7:1 



STOWELL, BARON. 



STRABO. 



752 



debted to the accident of his being a native of Durham. He was 

 now also elected by the same society a College tutor in the room 

 of the already celebrated linguist William (afterwards Sir William) 

 Jones, who had recently left Oxford for the metropolis. In 1767 he 

 took hia master's degree; and in May 1772, he proceeded B.C.L., 

 having by this time determined upon following the profession of an 

 advocate at Doctors' Commons. He had already, with a view to the 

 study of the law, entered himself at the Middle Temple, in June 

 1762. He was detained at the University however a few years longer 

 than he otherwise would have been by being elected in 1774 by the 

 members of convocation, after a contest, to the office of Caniden 

 Reader of Ancient History. The lectures which he delivered in this 

 capacity attracted crowded audiences, and brought him into high and 

 wide reputation. It is said that they still exist in manuscript. 



At last, in 1 776, he retired from the office of College tutor ; but he still 

 continued to reside at the University till after he had taken his degree 

 of D.C.L., which he did in 1779. On this occasion, in the University 

 phrase, he went out grand compounder, which means that he paid 

 the liigher fees exacted from graduates worth 300/. a year. He had, 

 no doubt, saved money from his income as Fellow, and his constantly 

 increasing receipts during the twelve years that he held the office of 

 College tutor ; but it is to be remembered that he had also inherited 

 a considerable property from his father, who died in 1776. It was 

 probably the independence to which he was thus raised that determined 

 him to resign his employment as a college tutor; but it appears that 

 old Mr. Scott's wealth was not quite so great as it has been stated to 

 be by Mr. Twiss in the first and second editions of hia ' Life of Lord 

 Eld on.' He left somewhat less than 20,000. 



He now entered at Doctors' Commons, and passed another year 

 partly in Oxford, partly in London, the rule being that no one shall 

 practise as an advocate till the expiration of that space of time after 

 his admission, which accordingly is called his year of silence. Dr. 

 Scott was called to the bar in February 1780. He was admitted into 

 the Faculty of Advocates at Doctors' Commons, according to Mr. 

 Surtees in one place in November 1779, in another place not till the 

 spring of 1780 ('Sketch,' pp. 26 and 61). So early however as in 

 December 1778, he had been elected a member of the famous Literary 

 Club, having been mainly indebted for that distinction to the favour 

 of Dr. Johnson, to whom he had been introduced in University College 

 by their common friend Chambers, afterwards Sir Robert, and now a 

 judge in India. Scott soon became a favourite with Johnson, whom 

 he_had accompanied from Newcastle to Edinburgh, when the latter 

 set out on his tour to the Hebrides, in the autumn of 1773. With 

 the patronage of Johnson, and his own 'clubable' qualities, Scott 

 rapidly made his way to distinction in the most intellectual society of 

 the English capital. 



His talents and learning, and the reputation he had brought from 

 the university, brought him a large practice in his profession from his 

 first entrance upon it. And his success as an advocate in no long time 

 led to promotion. In 1783 he was appointed to the office of Registrar 

 of the Court of Faculties. In 1788 the Bishop of London appointed 

 him Judge of the Consistory Court ; and the Archbishop of Canter- 

 bury, his Vicar-General, or Official Principal. In the same year he 

 was made Advocate-General, and knighted, and was also nominated 

 a Privy Councillor. In 1790 he was nominated by the archbishop 

 Master of the Faculties. Finally, in 1798, he was made Judge 

 of the High Court of Admiralty. Meanwhile, after having in 

 1780 been disappointed in his expectation of being sent into parlia- 

 ment as representative of the University of Oxford, and having been 

 unseated on a scrutiny in 1784, when he had been returned for 

 Downton, he had been a second time returned for that nomination 

 borough, in 1790, through the influence of ministers with the patron, 

 the Earl of Radnor. He was again returned for Downton to the next 

 parliament, which met in 1796. At last in March 1801, on a vacancy 

 occurring by the retirement of Francis Page, Esq., he obtained the 

 object of his early ambition by being elected member for his univer- 

 sity ; and that seat he retained as long as he continued a commoner. 



He had had reason to expect that he would have been raised to the 

 peerage in 1805 ; but some unexplained court intrigue interfered, and 

 he was not ennobled till the 21st of July 1821, when he was created 

 Baron Stowell, of Stowell park. He retained his place on the bench 

 till Christmas 1828. For the last two years of his life he was reduced 

 to a state of mental imbecility; and he died at his seat of Early 

 Court, Berks, after an illness of "a few days, on the afternoon of Thurs- 

 day, the 28th of January 1836, in his ninety-first year. He had been 

 twice married : first, in April 1781, to Anna Maria, eldest daughter 

 and co-heiress of John Bagnall, of Early Court, in the county of 

 Berks, Esq., who died in September 1809; secondly, on the 10th of 

 April 1813, to Louisa Katheriue, Marchioness Dowager of Sligo 

 (widow of the first Marquis and daughter of Earl Howe), his acquaint- 

 ance with whom had originated, singularly enough, in the circum- 

 stance of bis having presided in the preceding December at the 

 Admiralty Sessions at the Old Bailey, on the trial of her son, Lord Sligo, 

 for inveigling some seamen from one of the king's ships to serve on 

 board his yacht (for which he was sentenced to pay a fine of 5000Z., 

 and to be imprisoned four months in Newgate). This last proved 

 a very unsatisfactory connection; but the lady died in August 1817. 

