V.

COMIC POETS.

J. ANSTEY.

My acquaintance with "The Pleader's Guide" commenced some five-and-forty years ago, after the following fashion.

It had happened to me to make one of a large Christmas party in a large country mansion, the ladies whereof were assembled one morning dolefully enough in an elegant drawing-room. It was what sportsmen are pleasel to call "a fine open day;" which, being interpreted according to the feminine version, means every variety of bad weather of which our climate is capable, excepting frost. Dirt, intolerable dirt, it always means, and rain pretty often. On the morning in question, it did not absolutely rain, it only mizzled; but the clouds hung over our heads in a leaden canopy, threatening a down pour; and all the signs of the earth testified to the foregone deluge that had already confined us to the house until our patience was worn to a thread. Heavy drops fell from the eaves, the trees in the park were dripping from every bough, the fallen leaves under the trees dank with moisture, the grass as wet as if it grew in a ford, the gravel-walks soft and plashy, the carriage drives no better than mud. In short, it was the very dismalest weather that ever answered to the name of a fine open day;" and our sportsmen accordingly had all sallied forth to enjoy it, some to join Sir John's hounds, some to a great coursing meeting at Streatley.

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As we stood at the windows bemoaning our imprisonment, we saw that the drizzle was fast settling into steady rain, and that there was no more chance of a ride on horseback, or a drive in an open carriage, than of the exhilarating walk which is the proper exercise of Christmas. All the pets about the park sympathized in our afflictions. The deer dropped off to their closest covert; the pied peacock, usually so stately and so dignified as he

trailed his spotted train after him, when he came to the terrace to tap at the window for his dole of cake, actually sneaked away, when summoned, in pure shame at his draggled tail; the swans looked wet through. The whole party seemed chilled and dismal, and I was secretly meditating a retreat to my mother's dressing-room, to enjoy in quiet a certain volume of "Causes Célèbres," which I had abstracted from the library for my own private solace, when every body was startled by a proposal of the only gentleman left at home; a young barrister, who had had sufficient courage to confess his indifference to field sports, and who now, observing on the ennui that seemed to have 'seized upon the party, offered to use his best efforts to enliven us by reading aloud-by reading a law-book. Fancy the exclamations at a medicine so singularly ill-adapted to the disease! For my own part, I was not so much astonished. I suspected that the young gentleman had got hold of another volume of my dearly beloved "Causes Célèbres," and was about to minister to our discontent by reading a French Trial. But the rest of the party laughed and exclaimed, and were already so much aroused by the proposal, that the cure might be said to be more than half accomplished, before our learned teacher opened the pages of The Pleader's Guide.”

I wish I could communicate to my extracts the zest that his selections derived from his admirable reading, and from the humorous manner in which he expounded the mystery of the legal phrases, which I shall do my best to avoid, not to overtask my reader's ingenuity.

It is an old lawyer instructing a young one:

"But chiefly thou, dear Job, my friend,

My kinsman, to my verse attend;

By education formed to shine

Conspicuous in the pleading line;

For you, from five years old to twenty,

Were crammed with Latin words in plenty ;

Were bound apprentice to the Muses,

And forced with hard words, blows, and bruises
To labor on poetic ground,

Dactyls and spondees to confound;
And when become in fictions wise,

In Pagan historics and lies,
Were sent to dive at Granta's cells,
For truth in dialectic wells;

There duly bound for four years more,
To ply the philosophic oar,
Points metaphysical to moot,
Chop logic, wrangle, and dispute;
And now, by far the most ambitious
Of all the sons of Bergersdicius,
Present the law with all the knowledge
You gathered both at school and college,
Still bent on adding to your store
The graces of a Pleader's lore,
And, better to improve your taste,
Are by your parents' fondness placed
Among the blest, the chosen few,
(Blest, if their happiness they knew,)
Who, for three hundred guineas paid
To some great master of the trade,
Have, at his rooms, by special favor,
His leave to use their best endeavor,
By drawing pleas from nine till four,
To earn him twice three hundred more;
And after dinner may repair

To 'foresaid rooms, and then and there
Have 'foresaid leave from five till ten,
To draw the aforesaid pleas again."

