to the end of their own, for very few, if any, of them are yet living. He was a great lover of his profession, and took a pleasure to encourage young students, and admitted divers of them, in his Society of the Middle Temple, to have access to him at evenings, and to converse familiarly with him, and he was not only affable, but condescended to put cases, as they term it, with them." (North's Examen, p. 510.)

The encouragement and patronage extended by Sir Jeoffrey to the Lord Keeper North, in the earlier part of his life, are commemorated by Roger North, both in the Examen and the Memoirs of the Lord Keeper.

In the latter work, the author has given an account of Sir Jeoffrey's success in converting his lady from Popery.

"He had married a lady who was a Roman Catholic, upon terms not to meddle with each other's religion; but each to enjoy their several

church professions, without any mention to the contrary, and both kept parole religiously; and yet, by dint of his egregious piety and integrity, without any other arguments or eloquence, he converted her to the Communion of the Church of England, and it fell out thus: On Sunday morning his lady would rise with him, which she had used not to do, and he told her she need not, for her church began later, and asked, Why she should rise so soon? She answered, To go to church with him,-and so she did, and continued so doing all the rest of her life. And to some of her family she declared, that she found his knowledge so great, and his course of life so truly pious and virtuous, that she concluded he must needs be in the right, and that she would submit her judgment to his, rather than to any other human authority upon earth." (Life of North, p. 39. 4th Edition.)

SIR THOMAS MORE'S QUESTION TO THE FOREIGN

DOCTORS.

"When at Bruges, in Flanders, an arrogant fellow had set up a Thesis, that he would answer whatsoever question could be propounded to him, in any art whatsoever. Sir Thomas made this question to be put up, whether averia capta in withernamia sunt irreplegiabilia? adding, that there was one of the English Ambassador's reti

nue that would dispute with him thereof. This braggadocio, not so much as understanding those terms of our common law, knew not what to answer to it, and so he was made a laughing-stock to the whole city." (More's Life of More, p. 60. Jortin's Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 175.)

A similar anecdote is told of Lord Keeper Williams. The Lord Keeper, it must be remembered, was a churchman, and was therefore supposed to be wanting in his knowledge of the common law. "The terms of the common law, as in all other professions and sciences, seem barbarous to the vulgar ear, and had need to be familiarized with pre-acquaintance; which being the primar of that rational learning, he had inured himself to it long before, and was nothing to seek in it. Yet one of the bar thought to put a trick upon his freshmanship, and trouled out a motion crammed like a Granada with obsolete words, coins of farfetched antiquity, which had been long disused, worse than Sir Thomas More's averia de withernam among the masters of Paris. In these misty and recondite phrases, he thought to leave the new Judge feeling after him in the dark, and to make him blush that he could not give answer to such mystical terms as he had conjured up. But he dealt with a wit that was never entangled in a bramble bush; for, with a serious face, he answered him in a cluster of most crabbed notions,

picked up out of metaphysics and logic, as categorematical and syncategorematical, and a deal of such drumming stuff, that the motioner, being foiled at his own weapon, and well laughed at in court, went home, with this new lesson, That he that tempts a wise man in jest, shall make himself a fool in earnest." (Hacket's Life of Williams, part i. p. 75.)

The subtle theses of the schoolmen and logicians are admirably ridiculed in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, where a number are collected from the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, Saurez, and others. The following question would surely have puzzled the braggadocio of Bruges fully as much as that proposed by Sir Thomas More. An præter esse reale actualis essentiæ, sit aliud esse necessarium quo res actualiter existat ? In English, Whether besides the real being of actual being, there be any other being necessary to cause a thing to be?

1

CHARACTER OF LORD THURLOW, BY SIR

NATHANIEL WRAXALL.

Lord Thurlow, who at this time had held the Great Seal between two and three years, though, in point of age, the youngest member of the cabinet, enjoyed, in many respects, greater consideration than almost any other individual composing it. He had been indebted in his youth to the in

defatigable exertions and importunities of the celebrated Duchess of Queensbury, the friend of Gay, Pope, and Swift, for first procuring him. from Lord Bute a silk gown, to which distinction he long ineffectually aspired. His talents had subsequently excited admiration in both Houses of Parliament no less than at the bar, while he sat in the House of Commons, as Attorney General, during more than seven years, from 1771 to 1778.

Lord North derived the greatest assistance from his eloquence and ability. His removal to the House of Peers would even have left an awful blank on the Treasury Bench in the midst of the American war, if his place had not, during the two succeeding years, been ably, perhaps fully, supplied by Wedderburn. As Speaker of the Upper House, Lord Thurlow fulfilled all the expectations previously entertained of him. His very person, figure, voice, and manner, were formed to lend dignity to the Woolsack. Of a dark complexion, and harsh, but regular, features, with a severe and commanding demeanour, which might be sometimes denominated stern, he impressed his auditors with awe before he opened his lips. Energy, acuteness, and prodigious powers of argument, characterised him in debate. His comprehensive mind enabled him to embrace the question under discussion, whatever it might be, in all its bear