Brougham completed his four years' curriculum in 1795. He then had to choose his profession; and the law seeming to offer him the best prospect of fame and fortune, he decided in its favour. For two years he attended the lectures on civil law at the University, passed his examinations, and on the 16th of June, 1800, was called to the Scottish bar. In the same year he went the southern circuit as a brother of mercy—that is, as advocate for the defence of prisoners too poor to fee counsel. He showed much ingenuity and more assiduity in the cases intrusted to him; but it is to be feared. he was more successful in puzzling and perplexing the judge (Lord Eskgrove) than in exculpating his clients. The Faculty of Advocates seem to have held a favourable opinion of his legal qualifications, for they appointed him "Civil Law Examinator." But this was not enough to satisfy his insatiate energy. "Quiet to quick bosoms is a hell." As an intellectual diversion, and an effort to grasp the bubble reputation, he worked upon his elaborate

Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers," a book of much interest and value, which may still be read with advantage, though many of its hypotheses would find little favour with modern politicians.

The "Inquiry" was not published until 1803. In the preceding year an event had occurred in the literary world which had stirred it to its stagnant depths. A few clever young Whigs, meeting in a room on the third flat of a house in Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, conceived the idea of establishing a new Review, which should treat of political, literary, and social questions with freedom and facility. The principal projectors were Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, and Horner, to whom was afterwards added, though not without some dread of his indiscretion, Henry

Brougham. After a little hesitation, Brougham consented to give his help; and, having done so, with characteristic energy, contributed three (or, as he himself says, seven) articles to the first number; five to the second; eight to the third; and five to the fourth; in only five of these being assisted by a collaborator. He continued to be one of the most voluminous, and at times the most valuable of contributors.

"It has been said that he once wrote a whole number, including articles upon lithotomy and church music. It is more authentic that he contributed six articles to one number at the very crisis of his political career; and at the same period he boasts of having written a fifth of the whole Review to that time. He would sit down in a morning, and write off twenty pages at a single effort."

A great deal of what he wrote bears evident marks of this extemporaneousness of composition; and is certainly much inferior to the leader-writing in the great newspapers of the present day. But at the time the Review exercised a remarkable influence. It was plainspoken and pungent; its contributors were young men, and wrote like young men, with no very great respect for authority. They held what were then considered "advanced opinions," and expressed these opinions with a novel amount of freedom.

Few of Brougham's articles have had a greater interest for posterity than the one which (in 1808) dealt so trenchantly with Byron's youthful effort, "Hours of Idleness," and stimulated his genius into the production of the satire of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." As the poet had decidedly the better of the combat, neither he nor his admirers had much reason to complain;

and, in truth, the review, if flippantly written, was by no means unjust. Few, if any, great poets have ever put forth weaker stuff as their first-fruits than Byron unwisely gave to the world in his "Hours of Idleness;" and the keenest critic must have failed to detect in its mawkish and mediocre pages a single indication of latent or prospective power. In Brougham's once famous article it is not the severity which we notice, for that was deserved; nor the fun, for that was forced and heavy; but the slipshod composition, which makes us wonder that the Review ever attained to so formidable

a position as a literary dictator. I do not find in any of Brougham's contributions that superiority, that surpassing excellence which one naturally looks for when one remembers the repute they once enjoyed. I would venture to say as much of most of the writing of his colleagues; and the secret of the undoubted success of the Edinburgh Review is to be found, I think, not in any special merit of its own, but in the intolerable dulness and feebleness of its contemporaries. *

As early as 1803 Brougham entered himself of Lincoln's Inn, with the view of obtaining a wider field for his immense energies and intense self-assurance than the Scotch bar afforded; but he did not finally remove to London until two years later. There he applied himself

Mr. Leslie Stephen, after speaking of Brougham's portentous activity, justly condemns his writings as poor in style and substance. "His garden," he says, "offers a bushel of potatoes, instead of a single peach. Much of his work was up to the level necessary to give effect to the manifesto of an active politician. It was a forcible exposition of the arguments common at the time, but it has nowhere the stamp of originality in thought or brilliance in expression which could confer upon it a permanent vitality."

with characteristic ardour to the study of the English law, while finding leisure for political discussion, literary criticism, and social intercourse. At the dinners of the Whig leaders he soon became a welcome guest, and in the brilliant coterie of Holland House he held his own by his conversational powers and ready sarcasm. He was speedily noted as a man sure to get on, and the Whigs were delighted at having gained so versatile and vigorous an adherent. To the metropolitan papers he furnished article after article, attacking the Tory Government with unfailing vivacity, and defending Whig principles with untiring ardour. Lord Holland bears witness to the extent and value of his services :

"The management of our press," he says, "fell into the hands of Mr. Brougham. With that active and able man I had become acquainted, through Mr. Allen, in 1805. At the formation of Lord Grenville's Ministry, he had written, at my suggestion, a pamphlet, called "The State of the Nation." His early connection with the Abolitionists had familiarised him with the means of circulating political papers, and gave him some weight with those best qualified to co-operate in such an undertaking. His extensive knowledge and extraordinary readiness, his assiduity and habits of composition, enabled him to correct some articles, and to furnish a prodigious number himself. With partial and scanty assistance from Mr. Allen, myself, and two or three more, he, in the course of ten days, filled every bookseller's shop with pamphlets; most London newspapers and all country ones, without exception, with paragraphs; and supplied a large portion of the boroughs throughout the kingdom with handbills adapted to the local interests of the candidates; and all tending to enforce the principles, vindicate the conduct, elucidate the measures, or expose the adversaries of the Whigs."

In November, 1808, Brougham was called to the bar.

He met at first with the ill-success which, by some law of nature, seems to attend all famous lawyers at the outset of their career, and went the Northern Circuit without obtaining a single brief. He made himself a name, however, by the eloquence he displayed as counsel before Parliament for the Liverpool merchants, who had petitioned against the "Orders in Council;" the retaliatory measure with which the British Government had replied to Napoleon's attempt, in the Berlin and Milan decrees, to ruin England by a commercial blockade. The proceedings extended over six weeks, during which Brougham delivered at the bar of either House a number of spirited and forcible orations, which established his reputation as a public speaker. The want of stability in his character had hitherto deterred the Whig leaders from bringing him into Parliament; but they now acknowledged that it was worth while to run a little risk to secure the assistance of so redoubtable a champion, and accordingly, early in 1810, he was returned to the House of Commons for the borough of Camelford. His maiden speech was delivered on the 5th of March, in support of Mr. Whitbread's motion, condemnatory of the conduct of the Earl of Chatham, the "hero" of the disastrous Walcheren expedition. It did not fulfil the expectations that his previous public efforts had excited; but in the course of the session his vast powers as a debater were rapidly unfolded, and he soon became the acknowledged rival and opponent of George Canning. The subject of negro slavery he made his own, taking it out of the failing hands of the illustrious Wilberforce, and advocating the emancipation of the West Indian negroes with all his most finished eloquence, and a sincerity which even his enemies could not question.