hink ye'll
alloo that I hae checkmated you for ance."

Of all the bloodthirsty wearers of the ermine, no one, since the opening
of the eighteenth century, has fared worse than Sir Francis Page--the
virulence of whose tongue and the cruelty of whose nature were marks for
successive satirists. In one of his Imitations of Horace, Pope says--

"Slanderer, poison dread from Delia's rage,
Hard words or hanging, if your judge be Page."

In the same spirit the poet penned the lines of the 'Dunciad'--

"Mortality, by her false guardians drawn,
Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn,
Gasps, as they straighten at each end the cord,
And dies, when Dulness gives her----the Sword."

Powerless to feign insensibility to the blow, Sir Francis openly fitted
this _black_ cap to his dishonored head by sending his clerk to
expostulate with the poet. The ill-chosen ambassador performed his
mission by showing that, in Sir Francis's opinion, the whole passage
would be sheer nonsense, unless 'Page' were inserted in the vacant
place. Johnson and Savage took vengeance on the judge for the judicial
misconduct which branded the latter poet a murderer; and Fielding, in
'Tom Jones,' illustrating by a current story the offensive levity of the
judge's demeanor at capital trials, makes him thus retort on a
horse-stealer: "Ay! thou art a lucky fellow; I have traveled the circuit
these forty years, and never found a horse in my life; but I'll tell
thee what, friend, thou wast more lucky than thou didst know of; for
thou didst not only find a horse, but a halter too, I promise thee."
This scandal to his professional order was permitted to insult the
humane sentiments of the nation for a long period. Born in 1661, he died
in 1741, whilst he was still occupying a judicial place; and it is said
of him, that in his last year he pointed the ignominious story of his
existence by a speech that soon ran the round of the courts. In answer
to an inquiry for his health, the octogenarian judge observed, "My dear
sir--you see how it fares with me; I just manage to keep _hanging on,
hanging on_." This story is ordinarily told as though the old man did
not see the unfavorable significance of his words; but it is probable
that, he uttered them wittingly and with, a sneer--in the cynicism and
shamelessness of old age.

A man of finer stuff and of various merits, but still famous as a
'hanging judge,' was Sir Francis Buller, who also made himself od