LAWYERS AT THEIR OWN TABLES.

A long list, indeed, might be made of abstemious lawyers; but their temperance is almost invariably mentioned by biographers as matter for regret and apology, and is even made an occasion for reproach in cases where it has not been palliated by habits of munificent hospitality. In the catalogue of Chancellor Warham's virtues and laudable usages, Erasmus takes care to mention that the primate was accustomed to entertain his friends, to the number of two hundred at a time: and when the man of letters notices the archbishop's moderation with respect to wines and dishes—a moderation that caused his grace to eschew suppers, and never to sit more than an hour at dinner—he does not omit to observe that though the great man "made it a rule to abstain entirely from supper, yet if his friends were assembled at that meal he would sit down along with them and promote their conviviality."

Splendid in all things, Wolsey astounded envious nobles by the magnificence of his banquets, and the lavish expenses of his kitchens, wherein his master-cooks wore raiment of richest materials—the chef of his private kitchen daily arraying himself in a damask-satin or velvet, and wearing on his neck a chain of gold. Of a far other kind were the tastes of Wolsey's successor, who, in the warmest sunshine of his power, preferred a quiet dinner with Erasmus to the pompous display of state banquets, and who wore a gleeful light in his countenance when, after his fall, he called his children and grandchildren about him, and said: "I have been brought up at Oxford, at an Inn of Chancery, at Lincoln's Inn, and in the King's Court—from the lowest degree to the highest, and yet have I in yearly revenues at this present, little left me above a hundred pounds by the year; so that now, if we wish to live together, you must be content to be contributaries together. But my counsel is that we fall not to the lowest fare first; we will not, therefore, descend to Oxford fare, nor to the fare of New Inn, but we will begin with Lincoln's Inn diet, where many right worshipful men of great account and good years do live full well; which if we find ourselves the first year not able to maintain, then will we in the next year come down to Oxford fare, where many great, learned, and ancient fathers and doctors are continually conversant; which if our purses stretch not to maintain neither, then may we after, with bag and wallet, go a-begging together, hoping that for pity some good folks will give us their charity and at every man's door to sing a Salve Regina, whereby we shall keep company and be merry together."

Students recalling the social life of England should bear in mind the hours kept by our ancestors in the fourteenth and two following centuries. Under the Plantagenets noblemen used to sup at five P.M., and dine somewhere about the breakfast hour of Mayfair in a modern London season. Gradually hours became later; but under the Tudors the ordinary dinner hour for gentlepeople was somewhere about eleven A.M., and their usual time for supping was between five P.M. and six P.M., tradesmen, merchants and farmers dining and supping at later hours than their social superiors. "With us," says Hall the chronicler, "the nobility, gentry, and students, do ordinarily go to dinner at eleven before noon, and to supper at five, or between five and six, at afternoon. The merchants dine and sup seldom before twelve at noon and six at night. The husbandmen also dine at high noon as they call it, and sup at seven or eight; but out of term in our universities the scholars dine at ten." Thus whilst the idlers of society made haste to eat and drink, the workers postponed the pleasures of the table until they had made a good morning's work. In the days of morning dinners and afternoon suppers, the law-courts used to be at the height of their daily business at an hour when Templars of the present generation have seldom risen from bed. Chancellors were accustomed to commence their daily sittings in Westminster at seven A.M. in summer, and at eight A.M. in winter months. Lord Keeper Williams, who endeavored to atone for want of law by extraordinarily assiduous attention to the duties of his office, used indeed to open his winter sittings by candlelight between six and seven o'clock.

Many were the costly banquets of which successive Chancellors invited the nobility, the judges, and the bar, to partake at old York House; but of all the holders of the Great Seal who exercised pompous hospitality in that picturesque palace, Francis Bacon was the most liberal, gracious, and delightful entertainer. Where is the student of English history who has not often endeavored to imagine the scene when Ben Jonson sat amongst the honored guests of

"England's high Chancellor, the destin'd heir,
In his soft cradle, to his father's chair,"

and little prescient of the coming storm, spoke of his host as one

"Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full,
Out of their choicest and their whitest wool."

