Volume 3 > Half-Volume 6

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and youth. After the usual preliminary education
he was sent to the high-school, then superintended
by the learned and amiable Dr. Adams, where his
immediate predecessors were Walter Scott and
Francis Jeffrey. In the winter of 1795, when he
was now fifteen years old, he passed from the high-
school of Edinburgh to the university, which at this
time was fortunate in possessing Black for professor
of chemistry, Robertson for natural philosophy,
Tytler for history, Playfair for mathematics, and
Dugald Stewart for moral philosophy. Among
these teachers and their departments the mind of
young Henry Brougham ranged with that restless-
ness and hunger of knowledge by which his omnivo-
rous appetite was already characterized; and how-
ever such an unsystematic course might be condemned,
it enabled him to lay in that store of knowledge in
every department by which his intellect was strength-
ened, and his eloquence enriched with illustrations.
It was also by this process that he trained himself
to that office of a universal instructor which he was
so ambitious of becoming. But he was too impatient
to await the season of maturity, and before the age
of manhood arrived he had made his first attempts
in authorship. In 1797, when he was not more than
eighteen years old, he communicated a scientific
paper to the Royal Society, which was published in
its Transactions; and in the following year he com-
municated some theorems in geometry, which were
published in the same repository. Feeling also the
early stirrings of that volcanic eloquence which was
afterwards to upheave established evils from their
lowest depths, he became a member of the '' Specu-
lative Society" in Edinburgh, at that time having
for members several young men who subsequently
became the renowned of their day. Still, however
much his anxious studies had made him conversant
with the theories of oratory, he found it a very dif-
ferent thing to reduce them to practice. But his
was to be no common eloquence, and therefore not
to be easily acquired; his fiery energy, and profusion
of thought and illustration, made selection difficult,
and sometimes utterance impossible; and, like
Demosthenes himself, whose first attempt was a
failure, his earliest displays in the Speculative So-
ciety gave little promise of his subsequent success as
an orator. By practice and perseverance, however,
he attained the full mastery of that eloquence with
which he was to delight his friends and confound his
enemies; while its rich and massive character, its
happy selection of thoughts, and its involution of
parentheses within parentheses, which instead of
obscuring his subject, as it would have done in
meaner hands, only brought out his argument with
clearer distinctness�these sufficiently showed the
causes of his earliest failures, and the great amount
of difficulties which had been successfully overcome.
And, truly, to become the first orator of the day
was worthy of any probation, however lengthened
and severe!
As it was necessary for Henry Brougham to make
his own way in the world, the profession of the law
was his choice, and the bar the fittest place for his
talents to have full scope. In the year 1800 he was
admitted into the faculty of Scottish advocates, and
two years afterwards he became a fellow of the Royal
Society. In 1802 he was one of that choice band
who originated the Edinburgh Review, and attended
that memorable meeting at Jeffrey's house, which
was a third-story dwelling in Buccleugh Place.
There the plan of the publication was settled; and
while a night of storm and tempest was raging with-
out, the company were making themselves merry
with the thought of the greater hurly-burly which
they were to let loose upon the literary world. To
the Edinburgh Review Brougham was a frequent
contributor upon a variety of topics, but his articles
did not rank among the best in the collection. His
authorship required the same gradual maturing as
his oratory, and from the same causes. One of his
productions in the Review, however, must be excepted
from any charge of mediocrity: it was his severe but
just castigation of Lord Byron's Hours of Idleness.
Even the Edinburgh Review, however, was not suffi-
cient to satisfy his craving for literary distinction,
or give exercise enough for his intellectual activity;
and in 1803 he published in two octavo volumes a
work entitled An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy
of the European Powers. That a political work of
1100 or 1200 pages should have been written by a
young man of twenty-five was considered by some
a remarkable instance of boldness, and by others of
audacity; but all were obliged more or less to ac-
knowledge the remarkable talent which it indicated,
and it was translated into several European lan-
guages. But experience in the right management
and government of colonies was still in its infancy,
and it was therefore no wonder that "Henry
Brougham, jun., Esq., F.R.S.," the author of the
work, advanced theories of colonial policy which
did not accord with the matured experience of the
great statesman Lord Brougham. It was natural,
therefore, that this Inquiry, however admired at the
time, should gradually pass into abeyance and cease
to be remembered, or that its author should make
no effort to recall it to public notice. It is certain
that this publication is now among those books that
are difficult to be met with, and that his lordship,
so far as we can learn, made no allusion to it in his
other writings. He would sometimes, however, in
conversation with his intimate friends, advert to it
in after-years, and point to the numerous published
translations of it contained in his library.
As an advocate at the Scottish bar Henry
Brougham's career was not particularly profitable
or successful. The merely provincial character into
which Scotland dwindled at the union had not yet
passed away, and the nation was only beginning to
feel its resources and put forth its latent powers.
Isolated by their position from contact with public
opinion, our impoverished aristocracy regarded the
court alone as the true source of distinction, and our
judges, trained in the same sentiments, were careful
to enforce submission to the powers that be. But
Brougham, already distinguished by pre-eminent
talents, a writer in the Edinburgh Review, and a
Whig, was obnoxious to the rulers of the court of
justice, who interposed every obstacle to his ad-
vancement. But he was not to be thus put down,
and he retaliated with a fierce withering wit from
which the bench of Themis was no protection. Of
those judges who were his haters, one of the chief
was Lord Eskgrove, of whom, and his bickerings
with the impracticable young advocate, Lord Cock-
burn gives the following account:�"Brougham tor-
mented him, and sat on his skirts wherever he went
for above a year. The justice liked passive counsel,
who let him dawdle on with culprits and juries in
his own way; and consequently he hated the talent,
the eloquence, the energy, and all the discomposing
qualities of Brougham. At last it seemed as if a
court-day was to be blessed by his absence, and the
judge was delighting himself with the prospect of
being allowed to deal with things as he chose; when
lo! his enemy appeared�tall, cool, and resolute.
'I declare,' said the justice, 'that man Broom, or
Brougham, is the torment of my life!' His revenge,
as usual, consisted in sneering at Brougham's elo-