As

Mr. Murray for the publication of the Lives of Haydn and Mozart [published by Mr. Gardiner in 1818] I found Mr. and Mrs. Moore in his drawing-room looking at the fine picture of Lord Byron. They were then living near London, at the rural village of Hornsey. [This was in 1817.] I was kindly invited next day to dinner, and the poet described to me a pleasant foot-path across the fields, which I should find more agreeable than the road. Mr. Murray was not at home they departed. Soon after they were gone he returned, and was much mortified, as it was the first call they had made him. I said I was invited to dine at Hornsey tomorrow, and pressed him to go with me: that he would not presume to do, but he would give me a commission to engage the bard to write a critique upon the Lives of Haydn and Mozart for the next Quarterly Review, and would give him fifty guineas a sheet. I stated this to Mr. Moore, who, it will be recollected, was then writing for the Edinburgh. He desired me to say "it was an extremely handsome offer, but he could not think of freighting his wares in an enemy's bottom."

The path to Hornsey I found so intricate that I lost my way, and did not arrive till an hour after time. They had sat down to dinner, and when I was apologising Mr. Moore, in a loud voice, called out, "Red or White ?" I could not but smile, and Mrs. Moore was not a little astonished. He reiterated still louder, Red or White? I answered, "Red," and took my place at table. As soon as the cloth was drawn, I explained to Mrs. Moore that it was an allusion to the Cambridge tale which I told at Lord Tamworth's table.*

After dinner we took a walk in the garden, and in passing through a conservatory there lay a heap of books in a corner. "Books everywhere," said I. "Ay," he replied, "these are the materiel of Lalla Rookh;" and, taking up one, said, "This book I bought at a stall for three pence, and it was of great use to me." Throwing it down and taking up another, "This cost me half a guinea, and I got nothing out of it but the tortoiseshell lanterns.'"'

The origin of Lalla Rookh was an ap plication made to him by Messrs. Longman and Co. to write for them an epic poem, in which there should be no allusion to the ancient classical authors. They would be responsible for the highest sum

ever given for an epic poem. Mr. Perry, it was agreed, should decide the amount, which was fixed at three thousand guineas.† He told me, on executing this work, he found it infinitely more difficult to write the prose introductions than the poetry. Upon those he could scarcely ever satisfy himself.

As I was a little curious to be let into the modus operandi of such intellectual tasks, I ventured to continue the conversation, and observed that many supposed that his verses slipped off his tongue as if by magic, and quoted a passage of great ease and beauty. "Why, sir," he replied, "that line cost me hours, days, and weeks of attrition before it would come;" which required, he said, the constant repetition of the verse as he walked up and down the avenue in his garden.

The

Every one feels the beauty of this author's verse; the liquid smoothness of his numbers surpasses everything previously written. He is the only example of an exquisite ear for music combined with an elegant fancy. Drayton, Herrick, Suckling, Beaumont, Raleigh, Lovelace, and Marlow are poets of this order, but their verses are not without alloy. composer meets with expressions that have no alliance with sounds; but in Moore there is not a word which the music composer wishes to remove. On this subject I asked the bard who, in his opinion, was the finest of our lyric poets? (I might have said excepting himself.) He replied, Burns was the greatest that ever wrote.

In another place (vol. i. p. 465) Mr. Gardiner relates the circumstances of his attending a levee at Carlton House, in order to present to the Prince Regent the first volume of his Sacred Melodies. This he did at the suggestion of Moore, who offered him his own court suit for the purpose, and it is to the result that the poet alludes in his letter (Moore, vol. ii. p. 6.):—

The Prince was very gracious to you, and no one can be more so when he chooses. To give the devil his due, he is very fond of music, and that is one great step towards redemption, at least where you and I are judges.

We must now lay before the reader a letter of Moore to Mr. Gardiner, which is not included in Lord John Russell's series, though, as it appears

to us, it is fully as remarkable as the majority in his work. Mr. Gardiner had requested the bard to write some verses to his music, and Moore had not merely assented, but had actually commenced writing a song, when he recollected the engagement which bound him exclusively to the service of Mr. Power :

Keyworth, June 24, 1812. Dear Sir,-The more you do me the honour of valuing the assistance you expect from me, the more I lament my thoughtlessness in offering it; for I ought to have recollected (when Miss Dalby told me that you wished some verses of mine) that I am no longer a free agent in the disposal of my writings-at least of those connected with music, having given, by regular deed, the monopoly of all such productions of mine to the Powers, of London and Dublin. These legal trammels are so new to my muse, that she has more than once forgotten herself, and been near wandering into infidelity, very much, I assure you, from the habit of setting no price upon her favours; but I think you will agree with me that it is worth while keeping her within bounds, when I tell

you that the reward of her constancy is no less than five hundred a year during the time stipulated in the deed. For not complying with your request I need offer no better apology; but for inconsiderately promising what I could not perform, I know not what I can say to excuse myself, except that (and believe me I speak sincerely) the strong wish I felt to show my sense of your merits made me consult my inclinations rather than my power; and it was not till I had actually begun words to one of your airs that I recollected the faux pas I was about to commit.