Even at the present day lawyers have reason to be grateful to Bacon for the promptitude with which, on taking possession of the Marble Chair, he revived the ancient usages of earlier holders of the seal, and set an example of courteous hospitality to the bar, which no subsequent Chancellor has been able to disregard without loss of respect and prestige. Though a short attack of gout qualified the new pleasure of his elevation—an attack attributed by the sufferer to his removal "from a field air to a Thames air," i.e., from Gray's Inn to the south side of the Strand—Lord Keeper Bacon lost no time in summoning the judges and most eminent barristers to his table; and though the gravity of his indisposition, or the dignity of his office, forbade him to join in the feast, he sat and spoke pleasantly with them when the dishes had been removed. "Yesterday," he wrote to Buckingham, "which was my weary day, I bid all the judges to dinner, which was not used to be, and entertained them in a private withdrawing chamber with the learned counsel. When the feast was past I came amongst them and sat me down at the end of the table, and prayed them to think I was one of them, and but a foreman." Nor let us, whilst recalling Bacon's bounteous hospitalities, fail in justice to his great rival, Sir Edward Coke—-who, though he usually held himself aloof from frivolous amusements, and cared but little for expensive repasts, would with a liberal hand place lordly dishes before lordly guests; and of whom it is recorded in the 'Apophthegmes,' that when any great visitor dropped in upon him for pot-luck without notice he was wont to say, "Sir, since you sent me no notice of your coming, you must dine with me; but if I had known of it in due time I would have dined with you."

From such great men as Lord Nottingham and Lord Guildford, who successively kept high state in Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, to fat puisnes occupying snug houses in close proximity to the Inns of Court, and lower downwards to leaders of the bar and juniors sleeping as well as working in chambers, the Restoration lawyers were conspicuous promoters of the hilarity which was one of the most prominent and least offensive characteristics of Charles II.'s London. Lord Nottingham's sumptuous hospitalities were the more creditable, because he voluntarily relinquished his claim to £4000 per annum, which the royal bounty had assigned him as a fund to be expended in official entertainments. Similar praise cannot be awarded to Lord Guildford; but justice compels the admission that, notwithstanding his love of money, he maintained the prestige of his place, so far as a hospitable table and profuse domestic expenditure could support it.

Contrasting strongly with the lawyers of this period, who copied in miniature the impressive state of Clarendon's princely establishments, were the jovial, catch-singing, three-bottle lawyers—who preferred drunkenness to pomp; an oaken table, surrounded by jolly fellows, to ante-rooms crowded with obsequious courtiers; a hunting song with a brave chorus to the less stormy diversion of polite conversation. Of these free-living lawyers, George Jeffreys was a conspicuous leader. Not averse to display, and not incapable of shining in refined society, this notorious man loved good cheer and jolly companions beyond all other sources of excitement; and during his tenure of the seals, he was never more happy than when he was presiding over a company of sharp-witted men-about-town whom he had invited to indulge in wild talk and choice wine at his mansion that overlooked the lawns, the water, and the trees of St. James's Park. On such occasions his lordship's most valued boon companion was Mountfort, the comedian, whom he had taken from the stage and made a permanent officer of the Duke Street household. Whether the actor was required to discharge any graver functions in the Chancellor's establishment is unknown; but we have Sir John Reresby's testimony that the clever mimic and brilliant libertine was employed to amuse his lordship's guests by ridiculing the personal and mental peculiarities of the judges and most eminent barristers. "I dined," records Sir John, "with the Lord Chancellor, where the Lord Mayor of London was a guest, and some other gentlemen. His lordship having, according to custom, drunk deep at dinner, called for one Mountfort, a gentleman of his, who had been a comedian, an excellent mimic; and to divert the company, as he was pleased to term it, he made him plead before him in a feigned cause, during which he aped the judges, and all the great lawyers of the age, in tone of voice and in action and gesture of body, to the very great ridicule, not only of the lawyers, but of the law itself, which to me did not seem altogether prudent in a man in his lofty station in the law; diverting it certainly was, but prudent in the Lord Chancellor I shall never think it." The fun of Mountfort's imitations was often heightened by the presence of the persons whom they held up to derision—some of whom would see and express natural displeasure at the affront; whilst others, quite unconscious of their own peculiarities, joined loudly in the laughter that was directed against themselves.

