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From The Quarterly Review. HENRY ERSKINE AND HIS TIMES.*

THE Erskines, Henry and Thomas, who made the name famous, will be admitted on all hands to have been an extraordinary pair of brothers, and those who knew them best would have been puzzled to declare which was the more richly gifted of the two. The younger, Thomas, was haply superior in eloquence : the elder, Henry, was certainly pre-eminent in learning and wit. In 1806, Thomas, the undisputed leader of the English bar, was elevated to the peerage and the woolsack. About the same time, Henry, after filling a corresponding position at the Scotch bar, was made lord advocate, and attended a levée at St. James's where he was questioned as to his professional gains by George 111. "Not so rich as Tom, eh? not so rich as Tom?" "Your Majesty," was the reply, "will please to remember that my brother has been playing at the guinea table and I at the shill. ing one." The reply would be equally apposite should it be asked, why is he less known to fame. He was restricted to a narrower field of action, to a more

confined arena. Lofty and well-founded as were and are the pretensions of the northern Athens, the scene of his forensic and social triumphs, it was a provincial capital at best; and the fame it conferred, independently of durable works in litera ture or science, was, local and transitory, speedily to become traditional. There is no collected edition or report of Henry Erskine's speeches, no authentic record of his sayings or doings, and the once vivid impressions of his contemporaries survive only in the memories of the suc ceeding generation, a generation that knew him not.

Under these circumstances the highest credit is due to Colonel Fergusson for the conception and execution of the work before us, in which he has not only placed

The Honorabie Henry Erskine, Lord Advocate for Scotland, with Notices of certain of his Kinsfolk and of his Time. Compiled from Family Papers and other sources of information. By Lieut. Colonel Alex. Fergusson, late of the Staff of Her Majesty's Indian Army. Edinburgh and London.

1882.

451

the celebrity of his hero on a solid basis, but has lighted up anew the times in which he flourished and supplied a variety of curious incidental traits of the Erskine family, their connections, and their race. Fortunately he had a large store of materials to draw upon, in the shape of notes left by the late Lord Buchan (Henry Ersthe probability that a complete memoir of kine's son), who kept constantly in view

his father, to which he felt unequal, would some time or other be produced.

Lord Erskine was fond of alluding to his ancestors, and once, on a trial relating to a patent for a knee-buckle, he held it up to the jury, exclaiming, "How would my ancestors have admired this specimen of ingenuity!" Mingay, who was opposed to him, replied: "Gentlemen, you heard to-day of my learned friend's ancestors and of their probable astonishment at his knee-buckle. But, gentlemen, I can assure you that their astonishment would have been equally great at his breeches." The hit told, but in point of fact Erskine's ancestors, being Lowlanders, were not unacquainted with breeches. The name is derived from the barony of Erskine in Renfrewshire, where they were settled as far back as tradition or history can read. The earldom of Mar, the origin of which (according to Lord Hailes) is lost in the mists of antiquity, was one of their hereditary dignities, and the father of the subject of this biography was the tenth Earl of Buchan.

Referring to their intermarriages with royal or illustrious houses at home and abroad with the Bourbons and Stewarts, the Viscontis, Della Scalas, Dorias, Lenoxes, Fairfaxes, and Stairs a learned professor, quoted by Colonel Fergusson, remarks that "if there be any faith to be placed in the theory of the inheritance of mental qualities, especially through the female line, we should expect to see here, following this scheme of descent, true genius or great eccentricity perhaps both." The professor's expectation or inference will be found in strict accordance with the facts, for whilst the two most distinguished brothers were giving ample proofs of genius, the eldest, the eleventh earl of Buchan, also a man

educated under a tutor named Buchanan. They were affectionately attached to each other, and continued so through life, notwithstanding an incident handed down on unimpeachable authority. On one occasion a violent squabble having occurred between Lord Cardross and the two younger ones, he called out, "When I am Earl of Buchan, I will turn you both out of this house." On which Thomas answered, "That you shall not, for I will kill you first," and threw a heavy slate at him. Luckily the slate missed its mark.

of mark, was attracting his full share of public attention by eccentricity. He was expatiating to the Duchess of Gordon on the abilities of his family, when she cut him short with: 66 My lord, I have always heard that the wit came by the mother's side and was settled on the younger children." The tenth earl, the father, was a commonplace man, but the mother was a woman of powerful intellect which had been cultivated to a high degree of excellence. She had studied mathematics under Colin Maclaurin, the friend of Sir Isaac Newton. "To such accomplish- Some time in 1760 the family removed ments were added an elegant taste, with to St. Andrews, with a view to the more brilliant imagination, almost genius, and advanced education of the sons at the (above all) an eminent and earnest piety." university. Here as in Edinburgh, as The three sons of this lady were born Colonel Fergusson takes care to state for respectively: David Henry (Lord Car- the honor of the house, Lady Buchan bedross in his father's lifetime and after-came the centre of a pleasant and culti wards Earl of Buchan) in 1742; Henry, vated circle, whom she was able to enterNovember 1st, 1746; Thomas, January tain according to the frugal habits of the Ioth, 1749. The fortunes of the family period and the locality, where hospitality were by no means in a flourishing state, was not expected to extend beyond a "dish and the first virtue which this estimable of tea." But the homely character of the lady was called on to practise was econ- ordinary domestic fare may be inferred omy. But Lord Campbell (in his "Life from what is related of the housekeeper of Lord Erskine ") has clearly been guilty who in setting a dainty dish upon the of exaggeration, with the view to contrast, table was wont to call out, "Noo, boys, when he represents the trio as born in an ye're no to tak' ony o' yon; I've just elevated flat at the head of Gray's Close brought it up for lo❜e o' my lord." A verse in Edinburgh, and reared principally on in the youthful effusions entitled "Threadoatmeal. Colonel Fergusson, indignantly paper Rhymes " of the future lord chanrepudiating the notion of degrading im cellor, ran thus: pecuniosity, asserts that the house (still to be seen) was one of some pretension, although the family may not have occupied the whole of it, and asks whether it be necessary to assert that oatmeal porLord Buchan (the father) had a theory ridge is no sign of poverty in Scotland? that the mortification of the flesh was "Had the biographer_forgotten, during good for the mind, and that to be made to his long residence in England, the many put up with the disagreeable was a saluvirtues of that food? What better com- tary discipline for young people. The bination, or more likely to breed up a boys, like Lord Macaulay,* had a strong dean of faculty, or lord advocate? There dislike to veal; so veal was ordered every is deep wisdom, for those who can receive day for their dinner for some weeks. it, in the myth which tells how Mimung, soon as he was old enough to attend the the great Sword of the North, attained its university courses, Henry joined the huunparalleled sharpness from being tem- manity and mathematical classes, and pered with milk and oatmeal." studied natural history under Professor Wilkie, the author of the once celebrated

The three lads were brought up together, and we find them in early boyhood at the country house of Uphall, where "in a small room over the stables" they were

Papa is going to London,

And what will we get then, oh!
But sautless kail, and an old cow's tail,
And half the leg of a hen, oh !

As

"I hate him [Mr. Croker] as I hate cold boiled veal."- Lord Macaulay.