Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/733

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 719 hated Law (afterwards Lord Ellenborough), and did what- ever he could to oppose and humihate that most accomphshed advocate. Law retorted by sneering at Kenyon's bad Latin, his cheap clothes, his parsimonious habits and general lack of gentlemanly accomplishments. Law delighted in address- ing Latin quotations to Kenyon on the bench, and the judge, not understanding the Latin, was always in a quan- dary, whether to be gratified at the tribute to his learning or to resent the quotation as ridiculing some of his defects. Ellenborough while Lord Chief Justice reserved his most caustic utterances for Campbell; but Campbell revenged himself by writing a life of the judge. Lord Eldon had no favorite, but his kindest demeanor was shown, singularly enough, toward Romilly. Lord Tenterden made Scarlett an especial recipient of his favors, and lost no opportunity to put down Copley (afterwards Lord Lyndhurst). Lynd- hurst on the bench was without any partiality or enmity among the lawyers. Brougham, himself never any judge's favorite, hated Sugden, afterwards Lord St. Leonards, and missed no opportunity to sneer at his prosiness. Had there been a succession of judges like Mansfield, the law would not have needed much statutory reforming. But Mansfield was succeeded by Kenyon, a very narrow- minded lawyer, while in the chancery court Lord Eldon was soon to rule supreme. Both of them were accustomed to talk slightingly of the " late loose notions " that had pre- vailed in Westminster Hall. Not the least debt the profes- sion owes to Mansfield is his persuasion of Blackstone to deliver his lectures at Oxford. Afterwards Mansfield se- cured Blackstone a place in the Common Pleas. Yet even Blackstone was the chief factor in the Exchequer Chamber in reversing Mansfield's ruling, where he laid his reforming hand upon the ark of the covenant of the real-estate law- yers, and attempted to make the rule in Shelley's case yield to the clearly expressed intent of the testator. It was after Mansfield's retirement that the echoes of the French Revolution caused those State prosecutions which furnished the opportunity to Erskine to demonstrate his greatness as a forensic orator. It is a singular fact that