MR. DENMAN A visage sterne and milde, where both did growe Amid great stormes whom grace assured so THERE is this to be said of preeminent ability, that it is the object of envy with no man ; emulation, an honest struggle to deserve by doing as well, it will, and ought to, excite: but the aim of envy is lower, it looks only to the end; it does not care for the means but the accomplishment; and provided it can perform as much and acquire as much with talents far inferior, it has attained its purpose and is contented. 66 Envy is a vile passion-it has its birth in base minds;" and as those who are afflicted with it are incapa ble of understanding and estimating what is really great, they are incapable of envying it: a man may envy a painter the emoluments of his pencil, but not the talent that guides it-he may envy a poet the price of his productions, not the genius that dictated them he may envy an eloquent advocate the amount of his fees, but if by tricks and imposition he can obtain as large a share of business, he will turn learning and eloquence into ridicule, and hug himself that he can with impunity commit such easy and successful frauds. There is probably no profession where so much encouragement is given to envy as in the law the love of gain there is the principally operating motive, for even the gratification of ambition is generally made subservient to it, and a barrister will very commonly, when offered a situation of judicial eminence, (though he may already have acquired a large fortune,) strike a balance of profit and loss, and refuse the intended honours, because his emoluments would be reduced by acceptance. The means too by which wealth is acquired among these fruges consumere natos are chiefly such as may be subject to envy, particularly of late, since the comparative degradation of the Bar, and the absence or banishment of what was formerly understood by the term eloquence: I use the term banishment because I feel satisfied that it is only excluded by the degenerate nature of modern practice, and that were due encouragement given, were our judges less men of forms and more men of liberal attainments, it might, even in the course of a few years, be restored. Notwithstanding all the exertions of that "pompous piece of puffpaste," Mr. Phillips, to bring the Irish Bar into discredit with people of taste and understanding, we cannot entertain a doubt that the counsel in the courts of the sister-kingdom are far better speech-makers than those on this side of the channel; and the reason is connected with various points to which I adverted in my first article, where I mentioned some of the causes of the decline of the English Bar. On this account, too, if I may rely on information I have received, there prevails among the barristers in Dublin much more friendship and cordiality than among those in London: there is less room for the display of trickery and cunning by which, with us, so much money is made, and the possession and employment of real eloquence and talents is, as I have said above, the low mark at which envy levels. The difference is perceptible even in the very commencement of the pursuit, for making all due allowances for the more sociable and convivial spirit of our neighbours, (which social and convivial spirit, by the bye, is engendered and fostered by the absence of this base passion,) let any man observe the difference in the behaviour of the English and Irish students when dining in the hall of the Middle Temple: so strong is the contrast, that it has led to the separation of the one from the other, and the sides of the apartment are called according to the natives of the different countries which usually occupy them. I am no admirer of the flippant flourishes of the sons of St. Patrick, nor of their unrestrained self-confidence, but I am an admirer of the warmth of feeling and generosity of disposition they seem to possess. No doubt those who sit on the English side of the Hall are much harder readers, but they confound and bewilder their understandings, and one would have thought that they could have spared a single hour of the day cheerfully to shake hands and discuss the current topics of conversation. But no; generally a dead silence prevails, and men sit opposite to each other as if they sat opposite a dead wall, or automatons at best, and seem to have little in common but the dish out of which they carve, and the dulness which the countenance of the one seems to reflect from the visage of the other. This however is not invariably the case; two or three pupils of the same pleader or barrister sometimes join in a mess, (for so each division of four students is termed) and by the help of discussions upon pleas, rejoinders and demurrers, drawn or considered in the course of the morning, a conversation is kept going, if it cannot be said to be kept alive: if however a fourth person, a stranger, happen by chance |