profession,—the Lord Chancellorship; and the lowest which a gentleman can hold,—that of Sergeant at Arms to the Court of Exchequer.
When this legal Hercules had spent years in attempting to cleanse the Augean stable of abuse, he was raised to the peerage, and went to the upper House. Thereupon the following quatrain was written:—
"Why is Lord Brougham like a sweeping-man,
- That close by the pavement walks?
Because when he's done all the sweep that he can,
- He takes up his Broom and Valks!"
What a pile of literature has this man left behind him! Much necessarily written in haste and open to correction. He stood high as a mathematician. A paper on Optics, written before he was out of his teens, was judged by the Royal Society worthy of preservation among its "Transactions;" and he wrote much for the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,"—not the "Confusion of Useless Knowledge," as its enemies irreverently termed it,—of which he was long chairman. It is impossible to point out his share in this praiseworthy work with certainty; but to him are doubtless to be attributed some at least of the errors wittily exposed by the author of a lengthy pamphlet, published at the time, entitled The Blunders of a Big Wig; or Paul Pry's Peeps into the Sixpenny Sciences, London, 1827, 8vo.
There is little doubt that to Brougham, and not to Jeffrey, is to be ascribed the celebrated article in the Edinburgh Review on Byron's Hours of Idleness, which produced, by way of retaliation, the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,—and possibly much besides:—
"Facit indignatio versus."
These are of the "follies of the wise," and Brougham was full of such—impulsive as a woman, hasty and wayward as a child, made up of inconsistencies and contradictions. Maginn describes him happily:—"On the woolsack, leaping through cases, as Harlequin does through a hoop, without touching them; wonderful in agility, and most dexterous in dispatch; exciting the astonishment of the audience, and winning the tribute of a clap from the upper gallery of the press; in the House of Lords, as droll as Punchinello, and about as dignified; in the Edinburgh Review as airy as Jeffrey, and as deep as Mackintosh; in the Times as oracular as a Stock-Exchange reporter on the evening before settling day; in the Beefsteak Club as comical as he is in the House of Lords,—great over a bottle, over a case, over a debate, over an article, it is impossible to say in which he is greatest; but truth compels us to lament that he had not originally turned his talents to the stage, for he certainly would have beaten Mathews out of the field in the versatility of the characters he could perform, and driven Yates into despair by the rapidity with which he altered his dresses!"
The following quatrain, in the same vein of humorous satire, is attributed, I know not whether with truth, to Jeremy Bentham:—
"Oh, Brougham, a strange mystery you are,
Nil fuit unquam sibi tam dispar;
So foolish and so wise,—so great, so small,
Everything now,—to-morrow nought at all!"
