< Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu
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State Trials.

[Oct.

can apparently never be extended beyond that tongue, which the House seems since to have abandoned in despair. But the public require to be undeceived in an opinion, long traditionary, and formerly perhaps correct, but, though lately inculcated by some very popular publications, altogether at variance with the universal advancement of the age,—the opinion, that your special pleader is a creature without imagination, refinement, or sensibility; whom no arts delight, no muse illumines, no grace can inspire; who, by the sterility of an intricate and ungrateful profession, that always exhausts and never enriches the intellect, has been placed beyond the pale, alike of polite society and of elegant literature; and being therefore condemned to either an affectation of what he never can attain, or a sullen contempt for what he does not understand, finds a life of study has filled his mind with only a species of learning, which, out of the limits of his own country, or the sphere of his own business and associates, is every where either utterly rubbish, or valuable for the most sordid motive alone. Such is by no means the classic pleader of the present moment. The themes of his reflection and discourse will be found to blend whatever is subtlest in the learning of his profession, or choicest in its phrases, with all that is polite in music, painting, travel, literature, and science; and with all that is elegant in amusements, sports, and fashion,—even to the nicest appreciation of an opera ballet. And I am free to confess, that the older I grow the more do I appreciate that most graceful and refined spectacle, which the youth, beauty, and gaiety of human kind can ever exhibit;—that vague and elegant expression of the relations of the sexes, their desire to please, and pride to display their charms;—that imitation of sentiments, abstracted indeed from their ordinary modes, and impersonated in new phases and combinations, of measured motions, musical attitudes and harmonious positions,—adorned with all that fancy in costume, taste in grouping, cheerfulness in features, health, love, and festivity, can add to the fairest of human forms. The appreciation of this is undoubtedly the more peculiar property of the learned profession, and by traditionary right; as the ballet is evidently borrowed from the ancient revels of the Inns of Court, in whose stately dances perhaps the art—now lost—was then practiced, of representing by solemn gestures and measures, and with their feet in walking, the intricacies of lawsuits, and the reasonableness of their decision."

The part of the Preface most puzzling to our young Templar, is that which regards the personal identity of the ingenious author. His name, he says, is Nicholas Thirning Moile, and his habitat is 11, Crown Office Row, Temple. Our friend, wishing to make his acquaintance—with a view, no doubt, to the crack article—proceeded, one rainy day, to call at No. 11; but, after an hour's hunting, gave it up in despair. He ought not to be dismayed; for how seldom has it happened to any man that he found the desired number on the first day's voyage of discovery, either in the most regular of squares, or the simplest of streets? That 11, Crown Office Row, Temple, exists, why in unmanly despondency disbelieve? See the immediate consequence of such scepticism—that there is no Nicholas Thirning Moile. That gentleman, of whose existence we have no more doubt than our own, attributes the chief authorship of the State Trials to a pupil of his now dead. The poor youth was drowned, we are told, on his passage from the Isle of Man, "having first duly made and published his last will and testament, by which I was appointed his executor; an office, for once, of no great trouble, as his assets were small, and his debts less. On receiving this document, together with the keys of his chambers, I found in his library a row of large quartos, ranged under Wentworth's Pleadings, and lettered on the back 'Precedents.' Within, instead of Pleas, I found it entitled 'State Trials;' nor had I read far before I discovered it was written in metre and rhyme. What was this but my own design of combining the learning of the law with the melody of verse; a design I had before communicated to my late pupil in frequent conversations? It was evident he had been working upon my ideas, which I considered no less my own property than even my very books themselves. Let it not be supposed that these things are now mentioned in any spirit of complaint, or to intimate the charge of plagiarism in my poor friend. He, I doubt not, either always intended to contribute his assistance to my work, or may even have been utterly unconscious of any such trespass; indeed, he has too much mistaken the object, or departed from the conduct of the original design, to leave me any regret, but that I can derive so little

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