THE LAYS OF A
LIMB OF THE LA W
John Popplbstone
^^M
-DITE.D
Edmund B. V. Christian
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
THE LAYS
OF
A LIMB OF THE LAW.
Several of the pieces included in this volume, under the
head of "Leading Cases in Verse,'" had the advantage
of appearing originally in Messrs. Gibson and IVeldon's
Magazine, Law Notes, and are here reprinted by per-
mission of the Editors.
THE LAYS
OF
A LIMB OF THE LAW
BY THE LATE
JOHN POPPLES TONE
FORTY YEARS TOWN CLERK OF STOURMOUTH
EDITED
TXlttb a ADemofr ano postscript
EDMUND B. V. CHRISTIAN
! Law shall f sing, a?id what to Law belongs?'' — Crabbe
LONDON
REEVES & TURNER, 196 STRAND
1889
1
?R
P3 9 f A.
CONTENTS.
fAGE
A Memoir of the Late Mr. John Poppi.estone .
ix
Leading Cases in Verse: —
Ballade of Leading Cases
I
Miller v. Race
3
Peter v. Compton
6
Lickbarrow v. Mason
.
12
Armory v. Delamirie
.
• 17
Paterson v. Gandasequi .
. 24
Addison v. Gandasequi .
.
• 27
The Duchess of Kingston's
Case .
• 29
Cutter v. Powell
. 40
Strath more v. Bowes
• 43
Manby v. Scott
50
Scott v. Tyler .
59
Ashby v. White
. 61
Wilkes v. Wood
.
• 67
Frost v. Knight
• 74
VI
Contents.
Leading Cases in Verse {continued) :—
Omichund v. Barker
Calye's Case ....
Smith v. Marrable .
Cumber v. Wane
Lays of the Law : —
Ode to a Judge in Chambers
Ballade of Old Law Books .
The Splendid Six-and-Eightpence
Legal Maxims, &c.
My Client
Sonnets on the Mortgagees .
Old Father Antic, the Law .
Ballade of the Honest Lawyer
My Side-Bar Rule ....
Postscript : On the Comedy of the Law
Index
PAGE
77
82
84
S 9
95
101
103
107
112
116
122
124
126
133
159
MEMOIR OF
MR. JOHN POPPLESTONE.
M E M O I R
OF THE LATE
MR. JOHN POPPLESTONE.
He was an Attorney. — Bai: Ballads.
Mr. Popplestone's career might well be the despair
of a biographer. Its uneventfulness was complete. He
kept no diary ; he corresponded with no public man ;
he wrote, indeed, few private letters, and burnt those he
received ; and, at least when I knew him, talked little
of his past. Fortunately for our present purpose, it is
sufficient to state that his history may be summed up in
the line quoted above : he was an attorney.
The world has been hard to attorneys. It has not
been kind to our faults, and it has been more than
a little blind to our virtues. It has persisted in under-
estimating our services to mankind, and in over-esti-
mating our remuneration. This, perhaps, could be
borne, " for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe," and
there are consolations in the hardest lot. But this is not
the worst. Not content with a passing injustice, the
B
x Memoir.
men of letters have combined to misrepresent us to
posterity. A collection of hard sayings relating to our
profession, from Dr. Johnson to the unjust judge men-
tioned by Mr. James Payn,who translated "Nemo repente
venit turpissimus " as " It takes five years to make an
attorney," would fill a considerable volume ; more espe-
cially if there were given in an appendix a list of the
statutes which, under various plausible and benevolent-
sounding titles, have been enacted to reduce our modest
incomes. Even Mr. Payn himself, who imposes so
many obligations on his readers, and is so tender to
most of his dramatis persona, has agreed with the rest in
misrepresenting "that branch of the law," " the members
of which wear their own hair and are gentlemen by Act
of Parliament." Our craft he blasphemes as a "gigantic
system of imposture." " It is a calling," he says, " ex-
pressly invented for the encouragement of dulness ! "
A sense of personal injury may, perhaps, account for his
bitterness. But, whatever the cause, our generation has
read, and the next (if it is wise) will read his indictment ;
and it is likely that, imitating the celebrated jury, some
at least of his readers will be prepared to find us
guilty upon the opening speech of the advocate, without
troubling about the evidence.
Of dulness in another sense the profession certainly
cannot be acquitted. The monotony is fearful. Its
members are emphatically not happy in that they have
no history. Even at six-and-eightpence an hour, the
task of endlessly arranging other people's quarrels, or
transferring other people's property, is a burden, after the
charm of novelty has gone. And probably no one will
Memoir. xi
be tempted to join the profession's overcrowded ranks
by the record of the late Mr. Popplestone's career.
