Somers studied at Oxford, was admitted to the bar, and was one of the counsel for the famous seven bishops, in 1681. In 1692 he became Attorney-General, and in 1697 was made Lord Chancellor, and raised to the peerage. He was afterwards deprived of his Chancellorship and impeached, but was acquitted. Somers was chairman of the committee that drafted the celebrated Declaration of Right, in 1689. Works:—The works that Somers has left are scarcely proportionate to his great fame as a jurist. His speeches were never preserved. The most important of his published works are “A Brief History of the Succession of the Crown,” and “The Security of Englishman’s Lives,” a treatise on grand juries. Besides his graver works, Somers is the author of the translation of Dido’s “Epistle to Æneas,” and of Plutarch’s “Alcibiades,” in Tonson’s English versions of Ovid and Plutarch. The “Declaration of Right” is conjectured to have emanated wholly from him, and also King William’s last Speech to Parliament.

Personal

  The life, the soul, and the spirit of his party.

  He was very learned in his own profession, with a great deal more learning in other professions, in divinity, philosophy, and history. He had a great capacity for business, with an extraordinary temper; for he was fair and gentle, perhaps to a fault, considering his post. So that he had all the patience and softness, as well as the justice and equity, becoming a great magistrate.

  His life was, in every part of it, set off with that graceful modesty and reserve, which made his virtues more beautiful, the more they were cast in such agreeable shades…. His greatest humanity appeared in the minutest circumstances of his conversation. You found it in the benevolence of his aspect, the complacency of his behaviour, and the tone of his voice. His great application to the severer studies of the law, had not infected his temper with anything positive or litigious. He did not know what it was to wrangle on indifferent points, to triumph in the superiority of his understanding, or to be supercilious on the side of truth. He joined the greatest delicacy of good breeding to the greatest strength of reason…. His principles were founded in reason, and supported by virtue; and, therefore, did not lie at the mercy of ambition, avarice, or resentment. His notions were no less steady and unshaken, than just and upright.

  Somers, whose timorous nature, joined with the trade of a common lawyer, and the consciousness of a mean extraction, had taught him the regularity of an alderman, or a gentleman usher.

  One of those divine men, who, like a chapel in a palace, remain unprofaned, while all the rest is tyranny, corruption, and folly. All the traditional accounts of him, the historians of the last age, and its best authors, represent him as the most incorrupt lawyer, and the honestest statesman; as a masterly orator, a genius of the finest taste, and as a patriot of the noblest and most extensive views; as a man, who dispensed blessings by his life, and planned them for posterity. He was at once the model of Addison, and the touchstone of Swift: the one wrote from him, the other for him.

  In truth, he united all the qualities of a great judge, an intellect comprehensive, quick and acute, diligence, integrity, patience, suavity. In council, the calm wisdom, which he possessed in a measure rarely found among men of parts so quick and of opinions so decided as his, acquired for him the authority of an oracle. The superiority of his powers appeared not less clearly in private circles. The charm of his conversation was heightened by the frankness with which he poured out his thoughts. His good temper and his good breeding never failed. His gesture, his look, his tones were expressive of benevolence. His humanity was the more remarkable; because he had received from nature a body such as is generally found united with a peevish and irritable mind. His life was one long malady: his nerves were weak: his complexion was livid: his face was prematurely wrinkled. Yet his enemies could not pretend that he had ever once, during a long and troubled public life, been goaded, even by sudden provocation, into vehemence inconsistent with the mild dignity of his character. All that was left to them was to assert that his disposition was very far from being so gentle as the world believed, that he was really prone to the angry passions, and that sometimes, while his voice was soft, and his words kind and courteous, his delicate frame was almost convulsed by suppressed emotion. It will perhaps be thought that this reproach is the highest of all eulogies. The most accomplished men of those times have told us that there was scarcely any subject on which Somers was not competent to instruct and to delight.

  Somers’s learning and judgment, his honesty, his eloquence, his modesty, mildness, candour, and taste, together with his sweetness of temper, have been acknowledged by all modern authors of whose writings he has been the subject.

  Learning, patience, industry, instinctive equitableness of judgment, comprehensiveness of view, subtlety of discernment, and command of apt and perspicuous language; in short, all the qualities best fitted to adorn the woolsack, are ascribed to Somers by his contemporaries. Yet, partly by the fault of his reporters, partly in consequence of the dearth of causes célèbres, partly by reason of his early surrender of the great seal, his recorded achievement is by no means commensurate with his reputation…. Courtly and reserved by nature or habit, Somers carried into the relations of ordinary life a certain formality of demeanour, but in his hours of relaxation could be an agreeable companion. It does not appear that he was a brilliant talker, but his vast erudition and knowledge of affairs placed him at his ease with men of the most diverse interests and occupations. His religious opinions appear to have been latitudinarian. His domestic life did not escape the breath of scandal. His oratory, which cannot be judged by the meagre reports which alone are extant, is said to have united close reasoning with a masculine eloquence, the charm of which was enhanced by a musical voice. To Burke, Somers was the type of “the old Whigs” to whom was addressed the famous “Appeal;” to Macaulay he was no less a symbol of awe and veneration. Yet as a statesman he does not merit all the praise which has been lavished upon him by whig panegyrists.

General

  His style in writing was chaste and pure, but, at the same time, full of spirit and politeness; and fit to convey the most intricate business to the understanding of the reader, with the utmost clearness and perspicuity. And here it is to be lamented, that this extraordinary person, out of his natural aversion to vain-glory, wrote several pieces, as well as performed several actions, which he did not assume the honour of: though, at the same time, so many works of this nature have appeared, which every one has ascribed to him, that, I believe, no author of the greatest eminence would deny my Lord Somers to have been the best writer of the age in which he lived.

  The world will do that justice to the collection, as not to suppose that these specimens from it, immitis ignis reliquiæ, will afford an adequate idea of its merits. It filled upwards of sixty volumes in quarto, and did not contain a paper from Lord Somers’s pen which the most intimate friend would have wished to secrete, or the bitterest enemy could have fairly turned to his prejudice.

  This great lawyer, to whom every Englishman who feels the blessings of that constitution of government under which he has the happiness to live, owes the highest obligations for the excellent and spirited defences he made of the two great bulwarks of it, the limited succession to the crown, and the trial by jury.

  Political studies alone did not occupy the active mind of Mr. Somers. He had devoted himself with much ardour to classical pursuits; and of the progress which he had made in these, and of his general attachment to literature, he afforded an instance in 1681, by the publication of a translation, into English, of the Epistles of Dido to Æneas, and of Ariadne to Theseus, from Ovid. It would be unreasonable to institute a comparison between the versions of Mr. Somers and those of Dryden and Pope; but may be asserted that in Mr. Somers’s attempt there is considerable power of diction, and some ease of versification.

  But the greatest man among the members of the Junto, and in some respects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper Somers. He was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician, as an orator and as a writer. His speeches have perished; but his State papers remain, and are models of terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence.