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I suppose that the most famous cross-examination in our day was Sir Charles Russell’s of Pigott. It outstands by reason of the magnitude of the issue, and the flight and suicide of the witness. Had Pigott been of the stuff to stand up to Russell, and make a fight of it, I should regret far more keenly than I do that I was not in court. As it is, my regret is keen enough. I was reading again, only the other day, the verbatim report of Pigott’s evidence, in one of the series of little paper volumes published by The Times; and I was revelling again in the large perfection with which Russell accomplished his too easy task. Especially was I amazed to find how vividly Russell, as I remember him, lived again, and could be seen and heard, through the medium of that little paper volume. It was not merely as though I had been in court, and were now recalling the inflections of that deep, intimidating voice, the steadfast gaze of those dark, intimidating eyes, and were remembering just at what points the snuff-box was produced, and just how long the pause was before the pinch was taken and the bandana came into play. It was almost as though these effects were proceeding before my very eyes–these sublime effects of the finest actor I have ever seen. Expressed through a perfect technique, his personality was overwhelming. `Come, Mr. Pigott,’ he is reported as saying, at a crucial moment, `try to do yourself justice. Remember! you are face to face with My Lords.’ How well do I hear, in that awful hortation, Russell’s pause after the word `remember,’ and the lowered voice in which the subsequent words were uttered slowly, and the richness of solemnity that was given to the last word of all, ere the thin lips snapped together–those lips that were so small, yet so significant, a feature of that large, white, luminous and inauspicious face. It is an hortation which, by whomsoever delivered, would tend to dispirit the bravest and most honest of witnesses. The presence of a judge is always, as I have said, oppressive. The presence of three is trebly so. Yet not a score of them serried along the bench could have outdone in oppressiveness Sir Charles Russell. He alone, among the counsel I have seen, was an exception to the rule that by a judge every one in court is levelled. On the bench, in his last years, he was not notably more predominant than he ever had been. And the reason of his predominance at the Bar was not so much in the fact that he had no rival in swiftness, in subtlety, in grasp, as in the passionate strength of his nature, the intensity that in him was at the root of the grand manner.

In the courts, as in parliament and in the theatre, the grand manner is a thing of the past. Mr. Lloyd-George is not, in style and method, more remote from Gladstone, nor Mr. George Alexander from Macready, than is Mr. Rufus Isaacs, the type of modern advocate, from Russell. Strength, passion, sonorousness, magnificence of phrasing, are things which the present generation vaguely approves in retrospect; but it would titter at a contemporary demonstration of them. While I was reading Pigott’s cross-examination, an idea struck me; why do not the managers of our theatres, always querulous about the dearth of plays, fall back on scenes from famous trials? A trial-scene in a play, though usually absurd, is almost always popular. Why not give us actual trial-scenes? They could not, of course, be nearly so exciting as the originals, for the simple reason that they would not be real; but they would certainly be more exciting than the average play. Thus I mused, hopefully. But I was brought up sharp by the reflection that it were hopeless to look for an actor who could impersonate Russell– could fit his manner to Russell’s words, or indeed to the words of any of those orotund advocates. To reproduce recent trials would be a hardly warrantable thing. The actual participators in them would have a right to object (delighted though many of them would be). Vain, then, is my dream of theatres invigorated by the leavings of the law- courts. On the other hand, for the profit of the law-courts, I have a quite practicable notion. They provide the finest amusement in London, for nothing. Why for nothing? Let some scale of prices for admission be drawn up–half-a-guinea, say, for a seat in the well of the court, a shilling for a seat in the gallery, five pounds for a seat on the bench. Then, I dare swear, people would begin to realise how fine the amusement is.