Then he favors his pupil with a bit of his own history, which seems to me capital:

"Whoe'er has drawn a special plea,
Has heard of old Tom Tewksbury;
Deaf as a post and thick as mustard,
He aimed at wit, and bawled and blustered,
And died a Nisi prius leader-

That genius was my special pleader.
That great man's office I attended,
By Hawk and Buzzard recommended;
Attorneys both of wondrous skill

To pluck the goose and drive the quill.
Three years I sat his smoky room in,
Pens, paper, pounce and ink consuming;
The fourth, when Essoign day begun,
Joyful I hailed the auspicious sun,
Bade Tewksbury and clerk adieu;
*Purification Eighty-two

* The Purification of the Virgin Mary is one of the return days of Hilary Term.

Of both I washed my hands; and though
With nothing for my cash to show

But precedents, so scrawled and blurred
I scarce could read one single word,
Nor in my book of commonplace
One feature of the law could trace,
Save Buzzard's nose and visage thin
And Hawk's deficiency of chin,
Which I, while lolling at my ease,
Was wont to draw instead of pleas;
Yet chambers I equipt complete,

Hired books, made friends, and gave to eat
If, haply, to regale my friends on,
My mother sent a haunch of ven❜son,
I most respectfully entreated

The choicest company to eat it;

To wit, old Buzzard, Hawk, and Crow,
Item, Tom Thornback, Shark, and Co.,
Attorneys all, as keen and staunch
As e'er devoured a client's haunch;
Nor did I not their clerks invite
To taste said venison hashed at night;
For well I knew that hopeful fry
My rising merit would descry,
The same litigious course pursue,

And, when to fish of prey they grew,

By love of food and contest led,

Would haunt the spot where once they fed.
Thus having with due circumspection

Formed my professional connection,
My desk with precedents I strewed,

Turned critic, danced, or penned an ode,
Studied the ton, became a free

And easy man of gallantry;

But if, while capering at my glass,
Or toying with some favorite lass,

I heard the aforesaid Hawk a-coming,

Or Buzzard on the staircase humming,
At once the fair angelic maid
Into my coal-hole I conveyed;
At once, with serious look profound,
And eyes commercing with the ground,
I seemed as one estranged to sleep,
And fixed, in cogitation deep,
Sate motionless; while in my hand I
Held my Doctrina Placitandi.

And though I never read a page in 't,

Thanks to that shrewd, well-judging agent,

My sister's husband, Mr. Shark,

Soon got six pupils and a clerk.
Five pupils were my stint, the other

I took to compliment his mother."

This piece of autobiography seems to me admirable for its neatness and point, its humor and its good-humor. The termination of the poem is a trial of matchless pleasantry between John-aGull and John-a-Gudgeon, for an assault at an election. I transcribe the commencement and part of the opening speech, a piece of legal comedy which will make its way even with the least learned reader :

For the Plaintiff, Mr. Counselor BOTHER'UM.-For the Defendant, Mr. Counselor BORE'UM.-Mr. BOTHER'UM Opens the pleadings. His speech at length.

"I rise with pleasure, I assure ye,
With transport to accost a jury,
Of your known conscientious feeling,
Candor and honorable dealing,
From Middlesext discreetly chosen,
(A worthy and an upright dozen,)
This action, gentlemen, is brought,
By John-a-Gudgeon for a tort-”

Our French will serve us for this legal word, which is, I suppose, old Norman French, pronounced English-wise, but signifying a wrong, as one might guess from the modern tongue.

"By John-a-Gudgeon for a tort;

The pleadings state 'that John-a-Gull,

With envy, wrath, and malice full,

With swords, knives, sticks, staves, fist, and bludgeon,
Beat, bruised, and wounded John-a-Gudgeon.'

This prodigious accumulation of weapons, as well as the "twelve pots, twelve mugs," and so forth, to which we are coming, is an imitation of the real law fictions and endless repe

* As taken by an eminent short-hand writer.

† Middlesex. This being an election affray, the venue is supposed to have been changed upon the usual affidavit, for the sake of a more fair and impartial trial before a Middlesex jury.