fire, and make the embers glow."

only when the client is exhausted.

The process stops

But Crabbe admits exceptions. There were honourable men in the profession. These were the well-to-do,

66

I who hold manorial courts,

Or whom the trust of powerful friends supports."

An eighteenth century poet could not have made such an admission as this; and the "Pope in worsted" went further still:

Yet I repeat there are who nobly strive,

To keep the sense of moral worth alive.

Men who would starve, ere meanly deign to live

On what deception and chican'ry give;

And these at length succeed, they have their strife,
Their apprehensions, stops, and rubs in life;
But honour, application, care and skill
Shall bend opposing fortune to their will.

Of such is Archer, he who keeps in awe,
Contending parties by his threats of law;
He, roughly honest, has been long a guide
In Borough-business, on the conquering side;
And seen so much of both sides, and so long
He thinks the bias of men's mind goes wrong:
Thus, though he's friendly, he is still severe,
Surly though kind, suspiciously sincere ;

So much he's seen of baseness in the mind

That while a friend to man, he scorns mankind.

Sixteen years later, when the second year of the century was beginning, this more favourable view of the attorney received confirmation from within the legal profession. Crabbe was a clergyman, and had been an apothecary; an anonymous member of the bar came now to corroborate the other professions. He pictures the opening of Term: From Court to Court, perplexed, attornies fly,

A Dowling each! quick scouring to and fro,
And wishing he could cut himself in two,

That he two places at a time might reach,

So he could charge his "Six and eight pence each."

This is but natural weakness, and the author alludes to it, not in reprehension, but with the pride of superiority.

AIMBOTILIAD

102

THE ATTORNEY IN THE POETS.

As six-and-eight is to one, three, six, so is an attorney to a member of the bar. The author beholds the attorney again at the assizes, "bustling, hawk-eyed." There the attorney may have the ill-luck to find Scarlett against him and receive "a roasting."

"What!" some old practised limb is apt to cry,
When such a "roasting" meets his curious eye,
"Can all this difference be betwixt a leader
And an obliging smiling special pleader ? ”
I well remember at no distant time,
When Varro thought it neither sin nor crime,
To greet a friend with language soft and kind,
That won his patient client's heart and mind.
But now, behold! when by their friendly aid,
His end is answered, and his fortune made,
Up to the top of fame's proud height he goes

Then kicks the ladder down by which he rose !

Not content with this exposition of his views in verse, the author added a note in prose. "There is an immeasurable distance between a Barrister and an Attorney; and many of the former have, or affect to have, an absolute antipathy to the latter." He refers to Scarlett's habit of vituperating them in Court, which on one occasion led to the leading case of Hodgson v. Scarlett, in which it was decided that no action will lie against Counsel for slander uttered in Court. "One may collect at least three good reasons," continues the poet," why Counsel should be more abstemious in their vituperation of these gentlemen: 1. They (the Barristers) are sure of the protection of the Court. 2. The abused party cannot reply to any observations, however strong that may be made, on his character or conduct. 3. Nor can he have any redress or satisfaction out of Court."

The Barrister-poet usually, like Blackstone, bids an early farewell to his muse. While he is still among the singing birds, his practice is small, and he has reason to regard the attorney's as angelic visits. Mr. Justice Hayes, in his

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'Elegy written in the Temple Gardens," lamented the condition of the briefless in the upper stories.

"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
I long so much to share.
Alas! why all thy favour pour

On Robinson, Q.C.?

Ah! deign to bless the second floor
And bring thy briefs to me.

I 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 conservative and timorous in dispensing such patronage as they possess. They are blind to unpractised merit, slow to recognise worth in the new man. That theme must often have been sung. Mr. Smith, himself (doubtless 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 retain,
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 the 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.

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 that their business seemed uncommon flat

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 criticised, 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 intensely the study necessary for the profession of the law, and, indeed, he denounced the profession (though it was his father's, and doubtless supported him) 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 Butterfly Bayly 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 vertebrates; and, finally, in 1865, the attorney was definitely admitted within the human family. The honour 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

* A Dream of Idleness. Moxon, 1865.

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, and, deeply disappointed, Mr. Starkie plunged into practice, and sought to bury his woe amid his papers. How little, he reflected, the world knows of a man's real character! If this of most be true, 'tis true,

And doubly true of me,

Whose roots are plunged down deep from view.

Whose blossoms none may see.

A gnarlèd trunk, all seam'd and crost

Of hard and knitted grain;

Whose hopes were bitten by one frost,
And never grew again.

Nor grew, nor died-the sap return'd

And gathered in the roots;

And though in Spring no more it burn'd
Ambitious of green shoots

Yet, east and west, and north and south,
Refresh'd with rain and dew,

The roots sent slender saplings forth,
And none knew whence they grew.

How could they know? I blame not them;
They judge by what they see;
They only see the rough old stem,
And this they take for me.

How can they tell how I have striv'd

To keep my real life

Pure as the life I would have lived

If she had been my wife.

They think a lawyer thus must act,

And thus he scarcely can,
But they, methinks, forget the fact

That he, like them, is Man.

The path the toiling foot may tread
Shows not the spirit's goal,

And work which earns the body's bread
Need never stain the soul.