tain a prayer for preservation from lingering and some of his songs are extremely beautiful. sickness, rather than from sudden death. Ludicrous resemblance is generally the only obThe conversation was prophetic. That night ject or pleasure of parody. This one has some was the last of Lord Campbell's life; and he greater interest from its graphic touches of the passed away, as he wished to do, in the ful-old Outer House, and of some of its old charac ness of vigour and usefulness. Richardson survived him for two years; and on the 4th of October last his gentle and affectionate spirit took its flight. Such was John Richardson. We have endeavoured in faint lineaments to convey to those who did not know him an impression of what he was. Those who did, require no memorial to help them to retain his image in their recollection. We knew him chiefly after most of his companions had departed; but old age, while it brought with it all that should accompany it, had not blunted in him the sense of enjoyment in the refined or the beautiful; nor in associating with a younger generation had he lost any of those charms of manner, conversation, or heart, which had won his cotemporaries. When we recall the pleasant open smile, the never-failing courtesy, the kindly greeting, the playful humour, the unfeigned genuine solicitude, the cheerful interest in all which related to his friends; the ready, willing aid, never invoked" in vain; the warm pulses of his heart, never appealed to without response, we sigh, as we take leave of our task, to think that all these things are gone for ever, and that we shall never look on his friendly face again. NOTE. 11th April, 1845. "The verses were a parody on Scott's Helvellyn. They were published for the first time about two years ago, in a compilation called the Court of Session Garland. It is there stated in one place that the parody was the joint compo sition of Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray, Lord Cockburn, and Mr. Richardson ; and in another place this error is corrected by another, where it is said that except one line by Lord Jeffrey, it was all Richardson's. Both statements are inaccurate, and the explanatory notes are neagre and incorrect. Neither Murray, nor Cranstoun, nor I wrote or suggested one word or idea of it. Jeffrey wrote most of the second stanza; all the rest, and the general idea even of this s'anza, was Richardson's alone. The parody was written and privately shown in MS. within a few weeks of the appearance of the original, which, I think, was in 1804. Nobody was more diverted by it than Scott, between whom and Richardson there was always a cordial and unbroken friendship. Like all good men, Richardson has always been flirting with the Muses. Few laborious men of business, and certainly no Scotch London solicitor, have written more verse. Amiableness and elegance are its character, ters. It evokes men and scenes once far more alked of than more important things. So first here, for the sake of reference, come the lines: "When Balmuto or Banny the bench hath as- The former to bellow, the latter to sleep," Then are all the fee'd lawyers most anxiously on it, and a huge foot, and a silver buckle at the end of it, was always projected before him; and there he stood, with his great bland countenance, as if for the world to worship. President Blair used to say, that if a man's intellectual power could be judged by mere look and air, Nicodemus would be the greatest of men. (4.) John Wright, advocate, a curious species Short, stumpy, and as brown as deep-tanned. of man, if indeed he belonged to this genus. gaped to its utmost possible wideness whenever leather; a large head, a huge mouth, which cogitation or liquor or wonder made the enormous chin drop. He must have sat to the framer of the first Dutch nut-cracker. There tures, which, outrageous as it may appear, owes is a portrait of him in Kay's Edinburgh Caricaits only unlikeness to its being so little caricatured. The whole professional practice of a long life was said to have consisted of one cause, and it about a trunk. But he professed to teach Civil Law, a form for begging a guinea which several people gave him yearly for what he termed his course. No less a person than Francis Horner did so once. Horner told me that on first meeting, the class, consisting of seven or eight, sat round a table in what the learned lecturer announced as the parlour, a small smoky place down a close, and that Johnny seemed to be in the throes before he began, and took the cubeshaped Corpus between his hands, and squeezed, and turned, and candled it affectionately, and then proceeded: "Gentlemen, this wee bit bookie conteens the haill Ceevil Law!" The first lecture generally closed the course. It was a worthy creature; miserably poor, in so much that it was fed and slaked at last almost entirely on charity; much addicted to golf, and not at all bigoted against strong drink; though in its general babits rather temperate and philosophical. The general sturdiness of its structure, and the slowness of its gait and speech, exposed it to many adventures. He was believed to have been once fired at for a seal when bathing. The first shot missed, because he had ducked; and on preparing for a second fire, the sportsman was petrified by hearing the fish grunt, as soon as its head was up, "Stop, sir! I'm a man, and not a