Queen." "The Lord Somers may very deservedly be reputed the head and oracle of that party: he has raised himself, by the concurrence of many circumstances, to the greatest employments of the state, without the least support from birth or fortune; he has constantly, and with great steadiness, cultivated those principles under which he grew. That accident, which first produced him into the world, of pleading for the bishops whom king James had sent to the Tower, might have proved a piece of merit as honourable as it was fortunate; but the old republican spirit, which the revolution had restored, began to teach other lessons; that since we had accepted a new king from a Calvinistical commonwealth, we must also admit new maxims in religion and government. But since the nobility and gentry would probably adhere to the established church, and to the right of monarchy as delivered down from their ancestors, it was the practice of these politicians to introduce such men as were perfectly indifferent to any or no religion, and who were not likely to inherit much loyalty from those to whom they owed their birth: of this number was the person I am now describing. I have hardly known any man with talents more proper to acquire and preserve the favour of a prince; never offending in word or gesture, in the highest degree courteous and complaisant, wherein he set an excellent example to his colleagues, which they did not think fit to follow. But this extreme civility, so universal and undistinguished, and in private conversation, where he observes it as inviolably as if he were in the greatest assembly, is sometimes censured as formal. Two reasons are assigned for this behaviour; first, that, from the consciousness of his humble origin, he keeps all familiarity at the utmost distance, which otherwise might be apt to intrude; the second, that, being sensible how subject he is to violent passions, he avoids all incitements to them, by teaching those he converses with, by his own example, to keep a great way within the bounds of decency and respect. And it is, indeed, true, that no

man is more apt to take fire upon the least appearance of provocation, which temper he strives to subdue, with the utmost violence upon himself, so that his breast has been seen to heave, and his eyes to sparkle with rage, in those very moments when his words and the cadence of his voice were in the humblest and softest manner. Perhaps that force upon his nature may cause that insatiable love of revenge which his detractors lay to his charge, who consequently reckoned dissimulation among his chief perfections. Avarice he has none, and his ambition is gratified by being the uncontested head of his party. With an excellent understanding, adorned by all the polite arts of learning, he has very little taste for conversation, to which he prefers the pleasure of reading and thinking, and in the intervals of his time amuses himself with an illiterate chaplain, an humble companion, or a favourite servant." In the same spirit of depreciation, Swift, in a letter addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, says that "Somers's timorous nature, joined with the trade of a common lawyer, and the consciousness of a mean extraction, had taught him the regularity of an alderman or a gentleman-usher.”

The character of Lord Somers as a lawyer, and especially as a constitutional lawyer, has always been held in the highest estimation. His celebrated argument in the great case of the Bankers * may be referred to as a proof of his professional abilities and extensive learning. It has been termed by Mr. Hargrave “one of the most elaborate judgments ever delivered in Westminster Hall.”+ In collecting books and pamphlets for the purposes of this argument, Lord Somers is said to have expended several hundred pounds.‡

He was a most industrious collector both of manuscripts and printed tracts, and after his death his valuable manuscript collection came into the possession of the Hardwicke family, who were allied to him by marriage. It filled upwards of sixty volumes in quarto, and was deposited in the chambers of the Honourable

Charles Yorke, in Lincoln's Inn, where, in the year 1752, it was unfortunately destroyed by an accidental fire. From the fragments spared by the flames, Mr. Yorke collected a few papers which, after correcting the damaged passages with his own hand, he bound in a folio volume. From this volume a selection was given in the "Miscellaneous State Papers," published by the Earl of Hardwicke, in 1778, some of which have been referred to in the preceding memoir. "The world," says Lord Hardwicke*, “will do that justice to the collection, as not to suppose that these specimens from it, immitis ignis reliquiæ, will afford an adequate idea of its merits. It filled upwards of sixty volumes in quarto, and did not contain a paper from Lord Somers's pen which the most intimate friend would have wished to secrete, or the bitterest enemy could have fairly turned to his prejudice."

