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Proceedings of the Royal Society 
caused the late Sir John Bowring to give Lord Neaves the nick- 
name of “ Wit and Wisdom.” 
Lord Neaves, who was of Forfarshire extraction, was born in 
Edinburgh in the year 1800. He was educated at the Edinburgh 
High School, where he exhibited precocious scholarship, marked 
intellectual tastes, and that quick, capacious, and retentive memory, 
“ wax to receive and marble to retain,” by which he was dis- 
tinguished to the very end of his life. He was dux of the High 
School in 1814 ; and then passed through the Edinburgh Univer- 
sity with distinction, though it does not appear that he graduated 
— graduation not being the custom in those days. In 1822 he 
was called to the bar, which then included among its numbers a 
brilliant band of wits and scholars ; — the walls of Parliament House 
then resounded with the talk and the laughter of Lockhart, Pro- 
fessor Wilson, Professor Cheape, Sir William Hamilton, George 
Moir, Patrick Fraser Tytler, and Patrick Robertson : while among 
the older generation on the Bench were Cranstoun, Jeffrey, 
Murray, and Cockburn. Of the spirit of those times Lord 
Neaves was the last representative. In 1841 he was made Advo- 
cate-Depute in 1845, Sheriff of Orkney ; in 1852, Solicitor 
General; in 1853, on the death of Lord Cockburn, he was ap- 
pointed a Judge in the Court of Session; and in 1858 he became a 
Lord of Justiciary. The verdict of Lord leaves’ professional 
brethren upon his legal qualifications appears to be that he was a 
great “ case lawyer ” — his vast and accurate memory giving him 
peculiar facilities in referring to precedents, and that he was highly 
distinguished as a criminal Judge. 
Side by side with the faithful discharge of his professional duties, 
Lord leaves always maintained the part of the man of letters. 
From the year 1830 onwards he was a constant contributor, both 
of prose and verse, to “Blackwood’s Magazine.” He was the 
author of a series of articles, in that periodical, on Grimm’s 
“ Teutonic Grammar ” and Grimm’s “ Philological Magazine,” 
which excited much interest at the time, and the republication of 
which has often been urged. But his most lasting literary pro- 
duction will probably be his volume of “ Songs and Verses, social 
and scientific, by an old contributor to ‘ Maga,’ ” which was first 
published in 1868. The motto of this volume might be “ Riden- 
