244 THE SCOTCH BAR. [1800. 



position. His classical education was that of an 

 accomplished scholar. With all the poets especially, 

 whether of Greece or of Rome, he had a most familiar 

 acquaintance ; and his skill in these languages re- 

 mained unimpaired through after-life, insomuch that 

 to the last he read for relaxation the Greek classics 

 almost as easily as the Latin. It was probably from 

 his natural love of poetry that he somewhat under- 

 valued the great orators of the Attic school ; partly, 

 too, from a proneness to paradox, allied with the 

 extraordinary ingenuity of his mind and his disposi- 

 tion to grapple with great difficulties. In the Specula- 

 tive Society he bore a most distinguished part ; and 

 its members never can forget the brilliant display so 

 often made in that seminary, of his singular readiness 

 in debate, the subtlety of his reasoning, and the 

 extraordinary liveliness of his fancy a fancy ever 

 under control, and used always for the purpose of 

 aiding the argument, or arriving by a short route at 

 the conclusion. I well remember a speech in which 

 the resources of the Russian empire having been 

 largely dwelt upon as proving its foreign influence, 

 and the mild course of criminal justice under the 

 Empress Elizabeth, as showing how a despotism 

 might be administered in mercy, he gave such a 

 picture of the colossal body as, without reducing its 

 dimensions, made it viewed without alarm ; and such 

 a sketch of Elizabeth's clemency as rendered the 

 Siberian journey more horrible to contemplate than 

 the passage across the Stygian ferry. The picture of 



