Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/540

 The

Vol. XIX.

No. 9

Green

Bag

BOSTON

THE

RT. HON. JAMES By Edward Manson

NOT long ago the Journal of Compara tive Legislation in giving an appre ciation of Mr. Bryce said: "Politics have of late seemed to claim Mr. Bryce for their own. They have, however, filled but a fragment of a singularly varied career. He has cultivated literature and history with signal success; he has been a traveller and explorer: long ago he won a great academic reputation; and more recently he has shown himself a skilful adminis trator and a powerful and ready debator. To describe concisely and accurately the place in English life of one who has attained a foremost position in the House of Com mons, who has been Professor of Civil Law, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan caster, President of the Board of Trade, and a Cabinet Member — who has climbed Mount Ararat and has been President of the Alpine Club — who has written works so diverse as "The Flora of the Island of Arran," "The Holy Roman Empire," and "The American Commonwealth " — and who can address a popular assembly in French, German or Italian — is difficult. If he has found little leisure for the exercise of the legal profession, what he has written — notably his essays on jurisprudence, make every lawyer his debtor. Of the many books which have flowed from his prolific pen two at least — "The Holy Roman Empire" and "The American Common wealth" have become classics, and in the many years which have passed since their publication, their reputation has steadily grown. It is often a sore disappointment to Englishmen talking of their men of

September, 1907

BRYCE

letters and lawyers with foreigners to find that names much extolled here are almost unknown beyond our borders. It is not so with Mr. Bryce. He is one of a very small group of Englishmen who are held in high honor by the scholars of France, Ger many and America. He is indeed every where known and not least for his services to the causes which this Journal seeks to further. It is with these — Mr. Bryce's contri butions to Jurisprudence — that this sketch is namely concerned: for of all his many activities they are perhaps the least known and appreciated. OXFORD DAYS. When Queen Elizabeth asked young Francis Bacon how old he was the pre cocious young courtier replied "Two years younger than your Majesty's happy reign." The youthful Bryce might have made the same reply to Queen Victoria. His career like Bacon's has synchronised with a remark able epoch of our national history and there are few of the many sided developments which have not enlisted his sympathies or in which he has not borne a part. Coming to Oxford, as so many clever young Scotch men do, to complete his university course, he won a scholarship at Trinity — one of the leading colleges at Oxford — and from that beginning went on to a long series of academic successes. He gained the Garsford Prize for Latin verse and prose, the Vinerian Law Scholarship, the Latin Essay, the Craven, and the Arnold (historical) Prize. He took a double first — in Literes Humaniores and in the school of Law and