trolling hand which directs the destinies of men led him one day into the court where Lord Mansfield was presiding. Erskine at that time was a soldier in the King's service, having no special ambition, and apparently careless of promotion. Lord Mansfield, being a friend of the family, was interested in the youth, and invited him to a seat upon the bench. Young Erskine became so interested in the court proceedings that he decided to study for the bar. He consulted with Lord Mansfield and members of his own family. Meeting with no discouragement from this source, he prepared himself for the bar, and with that same confidence and disregard of consequences, which had characterized his entrance into matrimony, he launched out in poverty, with slim prospects as a lawyer.

Fate, or some guiding influence, seemed to be with him in all his ventures. It directed his marriage and his call to the bar, the two events which combined to shape his career and give expression to his mighty powers.

He established his fame from his very first appearance in court. He was employed to defend a naval officer in a criminal prosecution for libel. While he engaged in no long and labored effort he, in a short speech before Lord Mansfield on a preliminary motion, showed such a mastery of his case, and made such an impression upon his hearers, that his immediate success at the bar was assured. When asked how he could stand up so bravely and courageously before such a stern and rigorous judge, he replied that when speaking he imagined he heard his little children pulling at his robe crying: "Now, Father, is the time to get us bread."

It is well to call attention to a few passages from this maiden effort of his, a speech which immediately placed him in the front rank of British advocates. It has been truly said that he who is not a good lawyer when he comes to the bar will never be a good one afterwards. This, of course, does not mean that a lawyer's talents and ability do not improve with experience. It means that the essentials

and the elements must be present in the beginning, and must manifest themselves from the start. Erskine was fullfledged from his first appearance in court. He fell, fullarmored, like Minerva, from the brain of Olympian Jove. Listen to his first effort:

"When a British subject is brought before a court of justice only for having ventured to attack abuses, which owe their continuance to the danger of attacking them,-when, without any motive but benevolence, justice, and public spirit, he has ventured to attack them, though supported by power, and in that department too where it was the duty of his office to detect and expose them,-I cannot relinquish the high privilege of trying to do justice to such merit.-I will not give up even a small share of the honor of repelling and exposing so odious a prosecution. . . . I will drag him to the light who is the dark mover behind this scene of iniquity. I assert that the Earl of Sandwich has but one road to escape out of this business without pollution and disgrace. But if, on the contrary, he continues to protect the prosecutors, in spite of the evidence of their guilt, which has excited the abhorrence of the numerous audience who crowd this court, if he keeps this injured man suspended, or dares to turn that suspension into a removal, I shall then not scruple to declare him an accomplice in their guilt, a shameless oppressor, a disgrace to his rank, and a traitor to his trust."

Let it not be assumed, however, that Erskine's great efforts at the bar were extempore and born of the moment. "Eloquence," says Disraeli, "is the child of knowledge." As has been seen, Erskine had a vast store of the classics committed to memory, from which he could draw at his pleasure. At odd times, and at his leisure, he composed many of his great periods, which he brought out of reserve on occasion, and reconstructed to fit the particular case and the particular moment. In this respect he was not unlike other great orators. It is stated of Daniel Webster that his great apostrophe at the laying of the cornerstone of the monument at Bunker Hill, when he turned to the survivors of the Revolution and addressed them as,-"Venerable men! You have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives that you might behold this joyous day," was an expression which had flashed from his gigantic brain in addressing a couple

of trout as he pulled them from a brook upon his New England farm. Judge Speer, in his address referred to, states that "after Sheridan's death . . . it was discovered that those marvelous witicisms with which he had charmed his contemporaries had been deliberately considered, written out, re-written and rearranged, so at the proper time to produce a most captivating effect of original spontaneous humor."

Not only must the orator prepare beforehand his splendid passages, but the advocate at the bar particularly must well prepare his case upon the law and the facts. It was said of Rufus Choate, as of Erskine, that they spent more time upon the preparation of their cases than upon their speeches. Well has it been said that there is no such thing as genius, that genius is but a synonym for application and arduous labor. As truly may it be said that there is no such thing as spontaneous elequence, a species of genius. The orator has manufactured his remarks in some far-off laboratory, somewhere hidden and obscure. It is only their embellishments and their adaptation to the particular moment and the particular occasion which his skill spontaneously supplies. Even the scintillating flashes, apparently spontaneous, are but sparks flying from material already stored, being brought out and hammered in some mental forge.

