This distinguished judge was, in his latter years, extremely subject to
gout, and used to fall backwards and forwards in his chair—whence the
ungracious expression in the _Garland_. He used to characterise his six
clerks thus: ‘Two of them cannot _read_, two of them cannot _write_,
and the other two can neither _read_ nor _write_!’ The eccentric Sir
James Colquhoun was one of those who could not _read_. In former times
it was the practice of the Lord President to have a sand-glass before
him on the bench, with which he used to measure out the utmost time
that could be allowed to a judge for the delivery of his opinion. Lord
President Dundas would never allow a single moment after the expiration
of the sand, and he has often been seen to shake his old-fashioned
chronometer ominously in the faces of his brethren when their ‘ideas
upon the subject’ began, in the words of the _Garland_, to get vague
and windy.