s of which office
he for some years performed to the entire satisfaction of the governor.
His letters thence, I have understood, contained beautiful and vivid
descriptions of

"That happy island where huge lemons grow"

[he was an admirer of scenery and nature], and that the wit, graphic
portraitures of the men in office on the island, the general chit chat,
scandle and fun, intermixed with politics, occasional rhymes, &c., put
the reader [since dead] of a few of them, in mind of the letters of Lord
Byron. After his return home, he took chambers in Fig Tree or Elm Court,
in the Temple, read and awaited clients, and went the Norfolk circuit;
but, alas! few profitable knocks came to his door, and the circuit
yielded rather expense than profit; but on he went struggling and
struggling, till at last his talents were acknowledged; and the four
years preceding his death, he was an eminent leader, and engaged in
almost every cause throughout his circuit, and rapidly gaining a
reputation in London from "the very eloquent, bold, and honest style of
his defence," for Mary Ann Carlile, who was prosecuted, by what was then
styled the Constitutional Association, for publishing a libel upon the
government, and the constitution of this country. The trial ended after
a brilliant speech of the defendant's counsel, full of argument,
eloquence, and ability, in the dismissal of the jury, after being locked
up all night; the counsel for the prosecution, the late Mr. Baron Gurney,
consenting to their discharge. The report of the trial, and Henry
Cooper's speech in full, was printed and published by the notorious
Richard Carlile, who then kept a shop in Fleet Street. At the early age
of forty my brother died, and he was then looked on by the profession, as
a man, who, had he lived, must have achieved the highest honours in it.
He was an ardent admirer of, and some of his friends were pleased to say,
a close imitator of the oratory of Lord Erskine, with whom, till he died,
he was on terms of the greatest intimacy. In fact he was writing his
life for publication, by the express desire of Erskine himself, when
death staid the pen. Alas! but a few pages of it were written, and those
in the rough, I will, however, lay them, ere I have done, before the
reader.

Henry, the last four years of his going circuit, and when his abilities
were acknowledged, was sometimes opposed to his father, to the no small
pleasure and amusement of the Norw