ACTORS AT THE BAR.

Some years since the late Sergeant Wilkins was haranguing a crowd of enlightened electors from the hustings of a provincial borough, when a stentorian voice exclaimed, “Go home, you rope-dancer!” Disdaining to notice the interruption, the orator continued his speech for fifty seconds, when the same voice again cried out, “Go home, you rope-dancer!” A roar of laughter followed the reiteration of the insult; and in less than two minutes thrice fifty unwashed blackguards were roaring with all the force of their lungs, “Ah-h-h Go home, you rope-dancer!” Not slow to see the moaning of the words, the unabashed lawyer, who in his life had been a dramatic actor, replied with his accustomed readiness and effrontery. A young man unacquainted with mobs would have descanted indignantly and with many theatrical flourishes on the dignity and usefulness of the player’s vocation; an ordinary demagogue would have frankly admitted the discourteous impeachment, and pleaded in mitigation that he had always acted in leading parts and for high salaries. Sergeant Wilkins took neither of those courses, for he knew his audience, and was aware that his connection with the stage was an affair about which he had better say as little as possible. Instead of appealing to their generosity, or boasting of his histrionic eminence, he threw himself broadly on their sense of humor. Drawing himself up to his full height, the big, burly man advanced to the marge of the platform, and extending his right hand with an air of authority, requested silence by the movement of his arm. The sign was instantly obeyed; for having enjoyed their laugh, the multitude wished for the rope-dancer’s explanation. As soon as the silence was complete, he drew back two paces, put himself in an oratorical pose, as though he were about to speak, and then, disappointing the expectations of the assembly, deliberately raised forwards and upwards the skirts of his frock-coat. Having thus arranged his drapery he performed a slow gyration presenting his huge round shoulders and unwieldy legs to the populace. When his back was turned to the crowd, he stooped and made a low obeisance to his vacant chair, thereby giving the effect of caricature to the outlines of his most protuberant and least honorable part. This pantomime lasted scarcely a minute; and before the spectators could collect themselves to resent so extraordinary an affront, the sergeant once again faced them, and in a clear, rich, jovial tone exclaimed, “He called me a rope-dancer! after what you have seen, do you believe him?”

With the exception of the man who started the cry, every person in the dense multitude was convulsed with laughter; and till the end of the election no turbulent rascal ventured to repeat the allusion to the sergeant’s former occupation. At a moment of embarrassment, Mr. Disraeli, in the course of one of his youthful candidatures, created a diversion in his favor by telling a knot of unruly politicians that he stood on his head. With less wit, and much less decency, but with equal good fortune, Sergeant Wilkins took up his position on a baser part of his frame.

The electors who respected Mr. Wilkins because he was a successful barrister, whilst they reproached him with having been a stage-player, were unaware how close an alliance exists between the art of the actor and the art of the advocate. To lawyers of every grade and speciality the histrionic faculty is a useful power; but to the advocate who wishes to sway the minds of jurors it is a necessary endowment. Comprising several distinct abilities, it not only enables the orator to rouse the passions and to play on the prejudices of his hearers, but it preserves him from the errors of judgment, tone, emphasis in short, from manifold blunders of indiscretion and tact by which verdicts are lost quite as often as through defect of evidence and merit. Like the dramatic performer, the court-speaker, especially at the common law bar, has to assume various parts. Not only should he know the facts of his brief, but he should thoroughly identify himself with the client for whom his eloquence is displayed. On the theatrical stage mimetic business is cut up into specialities, men in most cases filling the parts of men, whilst actresses fill the parts of women; the young representing the characteristics of youth, whilst actors with special endowments simulate the qualities of old age; some confining themselves to light and trivial characters, whilst others are never required to strut before the scenes with hurried paces, or to speak in phrases that lack dignity and fine sentiment. But the popular advocate must in turn fill every rôle. If childish simplicity be his client’s leading characteristic, his intonations will express pliancy and foolish confidence; or if it is desirable that the jury should appreciate his client’s honesty of purpose, he speaks with a voice of blunt, bluff, manly frankness. Whatever quality the advocate may wish to represent as the client’s distinctive characteristic, it must be suggested to the jury by mimetic artifice of the finest sort. Speaking of a famous counsel, an enthusiastic juryman once said to this writer “In my time I have heard Sir Alexander in pretty nearly every part: I’ve heard him as an old man and a young woman; I have heard him when he has been a ship run down at sea, and when he has been an oil-factory in a state of conflagration; once, when I was foreman of a jury, I saw him poison his intimate friend, and another time he did the part of a pious bank director in a fashion that would have skinned the eyelids of Exeter Hall: he ain’t bad as a desolate widow with nine children, of which the eldest is under eight years of age; but if ever I have to listen to him again, I should like to see him as a young lady of good connexions who has been seduced by an officer of the Guards.” In the days of his forensic triumphs Henry Brougham was remarkable for the mimetic power which enabled him to describe friend or foe by a few subtle turns of the voice. At a later period, long after he had left the bar, in compliance with a request that he would return thanks for the bridesmaids at a wedding breakfast, he observed, that “doubtless he had been selected for the task in consideration of his youth, beauty, and innocence.” The laughter that followed this sally was of the sort which in poetic phraseology is called inextinguishable; and one of the wedding guests who heard the joke and the laughter, assures this writer that the storm of mirthful applause was chiefly due to the delicacy and sweetness of the intonations by which the speaker’s facile voice, with its old and once familiar art, made the audience realize the charms of youth, beauty and innocence charms which, so far as the lawyer’s wrinkled visage was concerned, were conspicuous by their absence.

