( 233 ) 

 DEATH AND CHARACTER OF LORD TENTERDEN. 



BY SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. 



LORD TENTERDEN died on Sunday,, 4th of November, 1832, aged 

 severity years, and about three weeks. No abler or better judge ever 

 presided over the King's Bench. His knowledge of the law was 

 profound and unerring. He had a natural solidity of judgment, and 

 he had improved it by the highest cultivation. He had distinguished 

 himself at the University of Oxford, as a perfect classical scholar ; 

 and he wrote Latin poetry to the last. As a judge he was eminently 

 skilful in seizing the pith of the question, and throwing off the dis- 

 traction of all irrevelant or collateral matter. Retaining this sole 

 clue, he simplified all arguments and debates, nor could ever be drawn 

 astray by wild oratory or ingenious sophistry : his sole object was to de- 

 the law, not to make it. He did not enter into assumed meanings or 

 intentions : he took it as it was. He allowed no prejudices to ope- 

 rate, he patiently waited till the case arrived at the stage where the 

 point became developed, and from that nothing could divert him. 

 He allowed no dust to be thrown into his eyes, however bright the 

 eloquence that threw the sparks. 



He was a master, first, of all the principles of the law, and se- 

 condly, of all its technicalities ; in him one was made to assist the 

 other ; the latter were guide-posts which aided the memory, and gave 

 precision to the rule. The laborious office of a Chief Justice of 

 England in these days is too great to be even conceived by a com- 

 mon mind. 



There have been judges who have loved display, and attempted to 

 grapple with irrelevant matter. There is more than enough for any, the 

 strongest mind, to do in deciding on the true question at issue, in the 

 innumerable cases which call for a chief's judgment. As ornament 

 is a mark of weakness in literary composition, so is discursive argu- 

 of ignorance in a judge : where he only guesses instead of knowing, 

 he argues. Lord Tenterden knew the whole law, both in its fountains 

 and its forms, and never resorted to these artifices. He was more able, 

 therefore as a judge than as an advocate. He came to the bar with 

 all the advantages of long and regular culture and established repu- 

 tation. At school he had been eminent for classical erudition from 

 an early age : thence he obtained a scholarship at Corpus Christi Col- 

 lege, Oxford, in 1781 ; and here he first obtained the under gradu- 

 ate's prize, in the University, for Latin verses ; and afterwards the 

 Bachelor's prize for the English prose-essay .He was about that time 

 tutor to Judge Buller's son, and, by the recommendation of that emi- 

 nent judge took the profession of the bar instead of the church. 



Thus he entered himself of the Middle Temple about 1788, being 

 then A. M. And though he came thus late, with the fame of an 

 eminent scholar, he patiently submitted, at the recommendation of 

 Judge Buller, to occupy himself a few months in the office of Sandys 

 and Co. eminent solicitors in Craig's-court, that he might become ac- 

 quainted with the first forms of practice. He then became a pupil of 



M. M. No. 99. 2 H 