beast!" (1.) The Outer House met then, as now, at nine, and therefore as nine was still ringing, the macer, in calling out his list of causes, should not have been at No. 3. But this is a sneer at an abuse, then far from uncommon, arising from the practice of paying the Judges' clerks partly by fees on enrolments. The more causes that were called in people's absence, the better for the clerks, for it made a new enrolment necessary. (2.) This "Luckless Lawyer, Poor Otho," was an advocate, who can't, at least, be said to have made no figure at the Bar, because for about forty years he was an absolute target for Parliament House jokes. His familiar title was Otho Wemyss, which James Grahame, the author of The Sabbath, used to enrage him by translating "O quamvis parvula puella." But his full and respectful address was Otho Herman Wemyss, for he had been sent to study Civil Law in his youth at Leyden, and testified his gratitude to his master, on coming away, by inserting his name between the two parts of his own, being the only fee that the learned Dutchman was supposed to have got. At his first appearance, Otho was thought intelligent and clever, and twice or thrice he certainly did write good papers, and he was always kindly. I have been told that he used even to be talked of as the probable rival of Cranstoun; but this was when Cranstoun was scarcely a visible star. These predictions, however, were all in vain. He was doomed always to be laughed at, and never to rise,-a fate sufficiently accounted for by his appearance and his pretension. An air of conscious gentility contrasted ludicrously with very poor though ambitious raiment, and a yellow, hungry look. His modest assumption of superiority from what he called foreign travel-There which meant having been a year at Leyden -might, perhaps, have been offensive, if this had not been avoided by the absurdity of his elegant and patronising politeness. (3.) Nicodemus was Edward M'Cormick, advocate, why so nick-named I do not know, unless it was that, being assessor to the town of Leith, he was a ruler of the Jews." Large and stately; one leg, with a black silk stocking (5.) The "huge brainless judge" was not meant by Richardson as generic, but was intended to describe a good man, but huge and brainless certainly; in voice, stare, manner, and intellect, not much above an idiot, but respectable from bulk, good-nature, broad Scotch, and slow, grievous stupidity. (6.) "Twixt the stove and the side-bar."This was a well-known spot, very accurately laid down in the parodist's geography. It was towards the south-west end of the Outer House. were no Permanent Lords Ordinary in those days, only one Lord Ordinary for the week, whose throne was called the Fore-bar. The other Ordinaries came out from the Inner House apparently according to no other rule or systein except their own pleasure, and sat on what were termed Side bars. Now there was a side-bar and a stove on the west side of the House, and between these two was this "darkbrown spot," a cosy, dingy recess of about a dozen of feet or so, which the junior counsel were too fine, and the senior too dignified to enter, but it was the favourite, howf of some unemployed, middle-aged disreputables of the faculty. (7.) Virgin Smith" was John Smith, Esq., of Balquharron, advocate. He obtained and kept the title here given to him by his timid, blushing modesty. Downcast eyes, pink cheeks, a low voice, and retired air, perfect respectability, and comfortable circumstances, make him a good deal out of place in the company he here stands in. But the explanation is that he did sometimes do the very thing Richardson says, extended his hand, by way of disarming the coarse jeers of these fellows at his gentle diffidence. But he never did more. He was no member of their craft. I think I see him shrinking past the "dark-brown spot," detecting a gibe coming, for his trying to pass, pausing for an instant and deprecating it, sometimes successfully, by a momentary extension of the hand, and after shuddering at the recognition, pass on. His being obliged occasionally to shake their hands, is meant as a proof of the power of their free-masonry over weak sensitiveness. (8.) "Haggart's strong breath."-John Haggart. He too was an advocate, and it may be doubted if so famous and peculiar a light ever shone at any other bar. He was the only one of the eminent lawyers here immortalized who got any fees. On one occasion, which I inyself witnessed, when a rogue, who had never seen or employed him, but knew him by reputation, was suddenly ordered by the Court to be taken by the neck, he no sooner felt the macer's hand upon him than he exclaimed instinctively, Gude God! where's Maister Haggart?" had bought it at second-hand, so that its original colour was lost in antiquity. But time and smoke (he lived in the Canongate) had made it a sandy yellow. It was certainly thin. The ground had been scourged till the subsoil was bare; yet such is the force of inborn elegance, it had really an air of gentility even in its dotage. (11.) "Should hardly have whole coat or breeches to stride in."