Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/634

There was a problem when proofreading this page.

Recreations of Lawyers.

597

The accident which Lord Tenterden appre In the same devoted spirit Mr. Fearne, hended did befall Mr. Justice Twisden on when he devoted himself to contingent re the last occasion on which the judges went mainders, burned all his profane library and in procession to Westminster Hall on horse wept over its flames, mourning more espe back. The procession, once settled for the cially in this great act of renunciation for march, proceeded statelily along. But when the Homilies of Saint John Chrysostom to it came to straits and interruptions, "for the people of Antioch, and for the comedies want of gravity in the beasts and too much of Aristophanes! It is not recorded that in the riders," as Roger North expresses it, Fearne ever returned to his scholarship, but "there happened some curvetting which Blackstone still found time to make critical made no little disorder; and Judge Twisden, remarks on Shakspeare, as another great to his great affright and the consternation of judge of our own day has found time in his his grave brethren, was laid along in the translation of the ^Eneid to reproduce for dirt." Need it be added that the learned us " the stateliest measure ever moulded by judge arose valde iratus f the lips of man." Such " wantonings with Cicero could be a lawyer, and a man of the muse," as Kirke White would call them, letters also. Lord Coleridge is so, too, are not in vain. They have left their impress happy in a double inheritance of genius; but on the luminous and eloquent diction of the the combination is a rare one, though many commentaries; they are discernible in the a lawyer quits the thorny roads of jurispru finish of Lord Justice Bowen's judgments. dence for the " primrose path " of literature. Lord Selborne's reputation as a lawyer is Sir Wm. Blackstone seems to have felt their none the worse because among the vulgar incompatibility when he wrote " The Law hustle of affairs his life, as has been well re yer's Farewell to his Muse," and said a fond marked, " has been elevated and ennobled adieu to the " Delilahs of the Imagination " " by an element of ethereal texture that love before embarking on the stern task of " The of poetry which has given us ' The Book of Commentaries;" feeling himself, however, as Praise.' " — Laiv Gazette. he did so, like "an exile" going from home.