Except for the necessary beginning and ending, the
incidents of his life might almost be described in
algebraical terms as to the n ih '
Mr. Popplestone was articled in London, and seems
to have practised there with indifferent success for a
short time, before a fortunate chance brought him to-
Stourmouth. How far the lines entitled "The Splendid
Six-and-eightpence " are a record of personal experience,,
it is difficult to say • but, in default of other record, they
may be accepted as autobiographical. It is to those
early years in London that most of the verses contained
in the following pages are to be attributed. Mr. Popple-
stone had not been long in Stourmouth before he gained
the public esteem, and was appointed to the office of
Town Clerk, which he held — and magnified — until
shortly before his death, a period of forty years. During
all that time he was the pivot upon which turned
the whole life of the town ; the confidential adviser of
the more prominent townsfolk ; the confidant of every
secret ; familiar with every family history and the title
to all the property in the borough ; a vigilant guardian
of municipal interests ; gently guiding the magistrates in
their decisions and the corporation in its resolves ; the
healer of more quarrels, the stifler of more promising
litigation, than less conscientious professional brethren
would, possibly, approve.
Mr. Popplestone used to say that he had by nature
all the qualities and defects necessary to the making of
an attorney. For occasionally mislaying papers, and
xii Memoir.
complete illegibility of handwriting, he used to plead
that he had licence by long usage of the profession. His
general views upon his calling I find stated, with some
conscious and intentional exaggeration, in a paper
read by him, at the Stourmouth Mechanics' Institute
and Athenaeum, and reported in the Stourmouth
Mercury of February 8, 1855. From that report I take
the following paragraphs, premising only that they are,
I should say, rather in the style of the reporter than the
lecturer.
t: The Athenasum," says the Mercury, "■ was the scene
on Thursday of an animated gathering to hear a lecture
by our esteemed and respected Town Clerk, entitled,
■'On the Art of Being a Family Solicitor' — a subject
which, naturally attractive to some, was made interesting
to all by Mr. Popplestone's eloquence and humour.
The chair was taken bythe Mayor (Mr. Alderman Brown),
who, in a few appropriate and well-chosen words, intro-
duced the lecturer. Among those present we noticed
Dr. and Mrs. Franklin, Major, Mrs., and Miss Long
.... and, indeed, the elite and gentry of the neigh-
bourhood.
" Mr. Popplestone commenced by reminding his
hearers that some men were born kings, some lock-
smiths, and, he added, it was fair to assume that, since
solicitors were evidently a natural, permanent, and
essential part of our social organization, some men were
born solicitors. The lecturer thought he might, without
undue vanity, claim to be one of those. (Hear, hear.)
For the profession was not one which demanded the
best men. It was a profession of the second-best. By
Memoir. xiii
that he meant that much self-effacement was necessary :
the solicitor's interests, and even feelings, should always
be subordinated to the client's. Men of the first
rank of intellect threw off the yoke, or entered
the other branch of the profession of the law. He
instanced Shakespeare (cheers), Mr. Disraeli (groans
from the back benches), and many others. Never-
theless, the ideal family solicitor should possess many
of the qualities which go to the making of a great
man — foresight, caution, decision, knowledge of men,
some — but not excessive — ambition. Let them re-
member
" ' The same ambition can destroy or save,
And make a patriot as it makes a knave.'
(Cheers.) .... The lecturer continued : He had alluded
to the need of knowledge of mankind. This must be
gained chiefly by the experience of life. But he ven-
tured to say (differing from some whose opinions he
respected) that much might be learnt from novels.
(Cheers, and cries of ' No, no.') Of course, novels
should be used under proper restrictions ; he would not
recommend their indiscriminate perusal. (The Vicar :
' Hear, hear.') But he maintained that much might be
learnt from them. And what, he asked, is the lawyer's
stock-in-trade? Knowledge of law, equity, conveyancing,
the practice of the courts ? These were essential, no
doubt, but they were mere preliminaries. His proper
study, at least, in the words of the poet, was Man — and,
he would say, Woman. Tact, knowledge of the world,
s avoir /aire— these were his tools, as much, ay, and
xiv Memoir.
more, than the habeas corpus, the warrant, and the man-
damus ! (Applause.)
" True knowledge could come only by experience,
and experience with time. But much of the working of
the human heart, of the way in which our interests and
passions affect our judgment, might be learnt in fiction.
Who that read Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Dickens, or Miss
Austen failed to close the volume a wiser and more
experienced man ? Who that loved the drama wisely,
and not too well, failed to experience at the theatre
that exaltation which brings man nearer to the gods ?
Speaking to his young friends he would say, if he might
adapt the sentence of one whose eccentricity they
deplored, while they revered his genius, 'Close thy
Blackstone, open thy Thackeray ! '
" Let him not mislead his hearers : there were draw-
backs to this honourable calling. Solicitors must expect
to be excluded from public life ; to find the prizes few
and their acquisitions inconsiderable. Nay, they must
expect to find people, clients even, recount to them the
stalest witticisms at the expense of the law, the most
venerable Millers, as though fresh coined from the mint
of their precious brains ! And more, they must be pre-
pared to laugh at them. There were thorns by every
rose : every heart knew its own bitterness. They must
stoop to conquer.
