engaged; and the entire conduct
of the cause, up to the hour of trial, confidently intrusted to his
masterly management. Amongst many others may be mentioned the great will
case of _Panton v. Williams_, and that of James Wood of Gloucester, and
other well-known cases. He was, without exception, one of the ablest
_pleaders_ with whom I ever came into contact: equally quick, sure, and
long-headed in selecting his point of attack or defence with reference
to the ultimate decision, skilfully escaping from difficulties, and
throwing his opponent in the way of them, and of such, too, as not many
would have had the sagacity to have foreseen, or thought of speculating
upon. A recent volume of the Law Reports contains a case which, though
his name does not appear in it, attests his appreciated superiority. It
involved a legal point of much difficulty, and so troublesome in its
facts as to have presented insuperable obstacles to two gentlemen
successively, one under the bar, the other at the bar, and both eminent
for their knowledge and experience. Their pleadings were, however,
successfully demurred to; and then their client was induced to lay the
case before Mr. Smith, who took quite a new view of the matter, in
accordance with which he framed the pleadings, and when the case came on
to be argued by the gentleman, (an eminent Queen's Counsel,) who has
recently mentioned it to me, he succeeded, and without difficulty. "I
never," said he, "saw a terribly bepuzzled case so completely
disentangled--I never saw the real point so beautifully put forward: we
won by doing little else than stating the course of the pleadings; the
court holding that the point was almost too clear for argument." I could
easily multiply such instances. Mr. Smith had a truly astonishing
facility in mastering the most intricate state of facts; as rapidly
acquiring a knowledge of them, as he accurately and tenaciously retained
even the slightest circumstances. He seldom used precedents, (often
observing that "no man who understood his business needed them, except
in very special occasions;") and, though a rapid draughtsman, it was
rarely, indeed, that he laid himself open to attack in matters of even
mere formal inaccuracy, while he was lynx-eyed enough to those of his
opponents. When _he_ was known to be the party who had demurred, his
adversaries began seriously to think of _amending_! When his cases were
ripe for argument _in banc_, he took extreme pains to