Eminent advocates have almost invariably possessed qualities that would have made them successful mimics on the stage. For his mastery of oratorical artifices Alexander Wedderburn was greatly indebted to Sheridan, the lecturer on elocution, and to Macklin, the actor, from both of whom he took lessons; and when he had dismissed his teachers and become a leader of the English bar he adhered to their rules, and daily practised before a looking-glass the facial tricks by which Macklin taught him to simulate surprise or anger, indignation or triumph. Erskine was a perfect master of dramatic effect, and much of his richly-deserved success was due to the theatrical artifices with which he played upon the passions of juries. At the conclusion of a long oration he was accustomed to feign utter physical prostration, so that the twelve gentlemen in the box, in their sympathy for his sufferings and their admiration for his devotion to the interests of his client, might be impelled by generous emotion to return a favorable verdict. Thus when he defended Hardy, hoarseness and fatigue so overpowered him towards the close of his speech, that during the last ten minutes he could not speak above a whisper, and in order that his whispers might be audible to the jury, the exhausted advocate advanced two steps nearer to their box, and then extended his pale face to their eager eyes. The effect of the artifice on the excited jury is said to have been great and enduring, although they were speedily enlightened as to the real nature of his apparent distress. No sooner had the advocate received the first plaudits of his theatre on the determination of his harangue, than the multitude outside the court, taking up the acclamations which were heard within the building, expressed their feelings with such deafening clamor, and with so many signs of riotous intention, that Erskine was entreated to leave the court and soothe the passions of the mob with a few words of exhortation. In compliance with this suggestion he left the court, and forthwith addressed the dense out-door assembly in clear, ringing tones that were audible in Ludgate Hill, at one end of the Old Bailey, and to the billowy sea of human heads that surged round St. Sepulchre’s Church at the other extremity of the dismal thoroughfare.

At the subsequent trial of John Horne Tooke, Sir John Scott, unwilling that Erskine should enjoy a monopoly of theatrical artifice, endeavored to create a diversion in favor of the government by a display of those lachrymose powers, which Byron ridiculed in the following century. “I can endure anything but an attack on my good name,” exclaimed the Attorney General, in reply to a criticism directed against his mode of conducting the prosecution; “my good name is the little patrimony I have to leave to my children, and, with God’s help, gentlemen of the jury, I will leave it to them unimpaired.” As he uttered these words tears suffused the eyes which, at a later period of the lawyer’s career, used to moisten the woolsack in the House of Lords

“Because the Catholics would not rise,
In spite of his prayers and his prophecies.”

For a moment Horne Tooke, who persisted in regarding all the circumstances of his perilous position as farcical, smiled at the lawyer’s outburst in silent amusement; but as soon as he saw a sympathetic brightness in the eyes of one of the jury, the dexterous demagogue with characteristic humor and effrontery accused Sir John Mitford, the Solicitor General, of needless sympathy with the sentimental disturbance of his colleague. “Do you know what Sir John Mitford is crying about?” the prisoner inquired of the jury. “He is thinking of the destitute condition of Sir John Scott’s children, and the little patrimony they are likely to divide among them.” The jury and all present were not more tickled by the satire upon the Attorney General than by the indignant surprise which enlivened the face of Sir John Mitford, who was not at all prone to tears, and had certainly manifested no pity for John Scott’s forlorn condition.