is understood to be a production of the hack writer Oldmixon. It is often referred to, without any author's name, in the Biographia Britannica.' And we have found one reference to it in Lord Campbell's work (at vol. i. p. 46); but that, as we shall see presently, is no evidence of his having been aware of its existence.

It is a fine thing to see Lord Campbell, after having been withdrawn for some forty years or more by another ambition, returning with so much freshness of heart to the studies which he had loved and cultivated in his youth. His book, looked at in this light, is a very delightful one, and begets a most favourable impression of the character and temper of the man. Putting aside altogether the literary ability which it displays, and the unbroken faculty of diligence and intellectual labour of which it is a monument, no reader can fail to be charmed with the evidence it affords in every page of how true and strong the author's sympathies still are with all the highest things-of how powerless both his labours and his successes in Westminster Hall and St. Stephen's, the more noisy conflicts in which his life has been spent, and the wellearned wealth and honours by which it has been crowned, have been to rob him either of his love for the quiet pursuits of literature, or of any other purer, aspiration of other days. It is not even unpleasant to find him occasionally making what might almost seem an ostentatious proclamation of the uncorrupted state of his mind in this respect; as when in one place he writes (vol. ii. p. 407)—" Several Englishmen owe their distinction as authors to their crosses as politicians. If my Lives of the Chancellors' gain any celebrity, my humble name may be added to the class adorned by Clarendon and Bolingbroke. I shall then be highly contented with my lot. I do not undervalue great professional reputation, but I would rather have written Hyde's character of Falkland than have pronounced the most celebrated judgments of Lord Hardwicke or Lord Eldon." We may or may not agree in rating Clarendon's tribute to his deceased friend as high as Lord Campbell does, or in considering it to evince more intellectual power than

any judgment ever pronounced from the bench of a court of law; we may even be disposed to attribute this outbreak in part to a momentary fit of enthusiasm, or fit of rhetoric; still it is exhilarating to read. Whether it be naïveté or art, its frankness and fearlessness equally carry our sympathies. And the tone of the book throughout is adapted with the same skill to win all readers. There is,

in the first place, a careful avoidance of everything which could offend anybody -or at the least there is a manifest and anxious ambition of such avoidance. Lord Campbell, a keen and consistent party politician, of course does not affect to conceal his principles or his partialities; but the ardour of his liberalism never betrays him into anything like bitterness or intolerance. The most that can be said is, that it is occasionally perhaps a little too credulous; as when, for instance, it leads him to affirm (vol. ii. p. 423) of Lord Bacon, that, "if misled by no personal interest, he would have supported the Bill of Rights in 1689, and the Reform Bill in 1832; and, by going so far and no farther, would have assisted in saving the constitution.” But there is something amiable and beautiful even in this "undoubting mind," whether of poet or politician-in this happy intellectual temper which leads a man to believe that the measures of his party. are always absolute perfection ; — that, given only a sound head and an honest heart, no other man could look at them and think there was anything either to add or spare. Our author's allegiance to his party-leader might have done honour to the days of chivalry. It is eagerly proclaimed on every occasion, and sometimes amusingly enough. Thus, in the account of John Russell, Richard III.'s Lord Chancellor, after an odd conjecture that his not being mentioned by Wiffen in his History of the House of Russell' may perhaps have arisen from a shyness to acknowledge him on account of his connexion with that king--the fact being that there is not a trace of any evidence of his having belonged to the family of the Dukes of Bedford-we come suddenly upon the following impassioned paragraph:-"I will fondly believe, though I can produce no direct evidence to prove

the fact, that to JOHN RUSSELL the nation was indebted for the Act entitled The Subjects of this Realm not to be charged with Benevolence,' the object of which was to put down the practice introduced in some late reigns of levying taxes under the name of benevolence,' without the authority of parliament. The language employed would not be unworthy of that great statesman bearing the same name, who in our own time framed and introduced Bills. To abolish the Test Act' and 'To Reform the Representation of the People in Parliament.' The preamble of Richard III.'s Act is then transcribed; but it would require an enthusiasm equal to Lord Campbell's own to see anything in the words recalling either the Reform Act or the Test Abolition Act and therefore the reader need not be troubled with it. We should not wonder, however, from the manner in which he expresses himself, that our author were disposed "fondly to believe" that there has been an actual metempsychosis in this case, and that Richard's old Chancellor still walks about among us in the person of the present noble leader of the Opposition.