I thank you very much for the Sermons, which I am reading with great pleasure, and beg you to believe me, Very sincerely yours,

THOMAS MOORE. To Wm. Gardiner, Esq., Leicester. The Sermons were those of Robert Hall, then resident at Leicester, and in the height of his fame as a preacher, and to whom, in turn, Mr. Gardiner lent Moore's Sacred Songs, when Mr. Hall read them with great delight, saying, "Sir, I discover that he is deeply read in the Fathers," &c. &c. (See Gardiner, vol. ii. p. 613.)

THE relation between the bar and the attorneys or solicitors and the public have been the subject of much attention and some controversy during the last year or two. It is pretty generally known that it is now the established rule of legal practice that no counsel should receive instructions except from a solicitor; and this rule was even sanctioned by express enactment of the legislature in the first of the late County Court Acts. This, however, has since been altered, and the matter is again left to the conventional determination of what is called "professional etiquette.”

Most persons are aware that the connection between the client and his counsel was a much closer one in ancient times. At present every man of property is in the habit of employing in all his transactions an attorney, or more frequently a firm of attorneys; for, by means of the institution of partnership, the "family solicitor" never dies. When the assistance of counsel is required, the solicitor takes his "in

structions" or his "case for opinion," with his fees, where he pleases. In old times the closer relation was between the client and his counsel; and the attorney, whose business it was to represent his principal in court or solicit for him in the offices of the Chancery, was probably often selected for the occasion by the counsel. In the Plumpton Correspondence, published by the Camden Society, we have a letter from Bryan Rocliff, a distinguished counsellor of the time of Edward IV., and subsequently a baron of the Exchequer, to his "worshippful maister Sir William Plumpton, Knt." about some business in the Court of Exchequer of Sir William, as ex-sheriff of the counties of Nottingham and Derby, in which his counsel informs him that, "for to be prepared in the next tearme, I have labored a felaw of mine to be your atturney in the court, for I may nought be but of counsell; and he and I shall shew you such service all that time and afterward that shall be pleasing unto you."

The distinction of the branches of the legal profession seems to have taken its rise, with so much beside of our legal forms and jurisprudence, in the reign of Edward I. In the thirteenth year of that monarch, by the statute of Westminster the second, liberty was first generally given to appear and conduct business in the king's courts by attorney. The statute of Westminster the first, ten years before, had enacted "that if any serjeant, pleader, or other (si nul serjaunt contour ou antre) do any manner of deceit or collusion in the king's court, or consent to do it in deceit of the court to beguile the court or the party, and thereof be attainted, he shall be imprisoned for a year and a day, and from thenceforth shall not be heard in the court to plead (a conter) for any man."

The book called Fleta (lib. ii. c. 37) describes the practitioners in the king's court as consisting of four classes: "In Curia autem regis sunt servientes, narratores, attornati, et apprenticii." The author then refers to the enactment of the statute of Westminster last quoted. These four classes were, serjeants, countors or pleaders, attorneys, and apprentices or students of the law. The second of these classes most requires explanation. The word count still designates a portion of the pleadings in an action. These pleadings were originally, and up to the time as is supposed of Edward III., conducted vira voce in court, it may be presumed by the narrator, instead of being, as has now been the custom for some five centuries, formally drawn up on paper. In the " Mirror of Justices," a book which belongs to the reign of the Second or Third Edward, the word "countor" is used of a class including, if not commensurate with, the serjeants. "Plusors sont que ne scavont lour causes pronouncer ne de defendre en jugement, et plusors que [ne] poient, et pur ceo sont countors necessarie: cy que ceo que plaintifs et actors ne poent ou ne scavent per eux mesmes, facent per lour serjeants ou procurators ou amies." And afterwards: "Countors sont serjeants sachants la ley, &c." (Mirror, c. ii. s. 5.) The word conteur is used in the same sense in the Grand Coustumier de Normandie (c. 64, f. 756)-" Conteur est que aucun establit pour conter pour

lui en cort." The "apprentices" were the class out of which our barristers, or counsel below the bar, have sprung.

The Mirror of Justices has a section upon fees (de loyers, c. ii. s. 4,) which may give some idea of the legal expenses of the reign of Edward II. "Those ministers," we translate literally, "who take their certain of the king, may not take aught of any of the people; but those judges who serve the king in hope of well doing (en esperance de bien fist?) may well take 12d. of the plaintiff on the day that he have audience, and nought more, the counter 6d., a knight witness or juror 6d., another juror 4., and the two summoners 4d." In a previous chapter the same author classes the taking by a counsel of an outrageous fee as an act of larceny. "En ceste peche (de larcene) chiont countors que pernont outragious salary, ou nient deserve, et que sont attaint de male defence ou d'autre discontinue."