" It is not our purpose, as it would be beyond our
powers, to follow at length this interesting and instruc-
tive lecture. We hope Mr. Popplestone will give it to
the world in print. The resources of the Mercury estab-
lishment shall be laid under contribution to reproduce it
in our well-known style, should Mr. Popplestone so far
Memoir. xv
honour us. 1 But we cannot refrain from quoting a
passage which will be interesting to our fair readers.
' Should a lawyer marry ? ' asked Mr. Popplestone.
' On the whole I am convinced he should not.'
(Here we observed an anxious expression of dissent
from Mr. Popplestone's pupil, Mr. Chas. Young.)
' Careful observation,' said the lecturer, ' alike of novels
and the stage, has convinced me that the part of the
family solicitor requires a bachelor. He must be ready
to appear at any time from the first act to the fifth,
whenever the plot needs elucidation — a thing no
married man would be at liberty to do; and he must
have no emotions. I once knew a family solicitor who
(on the stage) wanted to kiss the hand of a ward in
Chancery. But that was only in a farce, and was dis-
countenanced as an innovation. One advantage he
would concede to married solicitors : their sons might
succeed to the practice, and thereby avoid interruptions,
injurious alike to clients and practitioners. But, as a
rule, they wouldn't. Domestic troubles, too, distracted
the mind that should be always devoted to the interests
of a client, ready at all times to aid, to counsel, and to
cheer.' (Applause.)
" The lecturer concluded by saying that we could
not all be solicitors, but we could all do our duty.
(Cheers.) Therein lay the true merit ; to that he
exhorted them all. (Applause.) A vote of thanks,
appropriately moved by the Vicar, concluded a very
pleasant evening."
Mr. Popplestone was faithful to his principles, and
J Mr. Popplestone seems to have resisted these blandishments.
xvi Memoir,
remained all his days a bachelor. Friends who knew
his affectionate nature, indeed, found it difficult not to
suspect that this was due rather to some personal ex-
perience than to the opinion he thus jestingly pro-
fessed, or even to the necessity, which he often pointed
out, of maintaining the race of bachelor uncles. This
suspicion will be confirmed by the perusal of some lines
" To Sarah," which he one day showed me, with the quiet
laugh against himself which was his most familiar expres-
sion. " It is an old-fashioned name," he said, as he saw
my smile, "and never got its fair share of odes and
sonnets. But at least my heart was young before she
died. And if you study the ' Language of Flowers '
you will find the name means simply ' A Princess.' "
As a specimen of Mr. Popplestone's effusions (so he
would call them) on other than legal subjects, I trans-
cribe them here ; and I do so with the more pleasure
that they were, I think, in part suggested by an Essay of
Elia.
TO SARAH: A VALENTIXE.
Of all the saints whose titles we
Within the almanac enshrine,
My favourite I own to be
The good, old bishop, Valentine.
I cannot call the book to mind
In which is his biography ;
His diocese you will not find
Remarked in your geography.
I wonder was he High or Low ?
Or Broad, or Evangelical ?
Would he with Nonconformists go,
Or did he hold confessional ?
Memoir. xvii
When out he went on Sunday morn
Did little Cupids go as waiters,
To smooth the episcopalian lawn,
And button up his lordship's gaiters?
And did he always preach of love ?
For sweethearts offer special prayers ?
And did those Cupids wait above
The pulpit, or upon the stairs ?
We ask these questions all in vain,
For though the saintly bishop was well
Known and loved by all, it's plain,
He never had a Froude or Boswell.
But, though no details are supplied
With reference to the life he led,
Tradition tells us how he died,
And where he's gone to, now he's dead.
For such was his benevolence
The Government had made him Stand-
ing Counsel (without recompense)
To all the lovers in the land.
When Edwin wrote to Angelina
To Valentine he'd send the letter ;
And though the bishop had not seen her
He'd help to sing her praises better.
He'd polish up the jarring rhyme,
He'd mend and patch the faulty rhythm ;
Though great the calls upon his time,
He'd take no end of trouble with 'em.
Love-letters came for his correction
By every post, at such a rate,
Ten postmen, under police protection,
Would bring them by the hundredweight.
xviii Memoir.
Their likeness told upon his mind ;
When " wounded heart " occurred above,
"Love's dart " below he'd ever find,
But suffered most from "love" and " dove."
One day the bishop stooped to raise
A letter pushed beneath the door ;
Just then the postmen in relays
Were busy in delivering more.
They brought so many, great and small,
The letter-box beneath their weight
Gave way, and, with its contents all,
Fell down upon the bishop's pate
t
Still through the aperture they came,
Love's scented missives by the score,
And fell upon his prostrate frame
Till he was covered o'er and o'er.
He could not move, but with a sigh
Escaped his spirit orthodox,
And fled to brighter realms on high —
The Martyr of the Letter-box.
And since, upon the front -door mat
The good old bishop came to die,
There lovers have their habitat,
And linger o'er their last good-bye.
