bold and sweeping
character which often belongs to them makes them more instructive as
well as more agreeable reading than the judgments of most modern
judges, whose commonest fault is a timidity which tries to escape, by
dwelling on the details of the particular case, from the enunciation
of a definite general principle. Positive and definite Jessel always
was. As he put it himself: "I may be wrong, but I never have any
doubts."

At the Bar, Jessel had been far from popular; for his manners were
unpolished, and his conduct towards other counsel overbearing. On
the Bench he improved, and became liked as well as respected. There
was a sort of rough _bonhomie_ about him, and though he could be
disagreeable on occasions to a leading counsel, especially if brought
from the common-law bar into his court, he showed a good-humoured
wish to deal gently with young or inexperienced barristers. There
was also an obvious anxiety to do justice, an impatience of mere
technicalities, and a readiness, remarkable in so strong-willed a
man, to hear what could be said against his own opinion, and to
reconsider it. Besides, a profession is naturally proud of any one
whose talents adorn it, and whose eminence seems to be communicated
to the whole body.

Ever since, under the Plantagenet kings, the Chancery became a law
court, the office of Master of the Rolls had been that of a judge of
first instance. In 1881 its character was changed, and its occupant
placed at the head of the Court of Appeal. Thus it was as an appellate
judge that Jessel latterly sat, giving no less satisfaction in that
capacity than in his former one, and being indeed confessedly the
strongest judicial intellect (except Lord Cairns) on the Bench.
Outside his professional duties, his chief interest was in the
University of London, at which he had himself graduated. He was a
member of its senate, and busied himself with its examinations, being
up till the last excessively fond of work, and finding that of a judge
who sits for five or six hours daily insufficient to satisfy his
appetite. He was not what would be called a highly cultivated man,
although he knew a great deal beyond the field of law, mathematics,
for instance, and Hebrew literature and botany, for he had been
brought up in a not very refined circle, and had been absorbed in
legal work during the best years of his life. But his was an
intelligence of extraordinary power and flexibility, eminently
practical