| Show HAD LOST HIS TEMPER unpardonably harsh retort made at the dinner table poet essayist politician and man ot the world tho friend of all oppressed causes and ot all persecuted men lord houghton had warmed both bands before the fire 0 life 1 I am going over to the majority he said when he was very in the year before bis death and you know I 1 have always preferred the minority I 1 have given in the cornhill Corn hlll my father s account 0 the way in which sir alexander cockburn the lord chief justice at tempted at a dinner party to browbeat lord houghton who bad spoken in de tense of the notorious plaintiff at that time prosecuting bis claim to the estates suddenly writes my father cockburn cut him short by saying 1 I would have thought this am possible from any one with the very meanest intellect houghton paused apparently overwhelmed and thed replied but surely that was very rude upon which cockburn glaring fixedly at him merely added 1 I meant it to be so I 1 think that it was lord houghton who in allusion to this incident said that nobody ought to invite cockburn to dinner without having a fire engine at band R C lehmann in chambers journal |
