The Attorney in the Poets. The grave Attorney, knocking frequently The bustling Clerk, who hastens to the door, The bulky brief, and corresponding fee, Are things unknown to all that lofty floor.
The same theme has inspired the pen of Mr. Horace Smith. He speaks the very language of the " obliging, smiling, special pleader." Ah! sweet Attorney! I behold Thy brief so fat and fair; And on the back is marked the gold 1 long so much to share. Alas! why all thy favor pour On Robinson, Q. C.? Ah! deign to bless the second floor And bring thy briefs to me. 1 hear thy step upon the stair! My heart beats as 'twould burst Ah me! how vain this foolish fear, Thou knockest at the first. Raise, raise thy lovely eyes once more. Then may'st thou haply see The name of Figgins on the door, And bring thy briefs to me.
It is, indeed, one of the common complaints against attorneys that they are unduly con servative and timorous in dispensing such patronage as they possess. They are blind to unpractised merit, slow to recognize worth in the new man. That theme must often have been sung. Mr. Smith, himself (doubt less before he mounted the bench), gave us another variant of this opinion to the air of "Three Fishers went sailing." Three attorneys came sailing down Chancery Lane, Down Chancery Lane, e'er the Courts had sat. They thought of the leaders they ought to retail). But the Junior Bar, Oh! they tho't not of that; For Sergeants get work and Q. C.'s too, And Solicitors' sons-in-law frequently do, While Junior Bar is moaning. Three juniors sat up in Crown Office Row, In Crown Office Row. e'er the Courts had sat, They saw the Solicitors passing below. And the briefs that were rolled up so tidy and fat. For Sergeants get work, etc.
223
Three briefs were delivered to Jones, Q. C., To Jones, Q. C., e'er the Courts had sat, And the juniors weeping and wringing their paws, Remarked flat that their business seemed uncommon For Sergeants get work and Q. C.'s too, But as for the rest it's a regular •• do." And the Junior Bar is moaning.
But here the attorney is not criticized, but wooed. While hope still lingers the junior barrister is not in a position to judge the attorney impartially, at least, aloud. Mr. Haynes Bayly, the drawing room darling, the popular singer of sixty years ago, suffered no such disadvantage. He had renounced attorneyship. He seems to have disliked in tensely the study necessary for the profes sion of the law, and, indeed, he denounced the profession (though it was his father's, and doubtless supported /ii'm) very freely, in the person of John Quill. Why was Mr. Bayly so angry? Apparently because he himself had but narrowly escaped being one of us. Even then from the son of a solicitor one might have anticipated a more sympathetic criticism. But the animus and flippancy of ButterflyBayly were but survivals from the past. A more humane criticism was proper to the nineteenth century, and the attorney was no longer to be considered as a venomous insect, but to be admitted to belong to the verte brates; and, finally, in 1865, the attorney was definitely admitted within the human family. The honor of making this admission belongs to Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse, in his poem, " John Starkie, Solicitor." ' In some two dozen verses John Starkie revealed his character, and the tragedy of his life — one leaf from the great human tragedy — just as a doctor, or estate agent, or poet, might have done. The poem is a picture of the solicitor, not as law agent, but as man of sentiment. John Starkie had loved, and loved in vain; she had wedded another, just as she often did in the fluent verse of Mr. Haynes Bayly, 1 A Dream of Idleness.
Moxon, iS65.