Still from his happy home above
He looks upon our lays, and when
I thought to write to thee of love,
He came and guided thus my pen : — ■
THE VALENTINE.
Well might thy parents, o'er thy cradle bending,
Declare thy name should Princess be ;
For sure the eye of love cculd see
To fairest name, thy form fresh graces lending.
Memoir. xix
Yet were their wondering eyes with joy less full.
Than those that see thy maiden days,
And trace thy path, in sweet amaze,
To gentlest womanhood through youth and school :
For had they all the future seen,
They would have called thee, love, a Queen.
These lines, like most of those which make this little
volume, were revised in the few months of unwonted
leisure, which intervened between Mr. Popplestone's
retirement from active practice and his death. While
still engaged in his profession he wrote little. It was
not that the poet in him died young, but that he had no
time to sing. It may be true, Mr. Popplestone used to
say, that
Nor pleads he worse, who with a decent sprig
Of bay adorns his legal waste of wig,
but the difficulty is to find time for both the pleading
and the adornment. But at the last he returned with
pleasure to the amusements of his youth. He pro-
jected an edition of" Felix Holt," annotated for the use of
Law students, with a copy of the settlement of the Tran-
some property, a pedigree of the family, and copies of the
pleadings in the suit of " Scaddon, otherwise Bycliffe, v.
Transome." He commenced then " The Peerage, Baron-
etage, and Knighthood of Fiction." It was then, too, that
he retouched most of the following rhymes ; destroyed
many, for the comprehension of which the changes of
fifty years had made long explanations necessary; and
added one or two pieces, which will be easily distin-
guished. Trifles, he said, he knew they were ; but at
seventy-five he had earned the right to trifle a little.
xx Memoir
Like Charles Lamb — if, on account of Mr. Popple-
stone's affection for him, one may be allowed the com-
parison — he would have earnestly disclaimed the idea
that these pages contain his works. His works, he
might have said, are contained in the piles of his dusty
papers ; the long series of letter-books ; the municipal
records and the title deeds of Stourmouth.
To such of the "Leading Cases in Verse," 1 as seemed
to me to require explanation, I have prefixed brief notes.
But in most cases I have been able to find remarks by
Mr. Popplestone himself among his papers ; and these,
where not expressly stated to be his, I have distinguished
from my own by the addition of his initials.
To the " Lays " I have ventured to add, in a post-
cript, notes on some of Mr. Popplestone's predecessors
in discoursing of the Comedy of the Law.
1 Leading cases have been defined as those which, " from their
important character, have demanded more than usual attention from
the judges, and from this circumstance are frequently looked upon
as having settled or determined the law upon all points involved in
such cases."
LEADING CASES IN VERSE.
" Poetical reports of law cases are not very common, yet it
seems to me desirable they should be so. Many advantages would
accrue from such a measure. They would in the first place be
more commonly deposited in the memory They would
become surprisingly intelligible And lastly, they would, by
this means, be rendered susceptible of musical embellishment, and
instead of being quoted in the country, with that dull monotony
which is so wearisome to by-standers and frequently lulls even the
judges themselves to sleep, might be rehearsed in recitation ; which
would have an admirable effect.''
CowrER, Letter to Rev. William Unwin,
Hay leys Life, I. 240.
Here, you see, the curtain rises ;
BALLADE OF LEADING CASES.
To H. S. M. G.
When August crowns the legal year,
When clients leave an hour for play,
But — your examination near —
You're doomed in London town to stay ;
When, tired of our prosaic day,
You'd catch a glimpse of old-world faces,
Put statutes, text-books, all, away, —
Read, mark, and learn the Leading Cases.
What ancient men and dames are here !
What formal beards in grave array !
Matt. Ashby's doubtful wrongs appear,
And Wilkes's counsel still inveigh ;
You'll see the inn where Calye lay,
Old Compton's woes, Miss Chudleigh's graces,
If you my sage advice obey,
" Read, mark, and learn the Leading Cases."
Popphstonc his clerk advises.
Still Moss's rent is in arrear,
Still rings Bowes' matrimonial fray,
Still Delamirie's fraud is clear ;
Fortuitous immortals, they
Shall live when you and I decay.
When fought our fight, and run our races,
Full fifty generations may
Read, mark, and learn the Leading Cases.
ENVO Y.
Prince, would you see Law's tricksy fay,
By Justice set in judgment places,
Now guide, now turn her sword astray ?
Read, mark, and learn the Leading Cases.
SJieppard soon the mail surprises.
MILLER v. RACE.
(/. Smith's Leading Cases, gth Edition, 491. Temp. 1791-)
Bank note stolen. — No title to chattel personal acquired from
person having no title. — Exception to rule.
The postboy takes the Western way,
The London mail-bag at his back,
'Twas where the ungentle Sheppard lay,
Whose name was Jack.
, There was within one letter's fold
A sight to make the miser gloat ;
Ah ! better than the yellow gold
The crisp bank-note !
