Personal Recollections of English Law Courts. one succeeded in persuading the commis sioner that Wyndham was not insane, in the teeth of strong evidence to the contrary and of the advocacy of Montague Chambers who appeared forthe relatives. Poor Sam Warren, he wrote an excellent novel, but as a barrister he never made a name in the courts; his per sonal vanity made him the subject of many capital stories. Here is one : Old Mon tague Chambers met him one day. "Warren, are you dining with the Chancellor to-night?" "No, Chambers, I am sorry I have had to put him off. I had a prior engagement to dine with the Duke of ." " Oh, Warren, you arc surely making a great mis take. A rising young barrister like you to put off a Lord Chancellor's invitation to dinner with an excuse! — you do not know what you may be losing; however, I will do this for you : I will tell the Chancellor I met you and that you told me how deeply you regretted you could not be with us to night." " No, don't do that, Chambers, I have written to his lordship and he will quite understand." " Now, Warren, I am a much older man than you; take my advice and let me put it all right for you." " No, Chambers, I beg you will say nothing to his lordship about it; the fact is, to be quite candid with you, I have not been invited." "No more have 1 old fellow," said Cham bers. Warren also wrote a short book called "Now and Then," whereupon some wag wrote this epigram : "If Warren, the ablest yet vainest of men, Were as glib with his tongue as he is with his pen, He would see his way clear To ten thousand a year, Instead of a brief now and then."
But I am wandering from Westminster Hall. Cockburn presided over the court of Queen's Bench with great dignity. It was a great treat to hear him deliver a judgment. His voice was the sweetest, his language the choicest, his reasoning the closest I ever listened to. Beside him sat Blackburn, then recently promoted, up to then almost un
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known; with a voice like a jackdaw in the agonies of strangulation; he too after a few years turned out a most excellent judge. On the other side sat Crompton a very able judge, and later on Mellor, Lush and Shee sat on the same bench; a somewhat curious collection so far as regarded their theology. Cockburn, I think, belonged to the Church of England, Blackburn was a Presbyterian, Crompton a Unitarian, Mellor an Indepen dent, Lush a Baptist, and Shee a Roman Catholic. Luckily they had not to sit to decide questions of church doctrine; and yet I feel confident that had they been called upon to do so, their judgments would have commanded as much as those of Lord Pen zance in later years. One of Cockburn's latest literary productions was a somewhat racy pamphlet in which he amply justified the clergy of the High Church party for their feeling of irritation at the intolerant treatment they received from Lord Penzance in the Arches Court. Lord Penzance brought this pamphlet down on his head by some petu lant remarks he made in his own court, complaining of Cockburn's presumption in not accepting as final one of his decisions on some matter of ritual. At the head of the old court of Common Pleas sat my beau ideal of a judge, Sir William Erle. Courteous to all, most of all to young juniors; calm and dignified at all times, I should think no judge was ever more highly respected and loved; enemies he had none. Beside him sat Willes, a judge steeped to the lips in black-letter law, now and then startling the court with a quotation from " Bracton de legibus," or citing a case from one of the Year Books, giving even the very page from memory. Here also sat Sir E. Vaughn Williams, Crouder and Byles, making an excellent court of sound lawyers, whose judgments are recorded and quoted with reverence. In those days the serjeants who were not Ouecns Counsel appeared in the Common Pleas in the blue stuff gowns, like seaside bathing dresses, and were al
