Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/164

 Rh

Vol. VIII.

No. 4.

BOSTON.

April, 1896.

RICHARD RIKER. By Irving Browne. RICHARD RIKER was born in New town, Long Island, in 1774. His an cestors, who were Germans, had settled there about 1632. His father, Samuel Riker, fought in the Revolutionary War, and his brother Andrew commanded the " Sara toga " and the " Yorktown " in the war of 1812. One of his sisters married Dr. Macnevin of New York, and another Thomas Addis Emmet. Richard was educated to the law, was district attorney of New York in 1802, deputy attorney-general of the State in 1803, and in 18i5was elected re corder of the city, which office he held, excepting two years, until 1839. The office of recorder had been held by Robert R. Livingston, Samuel Jones, James Kent, Ogden Hoffman, and has been held since by John T. Hoffman, John K. Hackett, and others of distinction. Riker died in 1842. Riker was a man of commonplace tal ents, but was eminently respectable. His remains are few, and not especially interest ing, but he undoubtedly was an excellent magistrate, learned in the criminal law, of wide experience, of unwearying patience, of good nature and keen sympathies, and thus in his place a highly useful. citizen. He was a gentleman of the old school — of the curled and ruffled Corinthian order — at a period when there was time for dignity, deliberation and courtesy, and when these qualities went a long way. Compared with Livingston, Jones, Kent, and Ogden Hoff man, his abilities were not shining, and yet

in the provincial town in which he flourished he made a prominent figure, respected and probably beloved by all, and a very evident object for the gentle satire of a merry poet. Some complimentary allusions were made to Mansfield by Pope and Cowper in their verse, but such things are rare, and it does not often fall to the lot of a lawyer to form the exclusive subject of a poem by a cele brated poet. Only two instances occur to the writer. Shelley handed down Lord Chancellor Eldon to a very unpleasant im mortality in some verses denouncing him for having deprived him of his children be cause the poet was an atheist. He refers to the court of chancery and the chancellor as "the earth-consuming hell Of which thou art the demon," and calls the chancellor ' ' darkest crest Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm, Which rends our mother's bosom," and speaks of his "most killing sneer," and "the acts and snares of thy black den," and charges that he can " outweep the croco dile," and that his " false tears " are " mill stones, braining men." Probably this did not disturb the chancellor much, but perhaps the verses will outlive his fame; and at all events, a bust of the poet has just been erected in Oxford, from which he was ex pelled for his atheism, and no attention of this kind has been bestowed on the chan cellor, who after all was a greater " doubter" than Shelley.