'Twas sent by Mr. F. to pay
A debt he owed, had it but got
Safe guarded on its destined way :
But it did not.
C
4 Sing, hey, the days when folks were richer,
A shout, a shriek at fall of night,
Black Bess, a highwayman thereon :
A postboy in an awful fright :
A mail-bag gone !
" Come bring the breakfast forth, mine host,
The cheerful coffee-cup, I beg,
Some rashers trim, and with my toast
I'll take an egg.
'•' We who perforce must ride at night
When business calls, against our will,
Can boast a traveller's appetite.
Boots, bring the bill."
How should our worthy landlord know
The note wherewith he paid his score
Was that the postboy had let go
The night before ?
Guileless he jogs to London town,
Seeks out the Bank, and straight thereat
Upon the counter puts it down,
With " Cash for that ! "
When Macheath lived, and Jemmy Tw ticker. 5
But Mr. Race, the cute cashier
(Commercial men were ever so),
When he had got the note, said, " Here !
Exactly so.
; 'This note was stolen the other night,
As doubtless very well you know.
Nor cash nor note, since you've no right,
From here will go."
" Why," said the jolly Miller, " why,
I've always heretofore been told
Notes pass by mere delivery,
Just as does gold
" Or silver coin. If you refuse
To pay the note that's fairly mine,
We'll take a judge and jury's views,
Sir Superfine ! "
'Twas in good faith, the jury said
The note was ta'en. No more he knew
Of Sheppard, or of Beau Brocade,
Than I or you.
And judgment did Lord Mansfield give,
" Bank-notes pass by delivery."
So home the Miller went to live
By^s.d.
What the Stat, of Fra?ids enacted,
PETER v. COMPTOX.
(/. Sm. L.C., 359. Temp. 1693.)
The Statute of Frauds, passed in 1677, "for the prevention of
frauds and. perjuries," made writing and, generally, signature,
necessary to the validity of contracts relating to the sale or letting
of land, or to the sale of goods at the price of ^10, or more, and to the
validity of (among others) agreements which could not be carried
out within a year from the making. Exceptions, however, are
made where the agreement has been partly performed, or some-
thing given in earnest, or paid on account of the price. It having
once been said that every section of the statute was worth a subsidy,
it is now invariably introduced to the student with the remark that,
at any rate, it has cost one. For the statute, though prepared by
high judicial authority, is so loose and unscientific in expression
that innumerable doubts as to its construction have come to the
courts for decision. The 4th and 17th sections, especially, have
become a joy for ever to Examiners, and the cases arising on them,
like "the trees that whisper round a temple," have become dear as
the statute's self. One of these cases, decided in 1693, has con-
ferred a perennial interest on the matrimonial alliance of Mr. and
Mrs. Peter, in circumstances which are here narrated by the defen-
dant : —
What defendant has contracted ;
I was talking one day to that Peter
And Peter was talking to me.
" When I find the right girl, I shall greet her
And marry her quickly, " says he ;
And I laughed, " Well, I hope you may meet her,"
For he wasn't a beauty to see.
" Tell you what ; if you'll give me a guinea,
I'll give you a hundred ' the day
You are wed ; " for I thought, " No such ninny
As 'ud wed him can live any way."
" Right !" he cried, and then, with a spin he
Tossed the coin, and I took it, O.K.
But it seems about women I blundered
And judged 'em too highly, sir; for
One day Peter came for that hunderd—
'Tvvas about two years after, or more.
And how Peter and Mrs. P. thundered ! —
And then, sir, they took me to law.
We said as how they'd no writin',
Which my lawyer he made it appear
1 The reporter is here inaccurate ; the agreement was for a thou-
sand guineas. Eut the principle, as was said by the chemistry pro-
fessor whose experiments invariably failed, remains the same. — En.
8 Peter wins, and here you find
Was required by the Act he was citin'
(Chapter three of the twenty-ninth year
Of Charles Second) for contracts you might in
Performin', be more than a year.
But the judges for Peter decided
That the Statute of Frauds only meant
That there must be writing, perwided
It was clearly the parties' intent
That twelve months must by them have glided.
Before they performed th' agreement."
And Peter, they said, might have married
(And there's no denyin' he might)
Before he a twelvemonth had tarried ;
I'm not a-gainsaying they're right.
So Peter the argyment carried — ■
And my purse is uncommonly light.
" It has been pointed out,'' says Mr. Popplestone, "that, even
had the plaintiff failed on the point argued in this case, he might
have succeeded on the ground that, by payment of the guinea, there
had been part performance of the contract, and that the necessity
for writing was thus avoided. He was a more fortunate litigant
than the hundreds of others who have failed, for want of some
writing, to comply with the statute. On the other hand — so great
has been the amount of litigation arising from this famous Act —
there must have been hundreds, at least, who have had good cause to
How attorneys arc maligned.
bless the clay when their legal adviser persuaded them to insist on
the proper formalities in making a contract. Yet do we find that
gratitude recorded in literature? Not. at all; or, scarcely at all.