In studying Erskine as an advocate the chief source of his powers should not be overlooked. It was his thorough preparation beforehand which made him invincible in forensic debate. No great advocate has ever neglected this cardinal and essential virtue. Superficial observers, looking on, are apt to be carried away by an advocate's fine platitudes and rhetorical phrases. Splendid and rounded periods, however, do not make the forensic orator. It is his handling of the facts and the law of the case, and the truthful and convincing manner in which he marshals and presents them, that determine his force and power at the

bar. This talent Erskine possessed to a marked degree. In commenting upon this characteristic of him, the late Mr. John C. Reed, of the Atlanta bar, says: "The study of Erskine and Choate shows that the principal aim of these two great orators was to solve rightly the questions of fact and law in their cases. Abstract from their speeches that which answers to what we have pointed out as the business of the forensic speaker and the remnant is almost unmeaning." This "business" Mr. Reed had already stated to be "the best reasons which you can cull from the facts applicable to the law." Proceeding further, he says: "A comparison of Scarlett and Mason with Erskine and Choate gives true opinion of the value of these essentials of argument, and shows that while they can win without eloquence the latter cannot win without them."'1

It being desirous to impress the fact that true eloquence at the bar, as exemplified by the subject of this sketch, as well as by other great advocates of the past, consists in the proper handling and treatment of the law and the facts of the case in hand, it is well to bear in mind the words of Sir James Scarlett: "The duty of a forensic orator," says he, "is to make such use of his facts, and of the topics which his own imagination may suggest as will lead to the conviction of the jury in favor of his client. His sole object ought to be to persuade those twelve men to come to a specific conclusion. He may declaim and be as amusing as he can upon collateral topics, but they will not in the least help him to his object, even though the judge should not

1 "Conduct of Lawsuits." Attention is called to this able and remarkable book from the pen of one of our Georgia lawyers,-that excellent man, profound thinker, thorough student, scholar and author, John C. Reed. As this sketch is primarily directed to the young lawyer seeking to ground himself in the fundamentals it is not out of place here to commend this book. Prof. Wigmore, Dean of the Northwestern University, says of it:

"When a book is as good as this on every page, the pains (of mastering it) are worth bestowing. If to the equipment of legal knowledge and honest unskilled ambition which thousands of beginners among us today possess, could be added in each one, the intelligent use of the mature wisdom here purveyed, the profession and the community in the coming generations would be notably the better for it."

interrupt him, nor will they command long the attention of the jury, who are ever anxious to see their way clear before them and to lay aside mere topics of amusement. . . He must disdain all jest, ornament, or sarcasm that does not fall directly in his way, and seem to be so unavoidable that it must strike everybody who thinks of the facts."

The habit of some lawyers of indulging in irrelevant and superfluous rhetoric has often been the theme of satire. Martial, in a well-known epigram, alludes to a desperate and unfortunate client who appeals to his lawyer to confine his remarks to the issue of the case, the ownership of three goats. Says the client, remonstrating: "You, with all the force of your lungs, and striking the bar with your hand, only make a noise about the battle of Cannae, the war of Mithridates and the perfidy of the Carthagenians, about Sulla, Marius and Mucius. Speak, then, I pray you, of my three goats."

Some of the most brilliant passages from a number of Erskine's best efforts will be quoted, with a few observations thereon. From a critical point of view, they, perhaps, are not perfect in their syntax and rhetoric. In Erskine's own words in his Stockdale argument, "it is the nature of everything that is great to be wild and irregular." Viewing these passages as isolated specimens they might be improved upon. Such criticisms, however, are perhaps not absolutely fair to the author. All oratorical efforts must be judged in relation to their settings. Personal characteristics of the orator, the time, the place, and the occasion,all must be considered in making a true estimate of any speech. It is, therefore, impossible to reproduce an oratorical effort with its original force and vigor, as the particular atmosphere and the environment in which it was developed cannot be recalled. What was a Philippic at Athens would have been a mere sophomoric oration under the "Bush Arbor" in Georgia. Ben Hill's great effort would have fallen still-born from the lips of Demosthenes