ech in a public assembly is a knack. Now, I honor Thurlow, sir;
Thurlow is a fine fellow: he fairly puts his mind to yours." Of
Thurlow, when he had mounted the woolsack, Johnson also observed--"I
would prepare myself for no man in England but Lord Thurlow. When I am
to meet him, I would wish to know a day before." From the many stories
told of Thurlow and ebriosity, one may be here taken and brought under
the reader's notice--not because it has wit or humor to recommend it,
but because it presents the Chancellor in company with another
port-loving lawyer, William Pitt, from whose fame, by-the-by, Lord
Stanhope has recently removed the old disfiguring imputations of
sottishness. "Returning," says Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, a poor authority,
but piquant gossip-monger, "by way of frolic, very late at night, on
horseback, to Wimbledon, from Addiscombe, the seat of Mr. Jenkinson,
near Croydon, where the party had dined, Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor,
Pitt, and Dundas, found the turnpike gate, situate between Tooting and
Streatham, thrown open. Being elevated above their usual prudence, and
having no servant near them, they passed through the gate at a brisk
pace, without stopping to pay the toll, regardless of the remonstrances
and threats of the turnpike man, who running after them, and believing
them to belong to some highwaymen who had recently committed some
depredation on that road, discharged the contents of his blunderbuss at
their backs. Happily he did no injury."

Throughout their long lives the brothers Scott were steady, and,
according to the rules of the present day, inordinate drinkers of port
wine. As a young barrister, John Scott could carry more port with
decorum than any other man of his inn; and in the days when he is
generally supposed to have lived on sprats and table-beer, he seldom
passed twenty-four hours without a bottle of his favorite wine.
Prudence, however, made him careful to avoid intoxication, and when he
found that a friendship often betrayed him into what he thought
excessive drinking, he withdrew from the dangerous connexion. "I see
your friend Bowes very often," he wrote in May, 1778, a time when Mr.
Bowes was his most valuable client; "but I dare not dine with him above
once in three months, as there is no getting away before midnight; and,
indeed, one is sure to be in a condition in which no man would wish to
be in the streets at any other season." Of the quantities imbibed at
these three-mon