man heads that surged round St.
Sepulchre's Church at the other extremity of the dismal thoroughfare.

At the subsequent trial of John Horne Tooke, Sir John Scott, unwilling
that Erskine should enjoy a monopoly of theatrical artifice, endeavored
to create a diversion in favor of the government by a display of those
lachrymose powers, which Byron ridiculed in the following century. "I
can endure anything but an attack on my good name," exclaimed the
Attorney General, in reply to a criticism directed against his mode of
conducting the prosecution; "my good name is the little patrimony I have
to leave to my children, and, with God's help, gentlemen of the jury, I
will leave it to them unimpaired." As he uttered these words tears
suffused the eyes which, at a later period of the lawyer's career, used
to moisten the woolsack in the House of Lords--

"Because the Catholics would not rise,
In spite of his prayers and his prophecies."

For a moment Horne Tooke, who persisted in regarding all the
circumstances of his perilous position as farcical, smiled at the
lawyer's outburst in silent amusement; but as soon as he saw a
sympathetic brightness in the eyes of one of the jury, the dexterous
demagogue with characteristic humor and effrontery accused Sir John
Mitford, the Solicitor General, of needless sympathy with the
sentimental disturbance of his colleague. "Do you know what Sir John
Mitford is crying about?" the prisoner inquired of the jury. "He is
thinking of the destitute condition of Sir John Scott's children, and
the _little patrimony_ they are likely to divide among them." The jury
and all present were not more tickled by the satire upon the Attorney
General than by the indignant surprise which enlivened the face of Sir
John Mitford, who was not at all prone to tears, and had certainly
manifested no pity for John Scott's forlorn condition.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"THE PLAY'S THE THING."

Following the example set by the nobility in their castles and civic
palaces, the Inns of Court set apart certain days of the year for
feasting and revelry, and amongst the diversions with which the lawyers
recreated themselves at these periods of rejoicing, the rude
Pre-Shakespearian dramas took a prominent place. So far back as A.D.
1431, the Masters of the Lincoln's Inn Bench restricted the number of
annual revels to four--"one at the feast of All-Hallown, another at the
feast of St. Erkenwald; the third at the feast of