-The "hardly" expresses the very thing. There were no slits or tatters in the worthy gentleman's integuments a thing his feelings could not have endured. But the garments, though still entire, were so abraded, that it seemed as if one other rub would be dangerous; and a few auxiliary threads that had been added to close rivets up might be seen lurking in the confidence of retired nooks. Still gentility prevailed. I see him! There he goes! with the bright cobbled shoes, the brown gold-headed cane, the antique, often pawned ring, the black silk stockings, their frailties hid beneath faded gaiters, the snuff and dust of his session black or vacation brown suit, swept in visible streaks by a brush worn to the stump; an air of pensive, ill-fed, self-satisfied fashionableness,-the downward aspect as if of a poor gentleman thinking, but truly surveying the process of decay in his general man, and inwardly indignant at the world's neglect of talent and foreign travel. (12.) "Balmuto and Banny, the former to bellow, the latter to sleep."-These were two of the Judges; the first was Claude Boswell of Balmuto, a very worthy man; as huge and strong as a cart-horse, his language broad Scotch; an ogre to those who did not know his real kindness. The other was M'Leod Bannatyne, a nice, merry old Celtic gentleman, the greatest public sleeper, and the most successful compounder of incoherent interlocutors, that ever tried these arts. His judicial slumber was owing to an inhuman practice of rising at four or five in the morning'; and he rose thus early, apparently for the sake of the nap on the Bench. The nodding used to set his wig awry, and nothing could be more ludicrous than his goodhe found himself in Court, and everybody laughing; but he soon relieved himself by another nod, after which they might laugh as they pleased for him. His interlocutors were like the song by a person of quality. Cranstoun's imitation in his Diamond Beetle is no caricature. Nevertheless, Banny was a gentleman, and popular, with all the warmth of the Highland heart, and all the defects of the Highland understanding. (9.) "The macer bawled loud."-I wonder if there be any other Court where counsel, instead of being obliged to wait on for their causes within earshot of the judge, lounge as they list, being sure to be summoned by a brazen-throated herald, whose strong, ringing voice makes their names resound wherever they may be lurking, so as to startle them in their own ears. It is a very gentleman-like institution, and greatly pro-natured stare, when on awakening suddenly motes legal ignorance, for no one need attend a moment longer than he pleases, and therefore, having the library and the Outer House at his command, the practice is for each barrister to be in Court when his own affair is under discussion, and never to listen to the proceedings merely for the sake of learning his profession. Hence we have more jokers and poets and philosophers than lawyers. I wish one of the poets would give us an ode on the first call after the long vacation. Jeffrey compared it to the first note of spring. It recalls in one moment all the associations of the place. A rush of counsel, like "eagles to the prey," to which Peter Peebles compared it, always follows the proclamation of each case. How many a good talk have these proclamations dissipated! how nany an anecdote interrupted! How often robbed us of Erskine's wit, of Scott's story, of Jeffrey's speculations! (10.) "The hard-hearted writer," persisted in imparting no fee; but the "thin wig" survived its owner. It was a very curious article. He (13.) "Hermand, as fierce as a tiger offended."-Lord Hermand. He was my uncle by affinity, and therefore I shall only say, that though he certainly had very often the appearance of being a tiger in public, he was never anything but a lamb in private. Richardson did not know him when he wrote those lines; they were great friends afterwards, and the lines were retained just because they had been writ ten. (14.) "And some for delay were most loudly debating "-In the old state of the Court, where almost nothing was peremptory, it is absolutely じ beyond belief how many hourly wrangles there were for a delay. The loudness of debate was never so conspicuous as in roaring for, or against, procrastination. แ (15.) But meeter for thee with old Thomas Macgrugar."-Macgrugar was an advocate, and, except in elegance, the second self of Otho. They were alike in the indication of early | talent and in subsequent failure, but most unlike in this, that after Macgrugar's death it was discovered, to everybody's surprise, that he was worth £3000 or £4000. While alive, he had the look and appearance and habits of a famished beggar. He was a good lawyer, and a skilful writing pleader, insomuch that some of the great guns of the profession got considerable praise for successful shots which Macgrugar had loaded and pointed for them. (16.) "The Corsican fairy."-Not Napoleon, but Mr. George Sandy. He was once secretary or something to the first Lord Minto, when that nobleman was something in Corsica, and got this title from his huge hairy grey bulk. (17.) "John Dowie's."-Fired at the sound! John was the last of his class in Edinburgh. He kept a mean but respectably-conducted tavern in Forrester's Wynd. It was nearly empty till about nine at night, when crowds of parties, composed chiefly of young men belonging to some of the departments of the law, went to sup. There can be no doubt, since Richardson, who knew the haunt well, says so, that they got red-herrings and penny pies; but there can be just as little doubt that toasted cheese and ale were the staple. |