But indeed throughout the three volumes every person whose name is introduced is kindly mentioned, as well as Lord John. Passing over the customary acknowledgments in the Preface for information and assistance, we find strewn over the surface of the work such tender or complimentary notices as the following

:

"That very learned and worthy bookseller, my friend, Thomas Rodd, Great Newport Street;" "The learned and accurate Hardy, the learned and acute Mr. Duffus Hardy" (with other variations); "His (William of Wickham's) promotion to be a judge was ascribed to his skill as an architect; the analogous case would be, if Mr. Barry, as a recompense for his excellent plan for the new Houses of Parliament, were now to be made Lord Chancellor;" "I have a great kindness for the memory of William of Wickham, when I think of his having produced such Wickhamists as my friends Baron Rolfe and Professor Empson;""Lord Coke rejoiced that his (Sir John Fortescue's) descendants were flourishing in the reign of Queen

Elizabeth; and I, rejoicing that they still flourish in the reign of Queen Victoria, may be permitted to express a confident hope that they will ever continue, as now, to support those liberal principles which, in the time of the Plantagenets, were so powerfully inculcated by their illustrious ancestor," "We need not wonder at the credulity of the most eminent men of that age (the reign of Henry VIII.), when in our own day a nobleman (Lord Shrewsbury), distinguished by his talents and his eloquence, as well as by his illustrious birth, has published a pamphlet to support two contemporaneous miraculous maids, the Estatica and the Adolorata;" "The male line of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, after producing many great and honourable characters, has failed; and he is now represented, through a female, by that accomplished statesman Lord Francis Egerton, who enjoys the princely possessions of the family, and to whom every one will rejoice to see its honours restored;" "An eloquent eulogist, Montagu, who, in his very valuable edition of Bacon, rather idolizes his hero;" "Whoever has had the good fortune to be present when Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst presides at similar dinners (to those given by Bacon to the Judges and the leaders of the bar) will form a better opinion of the manners of the man and the times;" "He (Clarendon) is now represented, through a female, by the present Earl of Clarendon, destined to add new lustre to the title which he bears ;" ;" "It is delightful to think that his (Shaftesbury's) honours and estates are now enjoyed by descendants who, inheriting a large portion of his talents, are adorned by every public and private virtue;" "His (Lord North's) daughter, Lady Charlotte Lindsey (Lindsay), still survives, the grace and ornament of her sex, in the reign of Queen Victoria;" &c. &c. &c. The liberality, in short, with which Lord Campbell has scattered this sort of laudation has probably never before been equalled in English authorship. Considering the number of persons, connexions and friends of the individual specified, whom each of these notices would interest and gratify, the publication of the book must have spread

a positive satisfaction, and universal sunshine of the breast, over a large portion of society. The only living or recently deceased person we find spoken of with anything like disparagement is the late poor old Earl of Bridgewater, whose Life of his ancestor, Lord Ellesmere, Lord Campbell, somewhat harshly we think, describes as the worst piece of biography he has ever had the misfortune to be condemned to read. He speaks with commendation of other biographies quite as bad in the course of his work. It may be suspected, however, that he did not know the author of the condemned biography, whom he styles the Reverend Francis Egerton, to be the same who subsequently became Earl of Bridgewater.

In addition to these pleasant personalities about other people, we have also many lively autobiographical memoranda. Thus, in one place the noble author writes: "Till the courts were finally removed out of Westminster Hall, there were easy means of communication between the Chancery and King's Bench, which enabled Sir Thomas More to ask his father's blessing in the one court before he took his seat in the other; and I myself remember, when a student of law, that if the Chancellor rose while the King's Bench was sitting, a curtain was drawn and the Judges saluted him." So at vol. i. p. 215. In another version of the same reminiscence at p. 544, where the story of More and his father is related, we read, "I am old enough to remember that when the Chancellor left his court, if the Court of King's Bench was sitting, a curtain was drawn and bows were exchanged between him and the Judges, so that I can easily picture to myself the blessing scene' between the father and son." The following are a few of these "fond records:""He (More in his Utopia) exposes the absurdity of the law of forfeiture in case of larceny, which, I am ashamed to say, notwithstanding the efforts I have myself made in parliament to amend it, still disgraces our penal code;" "Although on the rare occasions when it was my duty to speak while a member of the House of Commons I had the good fortune to experience a favourable hearing, I must

