"I had a walk in the New Inn Hall garden with Dr Johnson, Sir Robert Chambers, and some other gentlemen, (Chambers was principal of the Hall, and Vinerian professor of law. He was at this period on the point of proceeding to India as judge.) Sir Robert was gathering snails, and throwing them over the wall into his neighbour's garden. The doctor attacked him roughly, and charged his conduct as being unneighbourly. 'Sir,' said Sir Robert, 'my neighbour is a dissenter.' 'Oh,' said the doctor, 'if so, toss away, toss away as hard as you can!'"
This was evidently one of Johnson's odd freaks, a piece of his growling humour; for though no man disliked sectarianism more, no man had a stronger sense of charity to all.
His manners now and then exhibited strange absence. Lord Eldon says that he had seen him standing for a considerable time, with one foot on each side of the kennel of the High Street of Oxford, gazing at the water.
It was proverbially dangerous to contradict him. Dr Mortimer, head of Lincoln college, happened occasionally to interrupt him, by saying, "I deny that," while Johnson was holding forth. At length he said, "Sir, sir, you must have forgotten that an author has said, (he then repeated in Latin,) one ass will deny more in one hour, than a hundred philosophers will prove in a hundred years."
During the year 1774 and 1775, John Scott held the office of a tutor of University college; but he appears to have left the duty to Fisher and William Scott, his brother, those two dividing the emoluments. However, he was more importantly employed when he gave lectures on the law as deputy to Sir Robert Chambers, for which he had L.60 a-year. His first essay was sufficiently ridiculous. The law professor sent him his first lecture, which he was to read immediately to the students, and which he began, without knowing its contents. It happened to be on the statute 4th and 5th, Philip and Mary, on young men running away with young women. "Fancy me," said his lordship, "reading with about 140 boys and young men giggling at the professor." While Scott was eating his terms at the Middle Temple, he had some opportunities of seeing Mr Sergeant Hill, the great lawyer of his day, eminent for learning, and scarcely less so for eccentricity. Hill one day stopped Scott in the hall, and said, "Pray, young gentleman, do you think herbage and pannage rateable to the poor's rate?" Scott replied "that he could not presume to give an opinion to so learned a personage." "Upon my word," said the sergeant, "you are a pretty sensible young gentlemen—I don't often meet with such. If I had asked Mr Burgess, a young leader upon our circuit, the question, he would have told me that I was an old fool." Hill began an argument in the King's Bench thus:—"My Lord Mansfield and judges, I beg your pardon."—"Why brother Hill, do you ask our pardon?"—"My lords," said he, "I have seventy-eight cases to cite."—"Seventy-eight cases!" said Lord Mansfield; "you can never have our pardon if you cite seventy-eight cases!" After the court had given its decision, which was against the sergeant's client, Lord Mansfield said, "Now, brother Hill, that the judgment is given, you can have no objections, on account of your client, to tell us your real opinion, and whether you do not think we are right; you know how we all value your opinion and judgment." Hill wished to be excused; but as he always thought it his duty to do what the court desired, "Upon my word," said he, "I did not think that there were four men in the world who could have given such an ill-founded judgment as you four, my lords, have pronounced." This style, however, must have been now and then intolerable.
When Baron Hotham was placed in the Exchequer, he gave a dinner, as is usual on those occasions, at Sergeant's Inn, to the judges and sergeants. Hotham had been unsuccessful at the bar. Hill, in drinking his health, called him Baron Botham. Somebody whispered the real name to him. Hill said aloud, "I beg your pardon, Mr Baron Hotham; but none of us ever heard your name in the profession before this day." In justice to the baron, however, Lord Eldon adds the following note:—"The Baron made an extremely good judge. He had not much legal learning; but he had an excellent understanding, great discretion, unwearied patience, and his manners were extremely engaging; and those qualities ensuring to him in a very large measure the assistance of the bar, he executed his duties as a judge with great sufficiency."