It was anciently the custom for persons of rank to employ counsel at a yearly salary or fee, and such salaries, before the uncertainty of titles which followed the dissolution of the monasteries and other contemporaneous causes had brought so much business and profit to the learned profession, probably formed a large portion of the income of the serjeants and apprentices of the law. Chaucer's Serjeant derived his wealth from this source:

Of fees and robes hadde he manie one.

The word "fee," which now designates the sum of money marked on a lawyer's brief, or slipped into a physician's hand, was once I think properly used only of an annual or continuing provision or salary. This is the original sense of the word feodum, or fee,, as applied to land; since, according to the feudal system, all land was always held by service, and "a knight's fee" was the permanent provision for retaining the services of a knight. But the word feudum was not exclusively used of land. In a charter of Henry III. cited by Ducange, we have an example of a money fee," or salary: “ Assignatur ei annuum feodum xx. marcarum annuatim percipiendum ad scaccarium nostrum.' (See Ducange, sub vocibus Feudum camera, Feudum nummorum, &c.)

The advocates in the Ecclesiastical Courts were retained in a similar way. Master Warin de Boys was engaged as the advocate of Richard Swinfield, bishop of Hereford, in the court of arches at London, by a bond dated on the 13th Nov. 1287, and he was assigned an annual fee or salary of six marks, to be paid half-yearly. John of Canterbury was also regularly appointed by bond to be the bishop's proctor in the same court, at a yearly salary of two marks.*

The bishop employed one Roger Caperun as his attorney at Westminster, who was paid not by a yearly fee, but by occasional sums of 68. 8d. "in remuneration of his labour."

The great nobility retained several salaried counsel. The Northumberland Household Book gives an account of the retinue of the Earl of Northumberland in the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. In the "Kalendar of the noumbre of all my lord's servaunts in his cheqirroull daily abiding in his household," we find "two of my lordys counsaill and athir of them a servaunt, iiij.;" and in the list of "Wagies accustomyde of my Lordes House" occurs the following entry:-"Every oone of my lordes counsaill to have cs. fee, if he have it in houshold and nott by patentt."

In the same book we learn that even when the earl was living in privacy, "at such timis as his lordship kepith his secrat houss at the New Lodge or outherwheir," he could not entirely dispense with his legal adviser. He was then attended by a household of only forty-two persons-at Alnwick his attendants were a hundred and three score-and in this reduced court was "one of my lordes counsaill for aunswering and riddyng of causis whenne suters cometh to my lorde."

We do not know how late the custom of retaining" counsel in fee" by private individuals was in use. That it lingered in form, at least in one ducal establishment, until the beginning of the last

century, is proved by the deed poll of which the following is a transcript. It is a retainer by "the proud Duke of Somerset" of Queen Anne's time, of Sir Thomas Parker, a serjeant-at-law, afterwards Lord High Chancellor, and Earl of Macclesfield, in this traditional capacity. It is remarkable that the honorary or nominal "fee" is less than that paid by the Bishop of Hereford four centuries before to his ecclesiastical advocate.

To all persons to whom these presents shall come-The most noble Lord his Grace CHARLES DUKE OF SOMERSET, Marquis and Earle of Hertford, Viscount Beauchampe de Hache, Baron Seymour of Trowbridge, Chancellour of the University of Cambridge, Master of the Horse to her Majesty Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and one of hir Majesties Most Honourable Privy Councell, sendeth Duke of Somerset, for the speciall trust greeting, &c.-KNOW YE, that I, the said and confidence I have and do repose in my well-beloved friend Sir THOMAS PARKER, Knt. Serjeant-at-Law, and for the good esteem I have of his learning in the laws of this land, have constituted and retained, and by these presents doe constitute and retain him, the said Sir Thomas Parker, to be of my standing councell in ffee, and for his good advice and direction to me law, I doe hereby give and allow him the and my agents in businesses in matters of yearly ffee of ffour markes, to be paid by my Sollicitor at the ffeast of St. Michaell the Archangell, to continue during my will and pleasure. Given under my hand and seale at Northumberland House, this 19th day of July, in the sixth year of the reigne of our Sovereigne Lady Anne, by the grace of God Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Ffaith, &c.

anno domini 1707.

Signed-SOMERSET-and sealed.

We still occasionally hear of what is called a general retainer, which is presumed to last for life. The fee has long been fixed at five guineas. There is a well-known story of the celebrated Sarah Duchess of Marlborough sending Lord Mansfield, when a young man at the bar, a general retainer with