observe that there has subsisted in this assembly down to our own times an envious antipathy to lawyers, with a determined resolution to believe that no one can be eminent there who has succeeded at the bar;" "This (Lord Keeper Lit tleton's accepting a commission as a colonel of foot from Charles I. at Ox ford) reminds me of the gallant corps in which I myself served in my youth, the B. I. C. A.,' or Bloomsbury and Inns of Court Association,' consisting of barristers, attorneys, law students, and clerks, raised to repel the invasion threatened by Napoleon; but none of the reverend sages of the law served in this or the rival legal corps named the Temple Light Infantry,' or 'The Devil's Own, commanded by Erskine, still at the bar. Lord Chancellor Eldon doubted the expediency of mixing in the ranks, and did not aspire to be an officer; Law, the Attorney-General, was in the awkward squad;" "The precedent (of the com mitment of Shaftesbury by the House of Lords in 1677, simply for high contempts against this House, without specifying what the contempts were) hitherto has been respected. In the case of the Sheriffs of Middlesex, which occurred when I was Attorney-General and a member of the House of Commons, I settled the warrant of commitment, and took care that it should be in this general form. Some, observations were made by the Court of King's Bench as to the impropriety of preventing them from seeing the true cause of commitment; but they held it sufficient;" "I can testify, from having witnessed it, that the scene of the greatest exultation and joy in this world is the procession of the 'third man entering a borough during a canvass for the election of members of parliament. Those who do not mean to support him, and know that he has no chance of success, equally rejoice-in the consciousness of their own increased importance; and, from his worship the mayor down to the beggar in the street, all expect to derive some gratification from the coming contest;""In a note upon this sentence of my work (relating to those good old times when the appointment to an office of profit under the crown did not vacate a seat in the House

of Commons) by some laborious editor in a future age, it will be said, 'The author here speaks very feelingly; for I find that when he himself was promoted from being Solicitor to be Attorney General in the year 1834, he lost his seat for Dudley, and was kept out of parliament nearly a whole session, till re-elected for the city of Edinburgh;" ""At Gloucester summer assizes, 1832, the Asiatic cholera was raging in that city; tarbarrels were burnt all day in the streets; no one entered the county hall except on some sort of compulsion, and every one who entered held in his hand some charm against the infection. Yet of a bar above fifty in number, only one man fled the field. There were many deaths daily in Leather-Bottle Lane, close by my lodgings, but I thought that I, the leader of the circuit, was bound to remain at my post, and to give a chance to my juniors;' "I was obliged to investigate this matter (the jurisdiction of the Lord Chancellor in lunacy) during the short time when I had the honour to hold the Great Seal of Ireland. By an oversight the usual warrant under the sign manual respecting lunatics had not in the first instance been delivered to me, but I found that I might safely make some orders in lunacy before I received it;" "At the beginning of every parliament the Lords make an entry in their Journals, in French, of the appointment of the Receivers and Triers of Petitions, not only for England, but for Gascony; e. g. extract from Lords' Journals, 24th August, 1841.... 'Les Triours des Petitions de Gascoigne et des autres terres et pays de par la mer et des isles; Le Duc de Somerset, Le Marquis d'Anglesey, Le Count de Tankerville, Le Viscount Torrington, Le Baron Campbell.'"

But much as Lord Campbell has added to the interest of his book by these and similar recollections drawn from his experience of another world than that of books, it has also perhaps suffered somewhat as a literary performance in consequence of his having been so long withdrawn from the cultivation of literature by his monopolising professional labours. The mere writing is for the most part unobjectionable. There may be an occasional impropriety of expression; as,