As pet buffoon of the tories about town, Mountfort was followed, at a considerable distance of time, by Estcourt—an actor who united wit and fine humor with irresistible powers of mimicry; and who contrived to acquire the respect and affectionate regard of many of those famous Whigs whom it was alike his pleasure and his business to render ridiculous. In the Spectator Steele paid him a tribute of cordial admiration; and Cibber, noticing the marvellous fidelity of his imitations, has recorded, "This man was so amazing and extraordinary a mimic, that no man or woman, from the coquette to the privy counsellor, ever moved or spoke before him, but he could carry their voice, look, mien, and motion instantly into another company. I have heard him make long harangues, and form various arguments, even in the manner of thinking of an eminent pleader at the bar, with every the least article and singularity of his utterance so perfectly imitated, that he was the very alter ipse, scarce to be distinguished from the original."

With the exception of Kenyon and Eldon, and one or two less conspicuous instances of judicial penuriousness, the judges of the Georgian period were hospitable entertainers. Chief Justice Lee, who died in 1754, gained credit for an adequate knowledge of law by the sumptuousness and frequency of the dinners with which he regaled his brothers of the bench and learned counsellors. Chief Justice Mansfield's habitual temperance and comparative indifference to the pleasures of the table did not cause him to be neglectful of hospitable duties. Notwithstanding the cold formality of Lord Hardwicke's entertainments, and the charges of niggardliness preferred against Lady Hardwicke's domestic system by Opposition satirists, Philip Yorke used to entertain the chiefs of his profession with pomp, if not with affability. Thurlow entertained a somewhat too limited circle of friends with English fare and a superabundance of choice port in Great Ormond Street. Throughout his public career, Alexander Wedderburn was a lavish and delightful host, amply atoning in the opinion of frivolous society for his political falsity by the excellence and number of his grand dinners. On entering the place of Solicitor-General, he spent £8000 on a service of plate; and as Lord Loughborough he gratified the bar and dazzled the fashionable world by hospitality alike sumptuous and brilliant.

Several of the Georgian lawyers had strong predilections for particular dishes or articles of diet. Thurlow was very fanciful about his fruit; and in his later years he would give way to ludicrous irritability, if inferior grapes or faulty peaches were placed before him. At Brighton, in his declining years, the ex-Chancellor's indignation at a dish of defective wall-fruit was so lively that—to the inexpressible astonishment of Horne Tooke and other guests—he caused the whole of a very fine dessert to be thrown out of the window upon the Marine Parade. Baron Graham's weakness was for oysters, eaten as a preparatory whet to the appetite before dinner; and it is recorded of him that on a certain occasion, when he had been indulging in this favorite pre-prandial exercise, he observed with pleasant humor—"Oysters taken before dinner are said to sharpen the appetite; but I have just consumed half-a-barrel of fine natives—and speaking honestly, I am bound to say that I don't feel quite as hungry as when I began." Thomas Manners Button's peculiar penchant was for salads; and in a moment of impulsive kindness he gave Lady Morgan the recipe for his favorite salad—a compound of rare merit and mysterious properties. Bitterly did the old lawyer repent his unwise munificence when he read 'O'Donnell.' Warmly displeased with the political sentiments of the novel, he ordered it to be burnt in the servants' hall, and exclaimed, peevishly, to Lady Manners, "I wish I had not given her the secret of my salad." In no culinary product did Lord Ellenborough find greater delight than lobster-sauce; and he gave expression to his high regard for that soothing and delicate compound when he decided that persons engaged in lobster-fishery were exempt from legal liability to impressment. "Then is not," inquired his lordship, with solemn pathos, "the lobster-fishery a fishery, and a most important fishery, of this kingdom, though carried on in shallow water? The framers of the law well knew that the produce of the deep sea, without the produce of the shallow water, would be of comparatively small value, and intended that turbot, when placed upon our tables, should be flanked by good lobster-sauce." Eldon's singular passion for fried 'liver and bacon' was amongst his most notorious and least pleasant peculiarities. Even the Prince Regent condescended to humor this remarkable taste by ordering a dish of liver and bacon to be placed on the table when the Chancellor dined with him at Brighton. Sir John Leach, Master of the Rolls, was however less ready to pander to a depraved appetite. Lord Eldon said, "It will give me great pleasure to dine with you, and since you are good enough to ask me to order a dish that shall test your new chef's powers—I wish you'd tell your Frenchman to fry some liver and bacon for me." "Are you laughing at me or my cook?" asked Sir John Leach, stiffly, thinking that the Chancellor was bent on ridiculing his luxurious mode of living. "At neither," answered Eldon, with equal simplicity and truth; "I was only ordering the dish which I enjoy beyond all other dishes."

