BENCH AND BAR:* IN one respect at all events, Serjeant

Robinson's Reminiscences stand out in laudable contrast from other similar productions.

The narrator has almost entirely effaced his own personality, and so far from acting as his own Boswell, has told us hardly anything about himself beyond the circumstances of his being trailed to the Bar nearly sixty years ago, and a very few autobio- graphical details, such as the fact that he attributes the happi-

ness and prosperity of his long life to his privacy and love of books. As he puts it, rather than gossip about himself he has preferred to act as gentleman-usher to others, interspersing anecdotic sketches of his forensic contemporaries with de- scriptive matter illustrative of the social and other changes

that have been brought about in the past sixty years. An

agreeable feature about the narrative is the entire absence of the laudator temporis acti spirit. On the

contrary, in so far as the orderliness of the administra- tion of justice, the state of public morals, and the re- putability of the Press are concerned, Mr. Robinson is evidently of opinion that we are entitled to make use of the Homeric vaunt. He has no sympathy with antiquarians whose affection for landmarks of the past is incompatible with a due regard for sanitation. He has no regrets for the decadence of

hard drinking ; but, on the contrary, expresses his satisfaction that public opinion has rendered it impossible for occupants of the Bench to conduct business in the unseemly fashion that not unfrequently was witnessed circ. ann. 1840. Serjeant Arabin seems to have been a typical representative of such unseemly administration of justice. He was, at the same

time, noted for the perpetration of some of the most ex- travagant " bulls " that have been heard in or out of Ireland. Concerning Charles Phillips, his "horticultural eloquence" and ignorance of the rudiments of law, Serjeant Robinson has some interesting anecdotes. In regard to the Courvoisier trial, he thinks that Phillips was misreported and unfairly

treated. A propos of the same case, he mentions that during its progress even the dock was crammed with strangers, who surrounded and almost came in contact with the criminal him-

self. In those days, the morbid curiosity of the fashionable public manifested itself in applications for leave to visit condemned prisoners in their cells, and to hear the "condemned sermon," as it was called. "It is said," writes Serjeant Robinson, "that five hundred strangers were admitted by tickets to the service on the Sunday before Courvoisier was hanged." The most curious episode in this cadaverous connection, however, was the funeral sermon which Dr. Dodd, who was executed for forgery in 1777, preached on himself "before a fashionable audience, many of those who constituted it being his own personal friends."

The uniform kindliness which marks these somewhat garrulous reminiscences is seldom broken. An exception,

however, must be made in case of the sketch of Serjeant Ballantine, about whom one story is told which casts a slur upon his courage. He was, if we are to believe the present narrator, a creature of impulse, of chameleonic inconsistency, and with a cynical contempt for all social forms and ceremonies. Southgate is singled out, and rightly, as one of the most remarkable instances of the triumph of mind over matter which the annals of the Bar, or of any profession, contain ; while some of the peculiarities of Clarkson, the well-known Old Bailey counsel, are summed up rather smartly as follows :—

"Clarkson's was a very corrosive style of oratory, and he was generally said to be much fonder of his specie than his species. He could shed a tear or two on occasion, but he did not keep them well under command. He generally exhibited emotion in the wrong place: sometimes long after every one else had finished."

The romance of law is admirably exemplified by the career

• Bench and Bar : Reminiscences of One of the Last of an Ancient Race. By Mr. Serjeant Robinson. London Hurst and Blaekett.

of Serjeant Wilkins, who had been brought up to be a doctor, but, resenting the Draconian severity of his father's discipline, ran away from home, and "for a lengthened period subsisted on sixpence a day by playing in the cornfields the part of a scarecrow." Afterwards he became a schoolmaster, then a newspaper editor, and finally came to the Bar, where he achieved a sudden success, launched out into extravagant expenditure, and died "worse than poor." Aspirants to forensic honours will be encouraged by the sympathetic way in which an old hand like Serjeant Robinson treats the sub- ject of nervousness. He expresses a strong distrust as to the ultimate success of those who exhibit a cool and unabashed demeanour at the outset. There are varieties of effrontery, however, and that of the barrister nicknamed "Tom Jones," as illustrated in some very humorous anecdotes, was largely the outcome of a genial buoyancy that no Judge could resent or resist. The two most amusing chapters in the book are those devoted to Sir William Malik and Samuel Warren. Malik was a humorist of a very high order, as may be inferred from one exquisite retort :—

" A witness who had given his evidence in such a way as satis- fied everybody in Court that he was committing perjury, being cautioned by the Judge, said at last, My Lord, you may believe me or not, but I have stated not a word that is false, for I have been wedded to truth from my infancy.'—' Yes, Sir,' said Maule, but the question is how long you have been a widower.'" Samuel Warren, to judge from Serjeant Robinson's account,

was one of the naivest snobs that ever existed, whose elastic temperament and impenetrable complacency enabled him to survive the most mortifying rebuffs.

"He was always boasting," says Serjeant Robinson, "of his intimacy with members of the peerage, and one day he was saying that, while dining lately at the Duke of Leeds', he was surprised at finding that no fish of any kind was served. That is easily accounted for,' said Thesiger, they had probably eaten it all upstairs.'"

This same story has been told against others beside Warren, but in no case was the rebuke better deserved. Another familiar saying is here ascribed, and probably correctly, to

Lord Westbury : we mean his description of Sir William Wood, afterwards Lord Hatherley, as "a despicable creature,—brim- ful of virtues, without a single redeeming vice." Our last quotation from Serjeant Robinson's amusing chapters shall

be his account of a colloquy between Maule and Follett, the latter of whom he considers to have been, for sheer intellectual power, the ablest advocate of the century :— " There was a very important and intricate case coming on in the House of Lords, and the Peers had summoned the Judges to attend there to hear the subject-matter argued by counsel and to give their opinions upon it. Follett was retained as counsel on one side and Maule on the other. Shortly before the case came on, Follett strolled into the kitchen of the House of Com- mons (to which the Bar had always access in the day-time), and called for -a biscuit and a glass of sherry. To his surprise he saw Maule sitting at a table with a rump-steak and a huge flagon of stout before him, to the consumption of both of which he was applying himself with the most exemplary assiduity. Follett could not help expressing to his opponent his surprise at seeing him indulging in so solid and carnal a diet by way of a prepara- tive for the task he was about to enter upon, and for which a clear, unclouded brain was so essential. As to clearness of brain,' said Maule, I find that mine is too clear already. The truth is, I am striving to bring my intellect down to a level with the capacity of those idiotic Judges.'"