for instance, where, in an enumeration of the popular qualifications of Henry VIII., we are told (vol. i. p. 516) that, "beyond his fine person, his manly accomplishments, his agreeable manners, and the contrast he presented to his predecessor, he showed a disposition to patronize merit wherever it could be found," &c. But in general the style is both correct and sufficiently modish; and, if it is seldom irradiated by any striking felicity of expression, it is at least always clear and fluent, and sometimes what may be called lively or spirited. Pleasanter, easier reading is nowhere to be found; and, although there are no passages that can be described as picturesque, eloquent, or brilliant, a few are elaborated with considerable rhetorical skill and success. But still the manner of thinking upon many subjects is behind the time. It is of the fashion of forty years ago rather than of the present day. It looks, indeed, as if it had been of the newest fashion once; but it is not the better for that; if it had always been ancient, it might be venerable, though not fashionable; as it is, it is neither the one nor the other. Even in politics, the field of speculation lying nearest to that of his professional life, and upon which, after that of the law, his eye may be supposed to have been most frequently turned, the author is still to a great extent the man of 1806 rather than of 1846. For the last fifteen years, of course, during which he has taken an active part in public business, Lord Campbell has been carried forward with the rest of the world, and his manner of looking at all the questions that have been agitated among us within that time is sufficiently accordant with the most advanced views of his party; but, however particular opinions may have been modified in this way, his unconscious assumptions are constantly indicating to the discerning reader how little even of a politician he had been for the preceding quarter of a century. In his historical views and notions it is nearly the same: the books that he has looked into in his last four or five years of leisure, and mostly while engaged in the preparation of the present work, have given him new lights upon several insulated points; but it is easy to see that these crumbs of

more correct information have been merely picked up by chance, and that he has paid little continuous attention to what has been done in this department. Very strong reasons have been advanced against many old positions which he has evidently no suspicion that anybody has ever questioned; and events and measures, men and books, are all occasionally spoken of or referred to in a way in which they would not be by any writer who had either accompanied or observed the progress of opinion and discussion.

In some respects, indeed, the book would almost appear to be sent forth to the world upon the principle propounded by a certain French author:-"Il serait à désirer qu'on ne considérât les premières editions des livres que comme des essais informes que ceux qui en sont auteurs proposent aux personnes de lettres pour en apprendre leurs sentimens ; et qu'ensuite sur les différentes vues que leur donneraient ces différentes pensées, ils y travaillassent tout de nouveau pour mettre leurs ouvrages dans la perfection où ils sont capables de les porter. In the first place, the inaccuracies of a merely formal kind-we cannot call them misprints, for they have all the appearance of being mostly slips of the author, not of the printer-are numerous almost beyond example.

Lord Campbell's whole system of quotation or reference to authorities, we must also take the liberty of saying, is contrary to all established usage; and we are sure that nothing but his newness to literature would have led him to disfigure and degrade his work by a practice in this matter so unworthy of any but a compilation of the lowest order. His references are to a great extent either useless or misleading; and they are so in consequence of his continually quoting authorities which

*La Logique, ou l'Art de Penser (par Nicole et Arnauld) 5ième edit. 1683, p. 18. "It were to be wished that the first editions of books were looked upon only as rough essays, which the authors propose to the examination of men of letters; and that afterwards, with the help of the different lights they have received, they should set to work afresh to bring their compositions to all the perfection that their capacity can raise them to."-Translation by Ozell, 1717.

But

he 'has not examined, books even the title-pages of which he has never seen. A few examples will best illustrate his manner of proceeding. In vol. i. p. 2, Gibbon's account of the origin of the office of Chancellor and of the original meaning of the word is given with a reference to the passage in the Dec. and Fall; after which is added, “and see Casaubon and Salmasius ad Hist. Aug. 253." Now the intimation conveyed by this form would properly be, that the commentary of Casaubon and Salmasius upon the Augustan History was an additional authority or source of information which Lord Campbell had himself discovered and consulted. the fact is, that the reference is Gibbon's own, and that our author has no claim to it whatever. Instead of " and see Casaubon," he ought to have written, "Gibbon cites Casaubon," &c. At p. 24 a passage is given in the text within inverted commas, and referred at the foot to "Journal of Bishop Beckington, p. 6." Such a description would be altogether insufficient, even if it were correct, which it is not. The least that ought to have been done to make the reference intelligible was to have mentioned that this bishop was one of the ambassadors who, as we are told in the text, were commissioned in 1422 to negotiate a marriage between Henry VI. and one of the daughters of the Count of Armagnac (we are surprised to find Lord Campbell writing "either of the Count's daughters," as if there had been only two). Without this information what can any reader suppose his Journal has to do with the matter? is not one of the recognised authorities for the general history of the time. The book in question does not belong to the same class with Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time, or even to that of the Diaries of Evelyn and Pepys. It is a record of this embassy, and nothing more. But in fact it is not the Journal of Bishop Beckington at all; it is only a Journal kept by one of Beckington's suite, the French original of which is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and a translation of which was published some years ago by Sir Harris Nicolas. And the passage quoted by Lord Campbell is evidently not from the

He