RES JUDICATÆ

IN UNIFORM BINDING

RES JUDICATÆ

PAPERS AND ESSAYS

BY

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

AUTHOR OF 'OBITER DICTA,' ETC.

'It need hardly be added that such sentences do not any more than the records of the superior courts conclude as to matters which may or may not have been controverted.'—See Blackham's Case I. Salkeld 290

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1892

COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

PREFACE

The first two essays in this volume were composed as lectures, and are now printed for the first time; the others have endured that indignity before. The papers on 'The Letters of Charles Lamb' and 'Authors in Court' originally appeared in Macmillan's Magazine; and the short essays entitled 'William Cowper' and 'George Borrow' in the Reflector, a lively sheet which owed its existence to and derived its inspiration from the energy and genius of the late Mr. J. K. Stephen, whose too early death has not only eclipsed the gaiety of many gatherings, but has robbed the country of the service of a noble and truth-loving man.

The other papers appeared either in Scribner's Magazine or in the columns of the Speaker newspaper.

Although, by the kindness of my present publishers, I have always been practically a 'protected article' in the States, I cannot help expressing my pleasure in finding myself in the enjoyment of the same modest rights as an author in the new home of my people as in the old.

A. B.

Lincoln's Inn, London.

CONTENTS

SAMUEL RICHARDSON

A LECTURE

It is difficult to describe mankind either in a book or in a breath, and none but the most determined of philosophers or the most desperate of cynics have attempted to do so, either in one way or the other. Neither the philosophers nor the cynics can be said to have succeeded. The descriptions of the former are not recognisable and therefore as descriptions at all events, whatever may be their other merits, must be pronounced failures; whilst those of the cynics describe something which bears to ordinary human nature only the same sort of resemblance that chemically polluted waters bear to the stream as it flows higher up than the source of contamination, which in this case is the cynic himself.

But though it is hard to describe mankind, it is easy to distinguish between people. You may do this in a great many different ways: for example, and to approach my subject, there are those who can read Richardson's novels, and those who cannot. The inevitable third-class passenger, no doubt, presents himself and clamours for a ticket: I mean the man or woman who has never tried. But even a lecturer should have courage, and I say boldly that I provide no accommodation for that person tonight. If he feels aggrieved, let him seek his remedy—elsewhere.

Mr. Samuel Richardson, of Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, printer, was, if you have only an eye for the outside, a humdrum person enough. Witlings, writing about him in the magazines, have often, out of consideration for their pretty little styles, and in order to avoid the too frequent repetition of his highly respectable if unromantic name, found it convenient to dub him the 'little printer.'

He undoubtedly was short of stature, and in later life, obese in figure, but had he