International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1. Various
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the time among this class of men, that rendered them not disinterested judges. Their opinion therefore must be taken with a qualification, as well on the score of particular immediate drawbacks, as on the score of their general professional prejudices. Lord Brougham respected too much the principles of justice, and he too little regarded the technicalities of law, to be agreeable to that body. He had a faculty too, for giving speedy judgments, and a determination to prevent unnecessary expenses, that were particularly disagreeable to men imbued with a conscientious desire that justice should not be prejudiced by an unprecedented and informal haste in its dispensation, or by a reduction of the number of its advocates. The new Lord Chancellor, too, thought that when one or two intelligent barristers had been engaged at a large expense, and had well stated the case of their client, it was quite unnecessary that the same ground should be again gone over by juniors, whose arguments marred more than they helped the interests of their employers. When, therefore, he either put them down, or was droned into a short nap, while the industrious advocate was earning his unnecessary fee, it was a specimen of "the arrogance of an upstart wholly unacquainted with Chancery Law," or "of an eccentricity bordering on insanity, and wholly unfitting its exhibitor for the high and responsible situation he held." Posterity will do justice to Lord Brougham in this respect. It will be felt to have been impossible that a man of such vast acquirements, who had been so successful in his profession, and who had, in all other branches of knowledge, evinced such clearness of intellect, could have been the inefficient lawyer his detractors have represented him to be.
There is another great department in which he has proved his excellence—that of physical science. With the principles of all the sciences, his works show him to be familiar. His treatise "on the Objects, Pleasures, and Advantages of Science" is admirable, as a bird's-eye view of the subject, while at the same time it is an enticing stimulant to study. The work on "Natural Theology" necessarily touches upon the physical sciences, and their connection with the great mechanism of nature. The geometrical and optical papers, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, when he was only fifteen years of age, show at least a firm groundwork of scientific knowledge. And if it be said that Lord Brougham's attainments are superficial only, we say that knowledge of detail does not of itself make a man competent. The principles of all sciences are a sine qua non.
Lord Brougham is eminently clear-headed; and he is distinguished for his argumentative powers. He has peculiarly the faculty of analysis; that of keeping in his own mind a comprehensive view of the whole bearings of a question, even while running at large into the minutest details; no man detects the fallacy of an opponent's argument more easily; nor can any man be more skillful in concocting a fallacy to suit a temporary purpose.
Lord Brougham's eloquence most distinguishes him from his contemporaries. Learning may be acquired; the habit of reasoning may be induced by constant dialectic contest; but eloquence is far more than these the gift of nature. Lord Brougham's eloquence savors of the peculiar constitution of his mind. It is eminently adapted for educated men. He was never intended for a demagogue; for he never condescends to the art of pandering to the populace. His speeches are specimens of argumentative eloquence; and their only defect arises from his fertility of illustration. The extraordinary information he possesses has induced the habit of drawing too largely upon it; and he is apt to be led aside from the straight road of his argument, to elucidate some minor disputed point. But the argumentative style of which we speak is almost peculiar to himself. There is a ripeness, a fruitfulness, in his mind, that places him above the fetters of ordinary speakers. Such men, from the difficulty of clearing their heads for the contest, too often present a mere fleshless skeleton, as it were, very convincing to the judgment, but powerless over the feelings; so that no lasting impression is produced. But Lord Brougham, from being a master in argument, is free to pursue his bent in illustration, and thus conjures up a whole picture that dwells on the mind, and is remembered for its effect on the feelings or the imagination, even by men whose levity or dullness precluded their being fixed by the argument. The very structure of his sentences is more adapted for this kind of speaking than any other. They sometimes appear involved, to an ordinary mind, from their length, and the abundance of illustration and explanation which they embrace; but the extraordinary vigor with which the delivery is kept up, and the liveliness of fancy or of humor that flashes at every turn of the thought, soon dispel the temporary cloud.
In irony and in sarcasm, Lord Brougham is unrivaled among the public men of the day. That his exuberant power of ridicule led him while Lord Chancellor, into some excess of its use, cannot be denied, although a ready excuse can be found in the circumstances of his situation. He might be held to be the representative of liberal principles in a place where almost the name of Liberal had, till then, been proscribed; and the animosity toward the new Chancellor, evinced by many peers, was calculated to induce reprisals. The eccentricities, too, of men of genius are of such value that they may well be said to atone for themselves.
A quality of Lord Brougham's mind, that is almost as extraordinary as his extent of information, is its singular activity. His energies never seem to flag—even for an instant; he does not seem to know what it is to be fatigued, or jaded. Some such quality as this, indeed, the vastness and universality of his acquirements called for, in order to make the weight endurable to himself, and to bear him up during his long career of political excitement. Take the routine of a day for instance. In his early life he has been known to attend, in his place in court, on circuit, at an early hour in the morning. After having successfully pleaded the cause of his client, he drives off to the hustings; and delivers, at different places, eloquent speeches to the electors. He then sits in the retirement of his closet to pen an address to the Glasgow students, perhaps, or an elaborate article in the Edinburgh Review. The active labors of the day are closed with preparation for the court business of the following morning; and then instead of retiring to rest, as ordinary men would, after such exertions, he spends the night in abstruse study, or in social intercourse. Yet he would be seen as early as eight next morning, actively engaged in the Court, in defense of some unfortunate object of government persecution; astonishing the auditory, and his fellow lawyers no less, with the freshness and power of his eloquence.
A fair contrast with this history of a day, in early life, would be that of one at a more advanced period; say in 1832. A watchful observer might see the Lord Chancellor in the Court over which he presided, from an early hour in the morning until the afternoon, listening to the arguments of counsel, and mastering the points of cases with a grasp that enabled him to give those speedy and unembarrassed judgments that have so injured him with the profession. If he followed his course, he would see him, soon after the opening of the House of Lords, addressing their Lordships on some intricate question of Law, with an acuteness that drew approbation even from his opponents, or, on some all-engrossing political topic, casting firebrands into the camp of the enemy, and awakening them from the complacent repose of conviction to the hot contest with more active and inquiring intellects. Then, in an hour or so, he might follow him to the Mechanics' Institution, and hear an able and stimulating discourse on education, admirably adapted to the peculiar capacity of his auditors; and, toward ten perhaps, at a Literary and Scientific Institution in Marylebone, the same Proteus-like intellect might be found expounding the intricacies of physical science with a never tiring and elastic power. Yet, during all these multitudinous exertions, time would be found for the composition of a discourse on Natural Theology, that bears no marks of haste or excitement of mind, but presents as calm a face as though it had been the laborious production of a contemplative philosopher.
It would be a great mistake that would suppose the man who has thus multiplied the objects of his exertion to be of necessity superficial; superficial, that is, in the sense of shallowness or ignorance. Ordinary minds are bound by fetters, no doubt. Custom has rendered the pursuit of more than one idea all but impossible to them, and the vulgar adage of "Jack of all trades, master of none," applies to them in full force. But it must be remembered that a public man like Lord Brougham, who has chosen his peculiar sphere of action, and who prefers being of general utility to the scholar-like pursuit of any one branch of science exclusively, is not bound to present credentials of full and perfect mastership, such as are required from a professor of a university. His pursuit of facts must of necessity be for the purpose of illustrating general principles in political or moral science; and where more than a certain amount of knowledge is not laid claim to, the absence of more is no imputation.
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