Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI | Page 9

"Vendors and
Purchasers of Real Estates," and on "Powers," and Williams'
"Saunders;" while "Comyn's Digest" was ever lying before him, the
subject of continual reference, and with which he soon acquired an
invaluable familiarity. He also read several books on Equity with great
attention, and often said, that no one, who really knew law, could fail to
feel a deep interest in Equity, and the mode of its operating upon law.
The "Code Napoleon," too, he read very carefully, and for many years.
He had a copy of Justinian's Code, and Institutes, always lying on his
mantel-piece, and which he was very fond of reading. We have
frequently conversed together on the subject of the extensive
obligations of our Common Law to the Roman Law; to which he used
to refer, in the absence of the books, with great facility and accuracy.
He was very fond of Plautus, and would quote almost an entire scene,
as accurately, and with as natural a fluency and zest, as another would
have shown in reading off any of the scenes in a popular English play;
often accompanying his quotations with shrewd and ingenious critical
comments. He was also very fond of the French Dramatists,
particularly Moliere, from whom I have heard him quote entire scenes
with wonderful accuracy. You might have imagined him reading from
the book, as I have several times myself observed, and heard others
remark: and all this he did in a perfectly natural and unobtrusive way,
as if merely to relieve an over-charged mind, and give pleasure to those
whom he credited with inclination and ability to appreciate the
excellencies which he pointed out. His memory seemed, indeed,
equally tenacious of things important and unimportant; incapable, in
short, of forgetting any thing. I have heard him quote long-forgotten
but once popular and laughable trash, ballads, squibs, epigrams, &c.,
till at length he revived in the listener such a sort of recollection of
them, as made him imagine that Mr. Smith must have recently
committed them to memory for some special purpose, but for their
appearing so really fresh and racy to him, and plainly suggested by the
casual current of conversation. He was, about this time, and for years
afterwards, a very frequent visiter at my house; and never was any one,
independently of my personal regard for him, more welcome; for his
conversation was always that of a ripe and varied scholar and fastidious
gentleman. He was ever gay and animated as soon as he had recovered,

which he quickly did, from the exhaustion of a long and severe day's
work, and his fund of anecdote appeared inexhaustible. Never was any
man farther removed from being that insufferable social nuisance, a
professed talker. Display of any kind was quite foreign to his nature;
and whenever he chanced to encounter a person cursed with that
propensity, he would sit in silence for a whole evening: not in the
silence of vexation or pique, but of a man left at leisure to pursue his
own thoughts, or calmly amuse himself with the characteristics of the
chatterer. If, while thus occupied, unexpectedly interrupted, or appealed
to by the aforesaid chatterer, or any one else, he readily answered,
though certainly with a somewhat frigid courtesy. It was impossible for
any one, of the least powers of observation, to fail of detecting in Mr.
Smith, though beneath a reserve and formality not very easy to
penetrate, a kind of scrupulous antique courtliness, suggesting to you a
resuscitated gentleman of the school of Addison, particularly in his
intercourse with ladies. He was caution personified,--never saying any
thing that required retraction or modification: and though you might
guess the contemptuous estimate which he had formed of some
particular person's character or doings, he rarely permitted himself to
express it. He would sometimes smile significantly at the recital, or
witnessing, of some particular absurdity or weakness; but I think that
no one ever heard him utter a hasty, harsh, or uncharitable judgment of
any body. He seemed, in fact, equally chary of giving praise or blame.
No man would laugh louder, or longer, on hearing, or being told, of
some signal and ludicrous miscarriage of another; but he would say
nothing, except on very rare occasions, and among his intimate
friends--and even then, never any thing severe or violent. Tell him,
however, of any thing really mean and unworthy, or let him have
witnessed it, and no one could fail to see, calm and measured though
Mr. Smith's language might be, the profound contempt, or the lively
indignation with which he regarded the delinquent and his delinquency.
I fear, however, that I am digressing.--He and I commenced our careers
as special pleaders about the same time, viz. in 1831; and not many
days passed without our being