SKETCHES IN SCOTCH LEGAL LIFE.*
Trim is a disappointing book. The reader opens it expecting to find a collection of anecdotes and amusing stories different to w those which crop up in Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, and other works connected with English legal biography and history. For we here in England really know little, or next to nothing, not only of Scotch law, but of the good stories of Scotch lawyers. And we naturally expect to have plenty of the latter, which will be amusing, at any rate, on the score of their novelty. But in- stead of purely personal stories, we find a series of what may be termed short tales turning upon legal points. Thus, the first chapter in the 'book tells of "The Last Spuilzie at Battle- lmowe." A spuilzie in Scotland answers to an ejectment in England, and in this chapter the Member of the College of Justice relates how an inexorable landlord, one Gawin MacIlwraith, is determined to enforce his legal rights and eject from his farm of Battleknowe his impecunious tenant, Horatio Nelson Craw. After his brother, Arthur Wellesley Craw, has unavailingly endeavoured ; by every means known to his litigious mind to soften the heart, or to persuade the understanding of the landlord, the sheriff's officers make • Scenes and Beaches in Legal Lift. By a Member of the College of Justice. London and Edinburgh : William P. Nimmo. their appearance at night-time. The tenant lies dying in the house, but they would still have ejected the occupants, had not his wife stood at the door with her infant in her arms, and so softened the hearts of the officers that they tamed away without perform- ing their disagreeable task. This is really, shortly told, the whole story, and it may fairly be doubted whether it is worth the trouble of printing. The author no doubt thinks that he is sketching a peculiar and noticeable person in the confirmed liti- gant, Arthur Wellesley Craw, "eldest son of the late Daniel Craw, of the Scots Greys, who for distinguished services at Waterloo had been made a lieutenant ;" who has spent all his money in law-suits, and who is always reading Erskine's Institutes and Diorrison's Dictionary of Decisions. But the picture is at once overcharged and weak. It is a piece of extravagance, —the language is forced and absurd, and there is an absolute want of real life about it. The author's descriptive language is full of pomposity and strainings after effect. He likes to call the sun " sol," he speaks of a place "where great beds of sweet violets absolutely invite repose upon their soft, odorous profusion," as if odorous profusion were a sort of natural mattress. Several of the sketches, too, have really very little to do with the law. The "Tenants of Ben Eachan," for example, relates only how an ancient claimant of a Highland property sold to an English Jail- lionaire resists to the last all attempts to take him from his mountain home. But this is in some respects one of the best of these sketches. There is more real life about it. Alister Macre, the last of the clan, an aged man, who lives on the sides of Ben Eachan, is, to some extent, a vivid and melancholy figure, who stands out more prominently when contrasted with the young Cockney landowner who takes him away from his cottage. The old man is at last removed, but only to live a death-in-life kind of existence. One day the sound of the pibroch awakens memory and life for a few instants, only to put an end to the old man's existence,—" the music gave him life now, and gave him death."
The sketch which has really moat interest in it is that of the late Seniors of the Parliament House, for in the others there is too visible a straining to be humorous or pathetic, which produces in the reader a certain repugnance to passages where this effort is so very visible. But this chapter does bring before us some types of Scotch lawyers, frequenters of the Scotch Westminster Hall, who have genuine characteristics of their country and their profession about them, and require nothing but a plain narrative to make them of interest to the reader. The following little picture is characteristic enough : —" It was pleasant of a forenoon, when the House had rich noises of contention, though very wide of the mark, much of it coming from busy prattlers concerning 'points,' certainly not to be understood or settled by them, from clerks out of breath im- pressing escaping counsel, and from idle babblers and gossip- mongers,—it was pleasant to see moving in slow, well-measured paces across the oak floor the familiar and often antiquated figures of the Seniors of the Faculty. While these old advocates dipped into Horace, they might also gather in knots with delighted eyes over the busking of a March brown." Of a similar character to these classical and piscatorial lawyers was George Dalrymple, of Balmathrapple. "His shirt-frills, hanging down over his waistcoat, his gown a rag, like a standard of the Black Watch, trailing over the floor, had a little crowd of leisurely habitants of the House waiting upon the flowing of his stores of anecdote and the coming of his deep sayings. He was very great in conveyancing and agricultural questions. He was ready to discuss without book all matters of a me holdings, back and fore-hand rents, and rights of salmon- fishing upon title cum piscationibus. He mingled Stephens with Erskine, Angus Doddies with quips, and five shifts with articulate answers to pursuers' questions." Quite a different type is James Playfair. Tall, thin, and pale-faced, "he lived a solitary life in his great house, where he had dwelt nearly half a century alone, receiving persons at consultations. He was true, and would do a kindness for you unknown to you ; he was fully for his own wants employed by solicitors." These extracts will give some kind of idea of the book, which, it will be quite evident from them, is far from being vividly descriptive. In the other parts there are also various sketches, but these, again, are not vigorous enough in essential portions. Thus in the arbitration in Quash Lane as to the value of a parrot, and of the work done in making the cage, neither Ovens, the arbitrator, nor Mr. Dolphington, the defendant, brings before us any real impression of a character, however eccentric, to be met with in the usual routine of life. At the same time, there is a certain amount of humour in the picture of Mr. Dolphington—" a bachelor who had never been in busi- ness; a genial, fussy little man, who troubled himself to make his friends happy and to bring about reforms for the general weal, he came to have a belief in arbitration, the consequence of which was that he became noisy for arbitration ; he stormed with the indignation of an amateur in rage about the stupidity of legislators, for neglecting to bring about the salvation of the world by arbitration. Universal peace and good-will among men were to be ensured by arbitration." Mr. Dolphington puts his theories to the test about his parrot, but is ignominiously defeated, like a good many other people with various legal or social panaceas, the result of whose efforts is an absurd failure. What has already been said will give the reader no very strong wish to read these Scenes and Sketches in Legal Life. This species of descriptive literature requires some skill, and a natural and spontaneous humour in the teller, and a considerable ground- work of interesting material, in order to justify its publica- tion. Neither of these elements is to be found in this book, and therefore we hope no one, unless better qualified and better supplied with facts than this Member of the College of Justice, will rush into print, to the disappointment of the expectant reader.
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