Thomas Brougham

“ Sometimes he would crouch in his chair, muffled in his wig and robes, like a man asleep ; at other times he would burst into restless activity, writing letters, working problems, interrupting counsel, Mortal offence he gave to Sugden, then the leader of the Equity bar, who detested his person and despised his law. But upon the whole Brougham was a just and able judge ”

“ Brougham, whom I knew in society, and from seeing him both at his chambers and at my own lodgings, is now about thirty-eight, tall, thin, and rather awkward, with a plain and not very expressive countenance, and simple or even slovenly manners. He is evidently nervous, and a slight convulsive movement about the muscles of his lips gives him an unpleasant expression now and then. In short, all that [Pg 28] is exterior in him, and all that goes to make up the first impression, is unfavourable. ”

“ Without doubt his harangues fatigue him as much as they do those who listen to him; he does not spare himself, bawling and gesticulating without any regard to his own person; he bends and twists himself like a posture master; he dances and leaps with his words; he perspires and grows heated, but he leaves the hearer cold; his is not the eloquence which inflames the blood.
I would censure Lord Brougham more severely as a writer than as a speaker; for Lord Brougham is also a writer, and a good deal too much of one. ”

“ These words apply, with a painful degree of exactness, to the career of Lord Brougham. Few men have been more richly endowed by nature. Few men have exhibited a greater plasticity of intellect, a greater affluence of mental resources. He was a fine orator, a clear thinker, a ready writer. It is seldom that a man who sways immense audiences by the power of his eloquence attains also to a high position in the ranks of literature. Yet Brougham did this; while, as a lawyer, he gained the most splendid prize of his profession, the Lord Chancellorship of England ”

“ That blot on the scutcheon of England’s fair fame!
Will-o’-the Wisp, July 24, 1869. Lord Brougham.
“Now that the speedy ejection of the Whigs from office, is looked for on all sides and by all parties with a high anticipatory relish, the humane mind naturally turns with compassion to the fate of Lord Brougham, who is on the eve of losing that for which he staked and lost, all his once splendid popularity. He stands a detected apostate from the cause of liberality, and we can only pay to his deplorable condition the melancholy tribute of a commiserating melody.” ”

“ Brougham’s is ticketed and labelled eloquence, registered and in numeros (like the successive parts of a Scotch Encyclopedia) —it is clever, knowing, imposing, masterly, an extraordinary display of clearness of head, of quickness and energy of thought, of application and industry; but it is not the eloquence of the imagination or the heart, and will never save a nation or an individual from perdition.
Mr. Brougham has one considerable advantage in debate: he is overcome by no false modesty, no deference to others. ”

“ We shall not attempt in this notice of his life to follow the innumerable incidents of his long and varied career, or to enumerate the speeches and writings which he threw off like sparks on every imaginable occasion. Our object is rather to convey to the reader a just impression of the man, as he appeared to those who knew him as he was, and who still recall the transcendent effects of his energy. Lord Brougham has been unfortunate in his biographers. ”

“ At the bar there were greater and better advocates ; on the bench there were more sure and learned judges ; in science he made no real discoveries ; in letters, notwithstanding the prodigious activity of his pen, he has left no work of lasting celebrity ; and although as an orator he was in his best days unequalled, he himself outlived the evanescent glories of his eloquence. Hence it has come to pass, that within fifty years of his most brilliant period, and within ten years of his death, the figure of Lord Brougham has already become somewhat indistinct. ”

“ When poor Edmund Kean was acting in barns to country bumpkins, and barely rinding bread for his wife and child, he was just as great a genius as when he was crowding Drury Lane. When Brougham presided in the House of Lords, he was not a bit better or greater than when he had hung about in the Parliament House at Edinburgh, a briefless and suspected junior barrister. When all London crowded to see the hippopotamus, he was just the animal that he was a couple of years later, when no one took the trouble of looking at him. ”

“ Oh where, and oh where, does my Harry Brougham dwell?—
He dwells at Cannes in bonny France, and likes it very well;
But recollect ’tis not the Cann’s where gravy soup they sell.
In what clothes, in what clothes, is your Harry Brougham clad?—
His hunting coat’s of velvet green, his trowsers are of plaid;
And it’s oh! in my heart, he can’t look very bad.
Suppose, and suppose, that your Harry Brougham should die!—
Dog Toby would weep over him, and Punch himself would cry:
But it’s oh! in our hearts, that we hope he will not die. ”

“ Old as he now was, and notwithstanding the position he had achieved and the good work he had done, his constant thirst for admiration led him 'to desire to flourish away among silly and dissolute people of fashion.' Ever anxious to impress others with a sense of his superior ability, 'he had no idea how to converse or live at ease' (Greville Memoirs, 2nd ser. ii. 235) . When the French provisional government of 1848 summoned the National Assembly, Brougham was seized with a desire to be returned as a deputy, and applied to the minister of justice for a certificate of naturalisation. ”

“ The eccentricities, too, of men of genius are of such value that they may well be said to atone for themselves.
A quality of Lord Brougham's mind, that is almost as extraordinary as his extent of information, is its singular activity. His energies never seem to flag—even for an instant; he does not seem to know what it is to be fatigued, or jaded. Some such quality as this, indeed, the vastness and universality of his acquirements called for, in order to make the weight endurable to himself, and to bear him up during his long career of political excitement. ”

“ In the exciting scene in the House of Lords which followed the announcement of the king's arrival, the chancellor's self-importance caused him to lose his head (Grey Correspondence, i. 234-6; Greville Memoirs, 1st ser. ii. 135-7) . On 7 Oct. Brougham made a speech on the second reading of the Reform Bill that has been held to be his masterpiece: it is full of sarcasm on the tory lords. As in most of his great speeches, the peroration is studied and unnatural. Brougham ended with a prayer; he fell on his knees, and remained kneeling. ”

