GREAT MEN'S BODIES
times." He was of medium height, slender, quick and nervous, handsome and magnetic.
Irving Browne, in his Short Studies of Great Lawyers, says: "It is a proud boast for Scotland that the greatest of judges and the greatest of advocates were Scots. Mansfield and Erskine—names which cause the blood to glow in the veins of every lawyer who cherishes a high ideal of his profession—what other country can boast two such? Dr. Johnson, who heartily hated the Scotch, admitted that much might be done with a Scotchman, if caught young. But Erskine was not precocious. He presents the anomaly of a late and instantaneously brilliant entrance into the profession. Admitted to practice at the age of twenty-eight, he gained the height of legal fame, not by slow and toilsome steps, but at one bound; he burst upon the world, a star of the first magnitude, and of unfailing radiance. His eloquence, which, like the lyre of Orpheus, might have won a soul from the shades, was the companion of a solid and unerring judgment; a charming wit; a consuming sarcasm; an exquisite tact; an intuitive knowledge of mankind; and an inexorable and pervasive logic worthy of St. Paul."
Lord Campbell says: "He displayed genius united with public principle; he saved the liberties of his country; he was the brightest ornament of which the English Bar could boast. Without the invaluable assistance of Erskine, as counsel for the Dean of St. Asaph, the Star Chamber might have been re-established in this country." Brougham says: "He was an undaunted man; he was an undaunted advocate." The author of The Bar thus concludes his eloquent tribute:
"Yet long as liberty the soul delights,
And Britons cherish and maintain their rights;
Long as they love their country's sacred cause,
And prize the safest bulwarks of their laws;
So long shall be with freedom's loud acclaim
'Trial by jury' linked with Erskine's name."
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