—reminding us of Pope's antithetical summary of the character of a greater Chancellor even than Brougham:—
"If parts attract thee, think how Bacon shined,
The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind!"
—or Tom Moore's indignant distich on Jean Jacques Rousseau:—
"Be all at once that's brightest, worst,
Sublimest, meanest, in creation!"
Look at the caricatures of him in Punch,—especially that where we have him as "citizen of all nations," with varying head-dress and upper garments, while the uncouth features and the continuations of shepherd's plaid, are a fixed quantity!
There is a brilliant article on Brougham in Robert Gilfillan's Gallery of Literary Portraits; Hazlitt very ably discusses his character as an orator in his Spirit of the Age, treating Brougham as the representative of the Scottish School, whose oratory is the result of mechanism, as distinguished from the Irish, whose eloquence, according to him, is the offspring of impulse. The parallel is ingeniously drawn, and the conclusion not devoid of truth. He has been termed a Marcellus in attack; he was, at least, no Fabius in defence.
In the witty and clever New Whig Guide, which is understood to have been the joint production of John Wilson Croker, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Palmerston, is to be found the inimitable "Trial of Henry Brougham for Mutiny,"—certainly the prose-gem of the collection. The authorship of this has always been allotted to Peel.
To venture an opinion of my own, the Biographies of Brougham are among the most valuable of his literary labours. It is impossible to read without pleasure and profit his lives of the Chathams; the liberal, large-hearted estimate of Voltaire; and the notices of the other philosophers, and men of letters of the time of George III.
In olden times the epithet πένταθλος was bestowed on Eratosthenes, from his pre-eminence in various pursuits. Some such surname is applicable to Brougham, who has written on every imaginable subject, from the higher mathematics to lithotomy, and of whom it was ill-naturedly said that if he had only known a little of Chancery law, he would have had a smattering of everything. It may astonish some to be informed that this literary universalist has also adventured into the realms of fiction. But the book-collector, great at least in title pages, had long known the existence of a novel, in the orthodox three-volume form, and octavo size, entitled Albert Lunel; or the Chateau of Languedoc, the customary attribution of which to his lordship's pen had never been questioned. The bibliographic history of this work is somewhat curious. The title-page sets forth that it was published by Charles Knight in 1844; but, as may be learnt from Bohn's edition of Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, it was so rigidly suppressed that only five copies, which had been presented to friends, remained in circulation. Its value was estimated at five guineas; and certainly, on the rare occasions when a copy has found its way into the market, it has fetched an extravagant price. After the death of the author, the motives or necessity for suppression would seem to have ceased; and early in 1872, a number of copies were sold off, so that a set was attainable for half-a-dozen shillings. It has been reprinted