Although Eldon's penuriousness was grossly exaggerated by his detractors, it cannot be questioned that either through indolence, or love of money, or some other kind of selfishness, he was very neglectful of his hospitable duties to the bench and the bar. "Verily he is working off the arrears of the Lord Chancellor," said Romilly, when Sir Thomas Plummer, the Master of the Rolls, gave a succession of dinners to the bar; and such a remark would not have escaped the lips of the decorous and amiable Romilly had not circumstances fully justified it. Still it is unquestionable that Eldon's Cabinet dinners were suitably expensive; and that he never grudged his choicest port to the old attorneys and subordinate placemen who were his obsequious companions towards the close of his career. For the charges of sordid parsimony so frequently preferred against Kenyon it is to be feared there were better grounds. Under the steadily strengthening spell of avarice he ceased to invite even old friends to his table; and it was rumored that in course of time his domestic servants complained with reason that they were required to consume the same fare as their master deemed sufficient for himself. "In Lord Kenyon's house," a wit exclaimed, "all the year through it is Lent in the kitchen, and Passion Week in the Parlor." Another caustic quidnunc remarked, "In his lordship's kitchen the fire is dull, but the spits are always bright;" whereupon Jekyll interposed with an assumption of testiness, "Spits! in the name of common sense I order you not to talk about his spits, for nothing turns upon them."

Very different was the temper of Erskine, who spent money faster than Kenyon saved it, and who died in indigence after holding the Great Seal of England, and making for many years a finer income at the bar than any of his contemporaries not enjoying crown patronage. Many are the bright pictures preserved to us of his hospitality to politicians and lawyers, wits, and people of fashion; but none of the scenes is more characteristic than the dinner described by Sir Samuel Romilly, when that good man met at Erskine's Hampstead villa the chiefs of the opposition and Mr. Pinkney, the American Minister. "Among the light, trifling topics of conversation after dinner," says Sir Samuel Romilly, "it may be worth while to mention one, as it strongly characterizes Lord Erskine. He has always expressed and felt a strong sympathy with animals. He has talked for years of a bill he was to bring into parliament to prevent cruelty towards them. He has always had some favorite animals to whom he has been much attached, and of whom all his acquaintance have a number of anecdotes to relate; a favorite dog which he used to bring, when he was at the bar, to all his consultations; another favorite dog, which, at the time when he was Lord Chancellor, he himself rescued in the street from some boys who were about to kill it under the pretence of its being mad; a favorite goose, which followed him wherever he walked about his grounds; a favorite macaw, and other dumb favorites without number. He told us now that he had got two favorite leeches. He had been blooded by them last autumn when he had been taken dangerously ill at Portsmouth; they had saved his life, and he had brought them with him to town, had ever since kept them in a glass, had himself every day given them fresh water, and had formed a friendship for them. He said he was sure they both knew him and were grateful to him. He had given them different names, 'Home' and 'Cline' (the names of two celebrated surgeons), their dispositions being quite different. After a good deal of conversation about them, he went himself, brought them out of his library, and placed them in their glass upon the table. It is impossible, however, without the vivacity, the tones, the details, and the gestures of Lord Erskine, to give an adequate idea of this singular scene." Amongst the listeners to Erskine, whilst he spoke eloquently and with fervor of the virtues of his two leeches, were the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Grenville, Lord Grey, Lord Holland, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Lauderdale, Lord Henry Petty, and Thomas Grenville.