Some Books of the Week
As the founder of a legal dynasty Lord Chief Baron Pollock deserves to be remembered, and the excellent memoir of him by his grandson, Lord Hanworth (Murray, 10s. 6d.), will be read with interest—and not by lawyers alone. Jonathan Frederick Pollock (1788-1870) was the son of a Berwick man who was Court saddler and not very successful in getting his bills paid. The boy was at St. Paul's School for a brief space, and then went up to Trinity, Cambridge. He was too poor to continue his course unaided, whereupon his tutor, Tavel, impressed by his mathematical genius, lent young Pollock the money required to carry on. Pollock was Senior Wrangler in 1806 and then went to the Bar. Tavel continued to finance • for some years until briefs came in freely. Pollock at became leader of the Northern Circuit and the successful rival of Brougham. He was Attorney-General under Peel in 1834, and from 1841 to 1844 when he was made Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Lord Hanworth gives an interesting account of his legal career, of his skilful defence of Frost the Chartist in the Newport rising of 1889, and so on. But the average reader will be more deeply impressed at learning that the Lord Chief Baron, by his two wives had twenty-four children, of whom twenty survived him, and the family tree in the appendix shows at a glance how many distinguished men and women this great Pollock clan has given to the country in the past hundred years.
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