my father, was born in 1729, and educated to the
profession of a Writer to the Signet. He was the eldest of a large
family, several of whom I shall have occasion to mention with a
tribute of sincere gratitude. My father was a singular instance of a
man rising to eminence in a profession for which nature had in some
degree unfitted him. He had indeed a turn for labor, and a pleasure in
analyzing the abstruse feudal doctrines connected with conveyancing,
which would probably have rendered him unrivalled in the line of a
special pleader, had there been such a profession in Scotland; but in
the actual business of the profession which he embraced, in that sharp
and intuitive perception which is necessary in driving bargains for
himself and others, in availing himself of the wants, necessities,
caprices, and follies of some, and guarding against the knavery and
malice of others, Uncle Toby himself could not have conducted himself
with more simplicity than my father. Most attorneys have been
suspected, more or less justly, of making their own fortune at the
expense of their clients--my father's fate was to vindicate his
calling from {p.007} the stain in one instance, for in many cases
his clients contrived to ease him of considerable sums. Many
worshipful and be-knighted names occur to my memory, who did him the
honor to run in his debt to the amount of thousands, and to pay him
with a lawsuit, or a commission of bankruptcy, as the case happened.
But they are gone to a different accounting, and it would be
ungenerous to visit their disgrace upon their descendants. My father
was wont also to give openings, to those who were pleased to take
them, to pick a quarrel with him. He had a zeal for his clients which
was almost ludicrous: far from coldly discharging the duties of his
employment towards them, he thought for them, felt for their honor as
for his own, and rather risked disobliging them than neglecting
anything to which he conceived their duty bound them. If there was an
old mother or aunt to be maintained, he was, I am afraid, too apt to
administer to their necessities from what the young heir had destined
exclusively to his pleasures. This ready discharge of obligations
which the Civilians tell us are only natural and not legal, did not, I
fear, recommend him to his employers. Yet his practice was, at one
period of his life, very extensive. He understood his business
theoretically, and was early introduced to it by a partn