Think of the reams of paper devoted to abuse of us ; think of the
countless epithets hurled at our heads, the contumely, the ribald
jest. I have observed that the unsuccessful party to an action in-
variably thinks, and rarely fails to say, that his opponent's attorney
is a sharp practitioner and a pettifogger. And what is the record
on the other side ? I know of but one honest verse in literature,
and that (to our shame be it spoken !) comes from America : —
'" Give us your hand, Mr. Lawyer; how do you do to-day?
You drew up that paper — I s'pose you want your pay,
Don't cut down your figures ; make it an X or a V,
For that 'ere written agreement was just the makin' of me.'
"Of course it was ! It generally is. Yet when we do not cut
down our figures ; when we do make it an X or a V, or a combina-
tion of X's and V's, what proportion of clients regard those charges
as fair ? It makes even an old Tory respect Republicanism, that it
has created a man capable of rising so far above popular superstition
and popular prejudice, as thus honestly to speak the thing he
would.
" For an illustration of the opposite tendency, recall for a moment
that miserable creature, the Attorney of Fiction. Grasping, cheat-
ing, lying, hypocritical, callous, disreputable, he has no redeeming
feature. Take, for example, the creations of Charles Dickens. He
could create a 'Riah, to atone for his treatment of Jews in Fagin ;
but is there any reparation for his Dodsons and Foggs, his Pells,
his Guppy, his Brass ? George Eliot had less tendency to carica-
ture, but are men like Dempster, and Jermyn, and Johnson, the
only types of solicitor she met ? Sir Walter Scctt was wiser, with
his excellent Fairford, and, better, Pleydell. But he looked at law
from the inside, and will hardly be accepted as an unprejudiced
i o Critics all misunderstand us,
witness. I pass over the strife-provoking attorneys created ad hoc —
in novels, I mean, the purpose whereof is to denounce the law
' wrote,' as one such book puts it, 'for the Benefit of Unhappy Clients.'
They generally — especially if written by lawyers anxious to catch
the popular ear — out-herod Herod. And I can call to mind only
one prominent example of the soul of goodness, which must, one
would think, exist even in so evil a thing as writers represent our
profession — to wit, Mr. Carlyle, the hero of J East Lynne.' The
intention in his case was, no doubt, excellent ; but it is difficult
to feel very grateful for the result.
"The poets rarely favour us with their attention; for which,
indeed, they may be pardoned. As a class, we are not poetical, nor
the cause of poetry in others, though Chaucer puts his most pathetic
tale in the mouth of 'The Man of Lawe,' and that not as a con-
solation for want of practice : —
" ' There nowhere was a busier man than he,
Yet busier than he was he seemed to be.'
But the prominent exception is Crabbe. And what says our
' Tope in worsted ' ? He is ' of a tale' with the rest.
" ' Swallow, a poor attorney, brought his boy
Up at his desk, and gave him his employ ;
He would have bound him to an honest trade,
Could preparations have been duly made.'
The third line is delicious, though it may be thought, perhaps, to
beg the question. Swallow appeared in Crabbe's own Borough, for
" ' in this, in every place
Fix the litigious, rupture-stirring race ;
Who to contention, as to trade, are led,
To whom dispute and strife are bliss and bread.'
Poets, too, and prose rs brand us.
1 1
Of these the worst is Swallow :
" ' By Law's dark by-ways he had stored his mind
With wicked knowledge how to cheat mankind.'
There follows a long story of conduct which was certainly unpro-
fessional, and, if there had been one sensible man in the country,
must, one would think, have ended in a prosecution. However, for
details the reader may go back to Crabbe. The conclusion is
forcibly feeble : —
" ' Still we of Swallow as a monster speak,
A hard, bad man, who prey'd upon the weak.'
" The Attorney of the Stage I will not condescend to examine
seriously. He is, in modern plays at least, so wooden, so unnatural,
so mechanical a monster of wickedness, or such a mere machine to
explain the plot or expedite the denouement, that I think only the
stage detective excels him in unreality. No one is likely to detain
him long upon ' the rack of this rough world ; ' I, for one, let him
pass. But I lighted the other day on an old folio pamphlet of 1676
which is worth remembering — ' The Character of an Honest
Lawyer.' It is so refreshing to see the matter put in its true light
that I quote a passage or two. • An honest lawyer,' says the
author, a certain ' H. C.,' 'is the Life-guard of our Fortunes;
the best Collateral Security for an Estate.'' He distinguishes him
very properly from the sharp practitioner, and concludes thus : — ' In
a word, while he lives, he is the Delight of the Court, the Ornament
of the Bar, the Glory of his Profession, the Patron of Innocency, the
Upholder of Right, the Scourge of Oppression, the Terror of Deceit,
and the Oracle of his Country, and when Death calls him to the
Bar of Heaven by a Habeas Corpus cum Causis, he finds his Judge
his Advocate, nonsuits the Devil, obtains a liberate from all his in-
firmities, and continues one of the long robe in Glory.' 1 This is a
little 'steep' perhaps. But how much nearer the truth than the
popular conception ! "
12 Ne'er a word the author knew
LIC KB ARROW v. MASON.
