No biography of Lord Cairns has (so far as I know) appeared—a singular fact, considering the brilliancy of his career, and considering the tendency which now prevails to bestow this kind of honour on many persons of the second or even the third rank. One reason may be that Cairns, great though he was, never won personal popularity even with his own political party or among his contemporaries at the bar, and was to the general public no more than a famous name.
The reign of King Richard the First.
Two Lives of Dr. Fraser have been published, one (in 1887) by the late Judge Hughes, the other, which gives a fuller impression of his personal character, by the Rev. J. W. Diggle (1891).
He was a good judge of horses, and had in his youth been fond of hunting.
A clergyman of his diocese had once, under the greatest provocation, knocked down a person who had insulted him, and the bishop wrote him a letter of reproof pointing out (among other things) that, exposed as the Church of England was to much criticism on all hands, her ministers ought to be very careful in their demeanour. The offender replied by saying, “I must regretfully admit that being grossly insulted, and forgetting in the heat of the moment the critical position of the Church of England, I did knock the man down, etc.” Fraser, delighted with this turning of the tables on himself, told me the anecdote with great glee, and invited the clergyman to stay with him not long afterwards.