iations. For instance, it is recorded with much circumstantiality
that on circuit, accosting a junior who had lost his portmanteau from
the back of a post-chaise, he said, with mock gravity, "Young gentlemen,
henceforth imitate the elephant, the wisest of animals, who always
_carries his trunk before him_;" and on equally good authority it is
stated that when Polito, the keeper of the Exeter 'Change Menagerie, met
with a similar accident and brought an action for damages against the
proprietor of the coach from the hind-boot of which his property had
disappeared, Erskine, speaking for the defence, told the jury that they
would not be justified in giving a verdict favorable to the man, who,
though he actually possessed an elephant, had neglected to imitate its
prudent example and carry his trunk before him.

As a _litterateur_ Erskine met with meagre success; but some of his
squibs and epigrams are greatly above the ordinary level of '_vers de
societe_.' For instance this is his:--

"DE QUODAM REGE.

"I may not do right, though I ne'er can do wrong;
I never can die, though I can not live long;
My jowl it is purple, my hand it is fat--
Come, riddle my riddle. What is it? _What? What?_"

The liveliest illustrations of Erskine's proverbial egotism are the
squibs of political caricaturists; and from their humorous
exaggerations it is difficult to make a correct estimate of the lengths
of absurdity to which his intellectual vanity and self-consciousness
sometimes carried him. From what is known of his disposition it seems
probable that the sarcasms aimed by public writers at his infirmity
inclined him to justify their attacks rather than to disprove them by
his subsequent demeanor, and that some of his most extravagant outbursts
of self-assertion were designed in a spirit of bravado and reckless
good-nature to increase the laughter which satirists had raised against
him. However this may be, his conduct drew upon him blows that would
have ruffled the composure of any less self-complacent or less amiable
man. The Tory prints habitually spoke of him as Counsellor Ego whilst he
was at the bar; and when it was known that he had accepted the seals,
the opposition journals announced that he would enter the house as
"Baron Ego, of Eye, in the county of Suffolk." Another of his nicknames
was _Lord Clackmannan_; and Cobbett published the following notice of an
harangue made by the fluent advocate in the House of Com