 By his first wife Lord Stowell, besides a daughter who became the 



wife, first, of Thomas Townshend, Esq., secondly, of the late Viscount 

 Siduiouth, had a son, William, who died at the age of forty-two, about 

 two months before the death of his father. 



Lord Stowell is the highest English authority in his own depart- 

 ment of the law, including both ecclesiastical law and the law of 

 nations, if not the highest of all authorities upon the particular 

 questions which he had occasion to consider and decide ; for, having 

 produced no complete treatise upon either of the branches of juris- 

 prudence which he administered, he must be distinguished from the 

 great text-writers, between whom and him no comparison is properly 

 admissible. His judgments in the Consistory Court have been reported 

 very ably and carefully by Drs. Haggard and Phillimore ; those de- 

 livered by him in the Court of Admiralty, in an equally superior 

 manner, and, in part, with the advantages of his own revision, by 

 Drs. Robinson, Edwards, Dodson, and Haggard. Their characteristics 

 are the most complete mastery of all the learning of his subject, great 

 comprehensiveness of view, a penetrating sagacity in the disentangle- 

 ment of the essential points and governing principle of a case from 

 the confusion and sometimes apparent contradiction of details and 

 accessory circumstances, a remarkable faculty of luminous and striking 

 illustration, and all this combined and set off with a diction generally 

 of much precision, elegance, and expressiveness, though occasionally 

 somewhat diffuse and rhetorical. Some of Lord Sto well's judgments 

 may be called almost revelations of the law, being expositions of large 

 and intricate questions which had never before been thoroughly 

 investigated, but which he has completely cleared up and set at rest. 



As a politician this distinguished lawyer was, like his brother, Lord 

 Eldon, an uncompromising Conservative, shrinking from all change as 

 only the beginning of universal ruin. Except however by giving his 

 steady vote in support of his party and his principles, he very rarely 

 took part in the proceedings of either House of Parliament During 

 the first six years that he sat in the House of Commons, he only spoke 

 once; of some two or three displays which he afterwards made, a 

 speech of three hours' length, which he delivered on the 7th of April 

 1802, on moving for leave to bring in a bill for amending the statute 

 of the 21st of Henry VIII., respecting the non-residence of the clergy, 

 was the most memorable. He was also instrumental however in 

 carrying through the House several other measures having a reference 

 to the established church, of which he was the supporter on all occa- 

 sions, considering himself indeed as a sort of representative of the 

 clergy, both in his quality of. member for the University of Oxford, 

 and from his office as an ecclesiastical judge. 



(Memoir by Mr. Townsend in Law Magazine, No. xxxiii., reprinted, 

 with some alterations and additions, in the Annual Biography and 

 Obituary for 1837 ; article on Lords Stowell and Eldon in Law Review, 

 vol. i.; Lord Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen, second series; 

 Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stowell and Eldon, by William Edward 

 Surtees, D.C.L., 8vo, 1846; Anecdotes of Lord Stowell, in Gentleman's 

 Magazine for October, 1846.) 



STRABO (Srpa/Scoj/) was born at Amasia, in Cappadocia, before the 

 Christian era, but the time of his birth is unknown. His mother was 

 the granddaughter of Lagetas, who was one of the two sons of 

 Dorylaus, a skilful commander who had been employed by Mithridates 

 Euergetes. (Strab., p. 477, 478, ed. Casaub.) Moaphernes, who had 

 been employed by Mithridates Eupator, was an uncle of Strabo's 

 father (p. 499), or (according to the true reading of Strabo's text) the 

 uncle of his mother by the father's side. We are not informed who 

 his father was. It has been observed that his name, Strabo, is the 

 cognomen of Pompeius Strabo, the father of Pompey the Great, 

 whence it has been conjectured that on his father's side there was 

 some connection with the family of Pompey ; but what this connection 

 may have been, is purely a matter of conjecture. Strabo, the son, 

 received a good education. He studied at Nysa, under Aristodemus; 

 at Amisus, in Pontus, under Tyrannio ; and at Seleuceia of Cilicia, 

 under Xenarchus, who was a Peripatetic. He also visited Alexandria 

 in Egypt, where he had the instruction of Bocthus of Sidon, also a 

 Peripatetic ; and Tarsus, then a great school of learning, where he 

 studied under Athenodorus, who was a Stoic. It thus appears that 

 even during the course of his education Strabo must have been a 

 considerable traveller, and his own work shows that he must subse- 

 quently have visited many places. Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, as 

 far as the cataracts of Syene, were within the range of his travels. 

 In Egypt he became acquainted with ^Elius Gallus, who commanded 

 a Roman expedition into Arabia, in the time of Augustus, and he 

 visited in his company the vocal statue of Memuon at Thebes (p. 816). 

 He also travelled in Crete, Northern Greece, and probably some parts 

 of the Peloponnesus : he tells us that he saw Cleona) from the Acro- 

 corinthus; but his remarks about Myceuse seem to show that he did 

 not visit that part of the Peloponnesus at least (p. 377). He was per- 

 sonally acquainted with Italy, and he tells us that Elba, Corsica, and 

 Sardinia are visible from the heights of Populouium (p. 223), from 

 Which it is a probable conclusion that he had seen those places from 

 the Italian coast. It is also probable that he spent some time at 

 Rome, where he would find materials for his geographical work. 



There are various passages in his ' Geography ' which indicate about 

 what time they were written. In his sixth book (p. 288) he speaks 

 of Germauicus and Drusus as still living; and in the thirteenth 

 (p. 627) he speaks of Tiberius as the reigning emperor, and as having 