(/. Sm. L.C., 737. Temp. 1 786-1793.)
" Now it chanced that there came divers Knights from the
Marches of the North, and vvrang their hands, and cried, 'Justice ! '
And King Arthur sat on the chaflet and said, ' Fear not, but I will
do ye right, for it forthinketh me that wrong go unpunished. Who
hath done ye hurt ? ' So they spake their gest, and King Arthur
said, ' Nay, but this is a hard case. Sir Ashurst, I charge ye that ye
ride forth and do what beseemeth therein.' " — Morte cPArthtir. 1
The story told in the old Term Reports,
Of Mason and Lickbarrow, and the right,
To stop in transit goods, unpaid for, sold
To an insolvent ; and when nights are long
Read by each student lovingly with care,
Ere yet he girds him for his Final day.
For Freeman, as beside the Hasingvliet —
Fairest of all fair waterways that thread,
By street and bridge, the town of Rotterdam,
1 I have been unable to verify this quotation. — Ed.
Rhymed with " stop 211 transitu ;" 1 3
Where land and water meet, and every spire
Lies deep reflected in the waves beneath —
He paced, half lost in meditative mood,
Spoke thus to Turings : " Lo ! The summer wanes ;
The corn that waved so fairly, while the sun
Stood at his zenith, lies within your barns.
Send me a cargo ; send it me, I pray,
There where the Royal Liver makes her nest,
At Liverpool, beyond the Northern sea,
And I will pay you by acceptances."
Then Turings, hearing, did as he was prayed,
And through the Northern water the white spray
Foamed and dashed high in air. Yet, ere he went,
Sang Holmes, the bravest of all knights who stood
Upon the vessel's deck, and captain called,
And loud his voice and cheery. Thus he sang :
" Four bills of lading I have signed to-day ;
Three bills of lading soon have passed away ;
For Turings has them. Three and one are four.
" One bill of lading still I do retain ;
One I shall have when the good ship shall gain
Her distant port. And three and one are four.''
Then, as they sailed, did Turings take the bills,
And two he gave to Freeman, who with joy
14 Tells his talc, then, in blank verse ;
Received them, nor by him to be outdone
In knightly courtesy, he turned and gave
Bills of exchange to Turings for the price.
So the days passed, and the moon waxed and waned,
And August days grew shorter, and the barge
Yet sailed apace. But Freeman meanwhile sold
To Lickbarrow of Liverpool his corn.
The corn that lay within the vessel's hold,
And sent his bills of lading, and assigned
Them duly over, and Lickbarrow paid
His price. But Freeman, ill at ease, and grave
With many cares, and bearing now the pain
Of former loss, was bankrupt. Turings heard
And shuddered ; his acceptances as yet
Were not matured, and lost was this his wealth.
Yet rallying, as becomes a noble knight,
Wise in the tent as valiant in the field,
He seized the bill of lading he retained,
And sent it in hot haste to England's shore,
To Liverpool, to Mason ; and he said :
" My hour of need is come ; friend, be my friend,
In this my travail. Get ye down with speed
To where the water beats upon the land,
And oozes black by the far-stretching quays,
And where ye see the fair Endeavour lie,
There haste ye. Take the corn she groaning bears —
Plaintiff's treated worse and worse. I 5
My corn it is — and sell it ; yet unpaid
Am I ; and send the money ye acquire."
And Mason, ever faithful to his charge,
Stayed not to question, did as Turings bid.
Then said Sir Holmes, seeing in Mason's hand
The bill of lading, " Sir, so let it be
As ye would have it. I have done my deed
Do ye what resteth." So he gave the corn,
And Mason took, and sold it, in despite
Of Lickbarrow, who, turning, strove and cried :
" Wrong, bitter wrong and foul despite ye do,
As though the land were kingless, or as though
Rough Might ruled o'er us. Sirs, the corn was mine ;
Justly I bought it and the price I paid.
Give it, I pray you, that our strife may cease.
Yet — if ye will not — let us to the hall
Where, by his minster of the West, the King
Sits to right wrong, with him who meetly wears
The ermine of the Lord Chief Justiceship."
But Mason answered, " Sir, ye waste your words :
The corn is Turings'. Freeman, when he sold
And sent you bills of lading, had not paid
The price he promised. Bankrupt now is he,
And since I stopped it, lo ! the corn was mine."
Then on a day when, in due order ranged,
1 6 Here zve learn their lords/lips' pleasure.
The judges, following their custom, sate
To hear the plaints of those who suffer wrong,
In the great hall, where the dim light beat through
The many-coloured pane, the knights drew near
And cried for justice. And when all was told
Stood one grave judge before the rest and sang :
" This is the song, the song of Ashurst, J.,
Let him who will, J. Ashurst's song gainsay ;
He errs in counsel. Lo ! I sing the law.
