o my best to make the case as plain as--as--the nose on your lordship's
face." In this case the personality was uttered in hot blood, by a man
who deemed himself to be striking the enemy of his professional
reputation.

If they were not supported by incontrovertible testimony, the admirers
of the great Sir Edward Coke would reject as spurious many of the
overbearing rejoinders which escaped his lips in courts of justice. His
tone in his memorable altercation with Bacon at the bar of the Court of
Exchequer speaks ill for the courtesy of English advocates in
Elizabeth's reign; and to any student who can appreciate the dignified
formality and punctilious politeness that characterized English
gentlemen in the old time, it is matter of perplexity how a man of
Coke's learning, capacity, and standing, could have marked his contempt
for 'Cowells Interpreter,' by designating the author in open court Dr.
Cowheel. Scarcely in better taste were the coarse personalities with
which, as Attorney General, he deluged Garnet the Jesuit, whom he
described as "a Doctor of Jesuits; that is, a Doctor of six D's--as
Dissimulation, Deposing of princes, Disposing of kingdoms, Daunting and
Deterring of Subjects, and Destruction."

In comparatively recent times few judges surpassed Thurlow in
overbearing insolence to the bar. To a few favorites, such as John Scott
and Kenyon, he could be consistently indulgent, although even to them
his patronage was often disagreeably contemptuous; but to those who
provoked his displeasure by a perfectly independent and fearless bearing
he was a malignant persecutor. For instance, in his animosity to Richard
Pepper Arden (Lord Alvanley), he often forgot his duty as a judge and
his manners as a gentleman. John Scott, on one occasion, rising in the
Court of Chancery to address the court after Arden, who was his leader
in the cause, and had made an unusually able speech, Lord Thurlow had
the indecency to say, "Mr. Scott, I am glad to find that you are engaged
in the cause, for I now stand some chance of knowing something about the
matter." To the Chancellor's habitual incivility and insolence it is
allowed that Arden always responded with dignity and self-command,
humiliating his powerful and ungenerous adversary by invariable
good-breeding. Once, through inadvertence, he showed disrespect to the
surly Chancellor, and then he instantly gave utterance to a cordial
apology, which Thurlow was not generous enough to a