Grampian Club > Boswelliana

BOSWELLIANA. 275
ingenuity, but had a very weak voice and a diminutive appearance
and manner. I said his pleading was like Giardini's playing
on a child's fiddle/'
" The extracts of a book given in the review often please us
much more than the book itself does. The extracts are embel-
lished and illustrated with criticism. It is like collops well-
seasoned and served up with a good sauce, which are better
eating than the sirloin or rump from whence they are cut.
(Or, thus one eats with greater relish slices or collops well
seasoned and served up with a good sauce, than one does the
sirloin or rump from whence they are cut)."
" I said the Court of Session was much more quiet and
agreeable when President Dundas * was absent. ' When he is
there,' said I, ' you feel yourself as in a bleachfield with a large
dog in it. He is chained and does not bite you. But he barks
woiof, luowf, and makes you start ; your nerves are hurt by him.' "
"Mr. Alexander Murray, t said that the President Dundas
upon the bench was like Lord Kelly playing in a concert — very
quick, loud, and rumbling. Nothing can be a more lively
representation of his manner than this, when you harangue a
little with the president's blustering tone and bounces of voice
at intervals — ' I cannot agree to give you this cause against the
Duke of Gordon, sitting here as judge on great revolution
principles,' &c."
" I said that Mr. Charles Hay j and I, who studied Scotch law
died on the 28th March, 1823, in his eighty-ninth year. The
Most Eeverend Archibald Campbell Tait, D.C.L., Archbishop of Can-
terbury, is his grandson.
* See supra, p. 255.
■j- Alexander Murray was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1758, and
three years afterwards succeeded his father as sheriff of Peeblesshire.
In 1775 he was appointed Solicitor- General, and was in 1780 chosen
M.P. for Peeblesshire. He was promoted to the bench in 1783,
with the title of Lord Henderland. He died 16th March, 1795.
X Charles Hay passed advocate in 1768, and with the title of Lord