Shortly after his commencing the profession, Scott reduced himself into a state of invalidism by excessive study. In 1774, when he and Cookson, another invalid, were returning to Oxford from Newcastle, where they had gone to vote at the general election, the good-natured cook of the inn at Birmingham, where they arrived at eleven at night, insisted on dressing something hot for them, saying that she was sure neither of them would live to see her again. A medical friend remonstrated with him on the severity of his studies. "It is not matter," answered Scott, "I must either do as I am now doing, or starve." He rose at four in the morning, observed a careful abstinence at his meals, and, to prevent drowsiness, read at night with a wet towel round his head. At last it became necessary, as the time of being called to the bar approached, to provide a dwelling in London. In his latter days, he pointed out a house in Cursitor Street. "There," said he, "was my first perch. Many a time have I run down from that house to Fleet Market, to get sixpennyworth of sprats for supper." At this period, in mentioning to his brother the kindness of a great conveyancer, Mr Duane, whom he attended as a gratuitous pupil, he says—"This conduct of his has taken a great load of uneasiness off my mind; as, in fact, our profession is so exceedingly expensive that I almost sink under it. I have got a house barely sufficient to hold my small family, which will, in rent and taxes, cost me L.60. I have been buying books, too, for the last ten years; but I have got the mortification to find that, before I can settle, that article of trade—for so I consider it—will cost me near L.200." Of Duane's service to him, he said, a little more than a fortnight before his death, "The knowledge I acquired of conveyancing in his office, was of infinite service to me during a long life in the Court of Chancery."
In Hilary Term 1776, Scott was called to the bar by the Society of the Middle Temple. When we recollect what a leviathan of wealth the Lord Chancellor was in his latter days, it is amusing to read the statement of his early struggles, however painful they must have been at the time. "When I was called to the bar," said he, "Bessy (his wife) and I thought all our troubles were over. Business was to pour in, and we were to be almost rich immediately. So I made a bargain with her, that, during the following year, all the money that I should receive during the first eleven months should be mine, and whatever I should get in the twelfth month should be hers. What a stingy dog I must have been to make such a bargain! I would not have done so afterwards. But, however, so it was— that was our agreement; and how do you think that it turned out? In the twelfth month I received half-a-guinea. Eighteen-pence went for fees, and Bessy got nine shillings. In the other eleven months I got not one shilling." This was but sorry encouragement; but such is the profession. Men must wait. Property, or perhaps life, will not trust themselves to inexperience; and thus, from the very nature of the Bar, a long period of probation must be borne by all.
There had been an old and invidious conception which represented the Lord Chancellor as the son of a coal-heaver. It appears from the memoir that his father was, on the contrary, possessed of property very considerable in those days. He was what we should now call a broker in the coal-trade—technically, a coal-fitter or factor—who transacted business between the coal-owner and the ship-owner. He was intelligent and industrious, and prospered accordingly; leaving, at his death, property worth L.25,000 to his eldest son William; another L.1000 to John; making, in the whole, L.3000, and respectable sums to his other children. He appears to have realized above L.30,000—a sum equal to nearly double at the present day.
Lord Eldon, though all gravity on the bench, and seldom indulging in any sportiveness in parliament, was a humorist at table, and fond of humorous recollections. His story of Dunning on his travels has got into print; but, in the hands of a genuine humorist, it must have been an incomparable ground for burlesque. Dunning, when solicitor-general, had gone to see the Prussian reviews. Some of these were profoundly secret, and were presumed to be experiments in those tactical novelties with which Frederick dazzled Europe. But others were showy displays, to which the king invited the princes and generals of the Continent. Dunning had announced himself as Solicitor-General of England. Frederick, either knowing nothing of solicitors, though much of generals, or what is more probable—for he was the most deliberate wag in existence—determining to play the lawyer a trick, ordered him to be received as a general officer, and provided him with a charger for his presence at the grand display. Dunning, long unused to ride, soon found that he had his master under him. The charger, as well disciplined as one of his majesty's grenadiers, and delighting, like the horse of Joab, in the "trumpets and the shouting" of the captains, rushed every where with his unwilling rider; and it was not till after a day of terror, in which his cavalry exploits must have exposed him to frequent laughter, that the lawyer escaped from the din of battles, and rejoiced to find himself with unfractured bones, resolved never to play the general officer again.