Many of the valuable pamphlets which Lord Somers had collected were published in the middle of the last century, in sixteen volumes quarto, usually known under the name of the Somers' Tracts, a work which was republished a few years since, under the superintendence of Sir Walter Scott, who has adopted a much more convenient and methodical arrangement of the materials. Lord Somers appears to have spared no expense in the formation of his library, and is said to have given upwards of five hundred pounds to "Tom Britton, the celebrated smallcoal man, of Clerkenwell," for his collection of choice pamphlets. +

*State Papers, vol. ii. p. 399. + Morgan's Phoenix Brit. vol. i. p. 558.

LORD MANSFIELD.

1704-1793.

THE Honourable William Murray, the fourth son of Andrew, Viscount Stormont, was born at Perth, on the 2d of March, 1704, O.S. At the early age of three years he was removed to London, and in 1719 was admitted a king's scholar at Westminster. At the election, in 1723, he stood the first on the list of those destined to be sent to Oxford, and was entered of Christ Church on the 18th of June in that year. Both at Westminster and at Oxford he distinguished himself by his classical attainments, and after taking his degree of M. A., he left the university in the year 1730, and spent some months in travelling abroad. On his return, he was called to the bar in Michaelmas term 1731. It does not appear that at this period of his life he devoted much of his time to the study of his profession, though while a student he was in the habit of attending the meetings of a society of young men, who assembled for the purpose of discussing legal questions. The classical tastes and literary attainments of Mr. Murray led him to prefer the society of scholars and men of genius to that of his professional brethren. "When he first came to town," says Johnson, "he drank champagne with the wits.'

The rank, the personal character, and the reputation which he had acquired at the university, all contributed to Mr. Murray's success. It has been said, that for some time after he was called to the bar he was without any practice, and that he had been heard to say, that he never knew the difference between a total want of employment and an income of 3000l. a year.* It appears, however, that in 1732, the year after his being called, he was engaged in an important appeal case, in which the attorney and solicitor-general were employed, and Character of Lord Mansfield, by Mr. Butler, Seward's Anecdotes,

that in the two following years he was very frequently retained in similar cases before the house of lords.*

The frequent appearance of Mr. Murray in cases of appeal has been alluded to by Pope. The particular period at which the poet and Mr. Murray becaine acquainted does not appear, but it is probable that it was soon after the return of the latter from his travels. One of his biographers tells us, that "one day he was surprised by a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who took the liberty of entering his room without the ceremonious introduction of a servant, in the singular act of practising the graces of a speaker at a glass, while Pope sate by in the character of a friendly preceptor."+ Of the friendship of Pope and Murray, Warburton has said, "Mr. Pope had all the warmth of affection for this great lawyer; and indeed no man ever more deserved to have a poet for his friend, in the obtaining of which, as neither vanity, party, nor fear had a share, so he supported his title to it by all the offices of a generous and true friendship." ‡ In the year 1737, Pope published his imitation of the sixth epistle of the first book of Horace, which he dedicated to Mr. Murray, and in which he introduced him in the following flattering lines:—

"Go then, and if you can admire the state
Of beaming diamonds and reflected plate,
Procure a taste to double the surprise,

And gaze on Parian charms with learned eyes;
Be struck with bright brocade or Tyrian dye,
Our birth-day nobles' splendid livery.

If not so pleased, at council-board rejoice

To see their judgments hang upon thy voice;
From morn to night, at Senate, Rolls and Hall.
Plead much, read more, dine late, or not at all.
But wherefore all this labour, all this strife,
For fame, for riches, for a noble wife?
Shall one whom native learning, birth conspired
To form, not to admire, but be admired,
Sigh while his Chloe, blind to wit and worth,
Weds the rich dulness of some son of earth?
Yet time ennobles or degrades each line;
It brighten'd Craggs's, and may darken thine.
And what is fame? the meanest have their day;
The greatest can but blaze and pass away.
Graced as thou art with all the power of words,
So known, so honour'd, in the house of lords-

Holliday's Life, p. 28. + Id. p. 24.

Notes on Imitations of Horace.