“ It was obvious that Lord Melbourne, Lord Althorp, and Lord John Russell would be invited to take office, but there was a certain difficulty about Brougham. The difficulty, however, was not about offering a place to Brougham; the only trouble was to find the place which would suit him, and his acceptance of which would also suit his leaders and his colleagues. Nothing could be more certain than the fact that Brougham must be invited to a place in the new Administration. He was a strong man with the country, and he now had a distinct following of his own. ”

“ But Brougham is an excellent member, and is a remarkable instance of the peculiar influences of this peculiar Society on the human character. We took him just as the schools of philosophy, the bar, the senate, had made him. Literary, forensic, and parliamentary habits are most intractable materials, you will say, to make a member of the Steaks, yet no man has imbibed more of its spirit, and he enters its occasional gladiatorship with the greatest glee. ”

“ Here we find him figuring in turn as an English Lord Chancellor, a German student, a French subject, a French National Guard, an American citizen, a Bedouin Arab, a Carmelite monk, a Chinese mandarin, an Osmanli, a red Indian, a Scottish shepherd, and by the unmistakable nose and self-complacent smirk on his countenance, it is clear that in each and every character Henry Lord Brougham feels himself thoroughly at home. The Sleeping Beauty is a clever composition. ”

“ About the same time, he was passing through the press his admirable sketches of the ‘Men of Science and Literature of the Reign of George III.,’ and taking his full share of the law business and the political discussions in the House of Lords. Sydney Smith once recommended him to confine himself to only the transaction of so much business as three strong men could get through. But such was Brougham’s love of work—long become a habit—that no amount of application seems to have been too great for him ”

“ Brougham could tear a passion to tatters with any one, but he ranted. It is true that the post-boys used to drive the chaises of travellers in these regions somewhat out of the direct road, in order to glimpse the residence of Lord Brougham; but those travellers viewed the place, and Brougham himself, with curiosity, just as one might an Icelandic geyser, to which,165 indeed, he is not inaptly to be compared. ”

“ The display of his power and the fertility of his mind amazes friend and foe; for the genius of his fervent intellect includes French cookery, Italian poetry, bees and cell building, and a host of subjects seemingly far removed from law and politics. This must have been knowledge gained at the cost of his profession, for an epigram has it that he knew a little of everything, even of law. “Brougham, though a Whig, is not a goose,” says the Noctes. ”

“ Desire to expose a 469ministry, and you will do it—if it be, like ours, vulnerable all over. Desire to make a display of yourself, and you will do it, if you have a decent stock of acquirements. Mr. Brougham has a great quantity of combustible materials constantly passing through his hands, but he has not the warmth in his own heart to ‘kindle them into a flame of sacred vehemence.’ He is not a good hater. He is not an impassioned lover of the popular cause. He is not a Radical orator: he is not a Back-bone debater. He wants nerve, he wants impetuosity. ”

“ Lord Brougham is our best man now, the readiest—a great quality—and, strange as it may sound to those who know him not, the best-natured, with anecdote enough to point a moral, but no storyteller; using his wit as a skilful cook does lemon-juice—to flavour but not to sour the plat.
Painters and anglers, I have remarked, are always silent, thoughtful men. ”

“ He has addressed himself to every branch of knowledge, and is distinguished in all. Before he was elevated to the peerage he was one of the foremost men in England, honoured for his resolute and fiery opposition to abuses of every kind, and beloved for his eager anxiety to remove the shackles from the negro, and every disability from the limbs of his fellow-creatures nearer home. Social elevation has not added to the popularity of Lord Brougham, for the ermine has in part withdrawn the idol from the people. ”

“ He was again chosen president in 1860, and held the office during the five succeeding years. He was entertained at a public banquet at Edinburgh in October 1859, and two days afterwards was elected chancellor of the university. He delivered his installation address on 18 May 1860. In that year he received a second patent of peerage with remainder to his younger brother William and his heirs male, an honour conferred on him in recognition of his eminent services in the cause of education and in the suppression of slavery. Lady Brougham died at Brighton on 12 Jan. ”

“ But it is the greatest mistake to suppose that Lord Brougham is inattentive to the ceremonies with which his high place is surrounded. A careful observer will see clearly that imposing forms are [pg xiii] perfectly agreeable to his mind; nobody could ridicule form better, so long as he held no situation which required the observance of customary rules; but elevated to his present distinction, it is plain that he enjoys all the little peculiarities of his office. Somebody said that he presided in the House of Lords in a bar whig, and instanced the fact as a proof of his reforming temper ”

“ The only two people I have seen this week have been Lord Brougham and Sir C. Wood. [586] Lord Brougham was only in town for two nights on his way to Cannes. He is quite enthusiastic about my father’s papers, and has written something about them in the Law Review, and he was rather good-humoured and pleasant. ”

“ Such men, from the difficulty of clearing their heads for the contest, too often present a mere fleshless skeleton, as it were, very convincing to the judgment, but powerless over the feelings; so that no lasting impression is produced. But Lord Brougham, from being a master in argument, is free to pursue his bent in illustration, and thus conjures up a whole picture that dwells on the mind, and is remembered for its effect on the feelings or the imagination, even by men whose levity or dullness precluded their being fixed by the argument. ”

“ But, in England, the keeping of a stud of racehorses, the building of a dog-kennel, or the purchase of a foreign picture, is ignominiously and selfishly suffered to absorb a larger sum than the whole literary patronage of the most opulent empire that the sun ever shone upon. We recommend these considerations to Lord Brougham: they are nobler than politics; they are fitter for his combined character of statesman and philosopher; they will also combine with that character another which alone can give permanency to the fame of any public man—that of the philanthropist. ”