4 HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM. 



along with the late Lord Melville, in the year 1777. The late Lord Jeffrey 

 became a pupil of the same m aster in 1731. Among the schoolfellows of Henry 

 Brougham (amounting, as I have said, to 161) were several youths afterwards 

 highly eminent, of whom I make special mention of James Abercromby, after- 

 wards Speaker of the House of Commons, and Lord Dunfermline ; and Joseph 

 Muter, subsequently recognised by the title of Sir Joseph Straton, one of the 

 greatest benefactors of this University. 



" Lord Brougham was dux of the Eector's class in 1791. I personally 

 know how pre-eminently conspicuous at this University his attainments were, not 

 in one or two branches of study, but in all to which his attention was directed ; 

 and particularly in mathematics and natural philosophy, as well as in law, in 

 metaphysics, and in political science. Some of these shreds of information may 

 not be familiarly known to every one." 



In a later portion of his Address, the Principal, who himself entered the 

 University as a pupil in 1791, enumerated the following as having been educated 

 there, contemporaneously with, or subsequently to, Lord Brougham : — 

 Thomas M'Crie, the historian ; George Cranstoun ; Lord Corehouse ; Mount- 

 stewart Elphinstone ; Peter Roget ; George Birkbeck ; Sir David Brewster; 

 Prancis Horner ; Henry Cockburn ; Henry Petty, (now Marquess of Lans- 

 downe) ; John Leyden ; Henry Temple, (now Lord Palmerston) ; the Earl of 

 Haddington; Lord" Webb Seymour; Lord Dudley; the Earl of Minto ; Lord 

 Glenelg; Lord Langdale ; and Lord John Russell. 



About a year after his matriculation, when not more than seventeen, 

 young Brougham wrote a paper which he forwarded to the Royal Society, en- 

 titled " An Essay on the Inflection and Reflection of Light," which was printed 

 in the Philosophical Transactions for 1796. In the following year he contributed 

 another paper on the same subject; and in 1798, "General Theorems, chiefly 

 Porisms, in the Higher Geometry," which the author thus introduces : — " The 

 following are a few propositions that have occurred to me in the course of a con- 

 siderable degree of attention which I have happened to bestow on that interest- 

 ing, though difficult branch of speculative mathematics, the higher geometry. 

 They are all, in some degree, connected; the greater part refer to the come 

 hyperbola, as related to a variety of other causes. Almost the whole are of that 

 kind called porisms, whose nature and origin is now well known: and if that 

 mathematician to whom we owe the first distinct and popular account of this 

 formerly mysterious, but most interesting subject,* should chance to peruse 

 these pages, he will find in them additional proofs of the accuracy which charac- 

 terizes his inquiry into the discovery of this singularly-beautiful species of pro- 

 position." 



These papers, though the fact of their author's extreme youth was unknown, 

 attracted some notice among scientific men both at home and abroad. 



Having chosen the Scottish Bar as his profession, and completed his legal 

 studies at Edinburgh, Mr. Brougham, after a tour in Prussia and Holland in the 

 company of Mr. Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de Rothsay, was admitted a 

 member of the Edinburgh Society of Advocates in 1S00. His acquaintance with 

 Horner, Jeffrey, and other risiug young men of the Scottish Whig party began 

 about this time : and he was one of the most prominent members of the re- 

 nowned Speculative Society, in which these and other Scotchmen, afterwards 

 known to fame in various capacities, first cultivated their habits of extempo- 

 raneous debate. In the year 1802, when the Edinburgh Review was started, 

 Mr. Brougham soon became one of the chief contributors. "After the third 

 number," says Jeffrey, " he was admitted, and did more for us than anybody." 

 They were all young men. Allen was thirty-two years of age; Sydney Smith 

 was thirty-one ; Jeffrey was twenty-nine; Thomas Brown, the metaphysician, 

 was twenty-f our j Horner was twenty -four ; and Brougham was twenty-three. 

 Brougham, though the youngest, had the greatest share of literary ambition. 

 While writing his first articles for the 'Review, he was preparing for" the press a 

 more elaborate work in his own name, entitled An Enquiry into Vie Colonial 

 Policy of the European Potcert, which was published in two volumes at Edin- 

 burgh in Ho:'., and was considered an extraordinary work for so young a man, 

 both in reaped of knowledge and in respect of boldness of opinion. After this 

 work had been published, he concentrated his literary efforts on the Ueiiev. 

 'J In- ear!, numbers had been so immediately and largely successful that Con- 



See Mr. Playfair's Paper in vol. ii. of the Edinburgh Transactions. 



