Charles Lamb and the Law. which was written while Field was in New South Wales. Field was by way of being a poet, and Lamb wrote a review of his "First Fruits of Australian Poetry " for the "London Magazine." Avery different person from the Gibraltar chief justice, was Martin Burney. Martin was a young barrister of the Inner Temple, of somewhat idle and dissolute habits, whose only claim to re membrance by posterity is that he was the nephew of Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay), and the intimate friend of Charles Lamb. There was really no reason why Burney should not have got on at the bar, for we are told that he used to travel the western circuit with Sir Thomas Wilde (Lord Truro), whose briefs he used to read, and give an opinion upon before Wilde con sidered them. Burney was rarely absent from Lamb's Wednesday evening recep tions. Talfourd describes him as a little man with a disfigured face — the result of paralysis — and not over-clean in person or apparel, dealing out cards at the whist table, or carving the cold fowl for supper, " be cause a barrister should know everything." Burney is the hero of the well-known "dirt was trumps " story. Lamb and he, it will be remembered, were playing cards one evening, when the former thoughtfully re marked, "Martin, if dirt were trumps, what a hand you'd have! " History does not re cord Martin's reply. Martin Burney was, in Lamb's words, " on the top scale of my friendship's ladder." Lamb dedicated his collected works to him in 181 5, addressing to him at the same time a sonnet, in which occur the following striking lines : — In all my threadings of this worldly maze (And I have watched thee almost from a child); Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, I have not found a whiter soul than thine. This is a fine certificate of character, but there can hardly be any doubt that poor Burney like Lamb himself, was too fond of cards and punch ever to rise in his profes sion. After the Lamb menage was broken
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up in 181 7, we hear very little more of Martin Burney. Bryan Procter (Barry Cornwall) gives us a last glimpse of him standing at a street corner gravely informing Procter that he had finally, after long de bating the question, come to the conclusion that Raphael was a greater painter than Hogarth. It would hardly be fitting to dismiss this portion of our subject without a word or two about Henry Crabb Robinson, diarist, barrister, and friend of Charles Lamb, and of nearly every other literary man of note in the first half of the present century. Crabb Robinson was a great power in the literary life of his time, but, feeling that literature was not sufficiently remunerative, he joined the ranks of the bar in 181 3. It was Crabb Robinson's first case (which he happened to win) that Charles Lamb referred to as "thou first great cause, least understood." Robinson travelled the Norfolk circuit, and proved as successful in law as he had been in literature. In 1828 he retired from prac tice, having made up his mind to do so when his income arrived at £500, net, a year. "The two wisest acts of my life," he said, "were being called to the bar and retiring from it." Besides the four we have men tioned, many other young barristers used to drop in at No. 4, Inner Temple lane, in those days, notably Thomas Barnes, who, however, soon gave up law to become editor of" The Times." To glance for a moment at another phase of our subject, if Charles Lamb owed much to his early associations with the Temple and its lawyers, he has certainly paid the debt in full, in that finest of all his essays, "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." In particular, he gives us a picture of the ancient terrace in the gardens, in its palmy days, when " gods as old men covered with a mantle," in the shape of benchers of the Inn, used to stroll thereon in the morning hours. Curiously enough, none of the benchers whom Lamb enumerates have
