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 in good circles; quick; idle; frolicsome; fair at Latin; at St. Andrews, but he did not graduate; wanted to be a lawyer; but his father could not afford it. A midshipman the next four years in the West Indies; he read much; was struck by lightning at sea, but was not hurt; was acting lieutenant, but was paid off; bought a commission in the army; was married before he was twenty-one; acted as chaplain while in Minorca; wrote poetry; also Abuses in the Army; did not like the army; chanced to hear a trial one day, before Lord Mansfield, who, seeing his uniform, asked him up on the bench; and he commented so well upon the case, as it went on, that Lord Mansfield urged him to be a lawyer; he worked diligently, but never was a profound lawyer; was much at debating societies; and was very poor; "he was so shabbily dressed," says Bentham, "as to be quite remarkable"; at twenty-eight accident brought him instant fame and fortune: one Baillie had charged the Lords of the Admiralty with corruption in the management of Greenwich Hospital; he overheard Erskine speak so freely about it that he retained him; of the four counsel in the case, three advised a compromise, but Erskine resisted and Baillie refused it. Feeling his children tugging at his gown for bread, he said, made him brave; and so fierce was his onslaught that Jekyll, coming in in the middle of it, "said he found the court, judges, and all in a trance of amazement"; Erskine at once got many retainers, and stepped into a large practice; was in many famous cases, and so successful that he made in all at the bar £150,000; his income reaching £10,000 one year, which was £1600 more than had ever been made in a year at the Bar before.

Gilbert Clark says: "He was engaged in the court-martial of Lord Keppel; in the defence of Lieutenant Bourne, of the navy, for challenging Sir James Wallace; the Motherill case; the defence of Lord Gordon, charged with high treason; the Dean of St. Asaph for seditious libel; the Stockdale case, growing out of the Hastings impeachment, his speech being the finest ever delivered at the English Bar, winning a verdict which forever established the freedom of the press; the Horne Tooke case; Hardy for treason; the Thelwell case; the Stone case; and the prosecution of Williams for publishing Paine's Age of Reason. Perhaps his greatest display was the defence of Hadfield for attempting the life of George III."

Nothing can be added to Lord Campbell's estimate: "As an advocate in the forum he was without an equal in ancient or modern