Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846

Sir William Follett belonged to a respectable family in Devonshire, and was born on the 2d December 1798. In 1814 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and took the degree of B.A. in 1818, without any attempt to obtain honours ; quitting college in this latter year, and entering the Inner Temple, he prosecuted the study of the law in the chambers of eminent practitioners, where he continued for three years – and then practised for about three years as a special pleader. He was called to the bar in 1824, and went the western circuit, but for one or two years was much disheartened by his want of success. He expressed, on one occasion, his readiness to accept of the place of police magistrate, if it were offered! His progress was, soon afterwards, signal, and all but unprecedentedly rapid. He was appointed Solicitor-general in 1834, while yet behind the bar, and in 1835 was returned for Exeter, for which place he sate till his death. He quitted office with Sir Robert Peel in 1835, but returned with him to it in 1841, and became Attorney-general in 1844, on the promotion of Sir Frederick Pollock to the chief seat in the Court of Exchequer. For several years before Sir William Follett's decease, his constitution, never of the strongest, was broken by his incessant and severe labours; and in 1844, having been obliged to give up practice altogether, he went to Italy at the close of the session – having attended at the bar of the House of Lords, to lead for the Crown in the O'Connell case. He was, however, quite unfit for the task. His spine was then so seriously affected, that he was obliged to sit upon a raised chair while addressing the House, the Chancellor and the other Lords, out of great consideration for the distinguished and enfeebled speaker, moving down to the lower end of the House, close to the bar, in order to occasion him as little exertion and fatigue as possible. He did not speak long, and the effort greatly exhausted him; and it was not without difficulty, owing to something like partial paralysis of the lower extremities, that he could walk from the House. He returned from the Continent in March 1845, a little better than when he had gone, and endeavoured to resume the discharge of such of his less onerous, professional, and official duties as admitted of their being attended to at his own house. He continued to listen to patent cases, attended by counsel, till within a short period of his being finally disabled; but every one saw with pain the total exhaustion under which he was suffering. Finding himself rapidly declining, in May 1845, he wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, proffering the resignation of his office of Attorney-general.

He soon afterwards retired, for the advantage of some little change of air, to the house of a relative in the Regent's Park, where he enjoyed the soothing attentions of his family, and reverently received the consolations of religion. The public manifested great anxiety to have the state of his health, and the morning and evening newspapers contained regular announcements on the subject, as in the case of persons of the highest distinction. Her Majesty, Prince Albert, also, with numbers of the nobility, sent daily to enquire concerning him. For the last day, or possibly two days of his life, he became unconscious, and slightly delirious – and expired, without apparent pain, on Saturday afternoon, the 28th June 1845. For a long series of years, the death of no member of the legal profession had excited a tithe of the public concern which followed that of Sir William Follett, the Attorney-general. The bar felt that its brightest light had been almost suddenly extinguished. Its most gifted members, and those of the judicial bench, heartily acknowledged the transcendence of his professional qualifications, and the unassuming peacefulness with which he had passed through life. Had he lived to occupy the highest judicial seat – the woolsack – few doubted that, when relieved from the crushing pressure of private practice, he would have displayed qualities befitting so splendid a station, and earned a name worthy of ranking with those of his great predecessors.

His funeral took place on Friday, the 4th of July, at the Temple church. He was a bencher of the Inner Temple, and his remains repose in the vault at the south-eastern extremity of the church. For nearly two hours before the funeral took place, the church – a chaste and splendid structure – had been filled with members of the bar, and a few others, all in mourning, and awaiting, in solemn silence, the commencement of the mournful ceremony. At length the pealing of the organ announced the arrival of the affecting moment when the body of Sir William Follett – himself having been not very long before a worshipper in the church – was being borne within its walls, preceded by the surpliced choir, chanting the service, in tones which still echo in the ears of those who heard them. All rose silently, with moistened eyes, and beating hearts, as they beheld, slowly borne through the aisle, the coffin which contained the prematurely dead – him whose figure, erect and graceful in forensic robes, and dignified in gesture, had so recently stood among them, their cheerful and gifted associate in the anxious business of life – from whose lips, now closed for ever, had but lately issued that rich, harmonious voice, whose tones had scarce, even then, died away! They were bearing him to his long home, with all the solemn pomp and circumstance which testify the reverence paid to departed eminence: and when the coffin was placed beside the altar, at the mouth of the vault, no language can adequately describe the affecting and imposing scene which presented itself. The pall had been borne by the Prime Minister, (Sir Robert Peel,) the Lord Chancellor, one of the Secretaries of State, (Sir James Graham,) and the Vice-Chancellor of England; and amongst those who followed, were Lord Brougham, Lord Langdale, the Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas, and many of the judges, (almost all the courts, both of law and equity, having suspended their sittings on account of the funeral;) while in the body of the church were to be seen nearly all the distinguished members of the bar, who had been, up to a very recent period, opposed to, or associated with, him whose dust was now on the point of being committed to its kindred dust. Nearest to the body sat the three great ministers of the Crown, who had come to pay their tribute of respect to the remains of their gifted and confidential adviser; and their solemn countenances told the deep impression which the scene was making upon them, so illustrative of the fleeting shadowiness of earthly greatness! and their reflections must have been akin to those which – as may have occurred to them – their own obsequies might, at some future period, excite in the spectators – reflections such as those with which a great one, departed, 6 6 Sir Walter Raleigh — History of the World , last paragraph. closed his grandest labours.

"Oh, eloquent, just, and mighty death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done: and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words – Hic Jacet!"

The words chosen as the subject of the following verses, form the first line of an antiquated song, of which the remainder seems not to have been preserved. – See Mr Dauney's " Ancient Scotish Melodies ," p. 227.