" Dear is the right to stop in transit 'u
The goods unpaid-for, when the seller knew
The buyer bankrupt. List ! I sing the law.
" Yet, if before the goods the seller takes,
The purchaser a due assignment makes,
No right remaineth. Lo ! I sing the law.
" This corn Lickbarrow from yon Freeman bought ;
Justly he claimed the goods ; and true he ought
To have them rendered. I have sung the law. :;
Thus ceased he, and the murmured plaudits rose
As, for the plaintiff finding, he resumed
His seat august. Then slowly from the hall
The people passed away, and darkness fell
Upon them with the night • and the grey mists
Rose from the river, and the land was still.
Sing zve now a lighter measure. I 7
ARMORY v. DELAMIRIE.
(Z Sin. L.C., 385. Temp. 1722.)
" Finding's keeping."
Ain't it hard that when a feller has a bloomin' stroke o'
luck
There must come some other feller at his orange for to
suck?
But though I sweep a crossin', 1 a toff though he may be,
He ain't a-goin' to lord it over Charley Armory.
I was standin' at my crossin', sweepin' up like anything,
When I sees a shinin' jewel — twas a pretty lady's ring—
A-lyin' there beside me, and there worn't a copper near,
So out of the mud I whips it, and sticks to it, never fear.
1 Mr. Popplestone is here a little inaccurate : Armory swept
not crossings but chimneys. Perhaps since " climbing boys " have
ceased to be, it may be assumed that crossing-sweepers are their
lineal representatives. — Ed.
1 8 Like "golden boys " a sweeper may
Then says I, "My pippin Charley, you're in luck — that's
what you are ;
Off you go to Delamirie's ; sharp's the word, it isn't far.''
So although the day was rainy, and the trade was pretty
keen,
Off I goes, and makes no extry charge for that there
crossin' clean.
When I gets to Delamirie's (that's the goldsmith's what's
hard by),
" If you please, sir," says I, quickly, " a poor crossin'-
sweep am I,
And I want to know the value (I ain't never been to
school,
And I don't know nuftin, please, sir) of this pretty little
jewel."
And he ups and bosses sideways, then he takes a little
glass,
Then he turns and turns it over, then he eyes me, and
at las'
Kind o' laughs, and says off-handed, " Well, it's only
brass, you know,
But I'll give you, say, three ha'pence." " All yourself 1 "
I says, " Oh, no !
Find fortune lying in Jus way, 19
"Not for Joseph ! " says I, quickly, " please to give me
back the ring."
So he did, but — did you ever hear of such a wicked
thing ? —
He had taken out the jewels what was fixed and shinin'
there,
And he kep' 'em, and he only gave me back the socket
bare !
Didn't I just loose the lingo ? Didn't I just give him
sauce ?
Not by no means ! Not at all, sir ! No, I went at once,
o' course :
" Call this here a Christian country? Garn away, your
gammon cease,
Thieves and murder," says I, " Robbers ! Burglars !
Help ! Perleece — perleece ! "
So a gent, what was a passin', came to see what was the
row,
And he said as how he'd help me, and he took and
told me how
I could get from that there willin, who had gone and
done me wrong.
Damages for them there jewels, and could make him
change his song.
D
20 And find, ivhile travelling on lifes tour,
So one day I had to go, sir, 'fore a fine old big-wigged
beak,
And another chap puts questions ; so I ups and out I
speak,
Up I speak and tell 'em plainly how I got ihe ring, and
where,
And how that there Delamirie wouldn't act upon the
square.
And to hear that judge a-talkin', wasn't that a stunnin
treat ?
For he told that Delamirie he worn't better than a
cheat,
And he lectured, and he rated, at that poor, unlucky
bloke,
Till I a'most died o' larfin, and was nearly fit to choke.
" Spose," he says, u the boy did find it, it is his,
although o' course,
He'd have had to give it back to her as suffered by
the loss ;
But, 'gainst every other body, he'd a right to keep the
ring,
And for you to go and take it was a most dishonest
thing.
Laivs do not always grind the poor.
" And since you've took the jewels out, and gave him
back the socket,
You must pay him heavy damages out o' your unholy
pocket ;
And since we can't tell what the sort of those you took
away, sir,
We'll assume they were the best ones, and for 'em you
must pay, sir."
So ain't I just the cheese, sir? and don't I cut a dash,
And put on side of evenins with Delamirie's cash ?
But, lor', I am a steady sort, and gen'lly goes courtin',
Like Mr. Altamont I'll wed as soon 's I've made a fortin 7 .
So farewell, gentle reader ; may your crossin' be a broad
J un!
And every Sunday mornin' wet; the takings, too 7
accordun'.
May you live to be a hundred, and then be strong and
wiry,
And all your lawsuits end like this 'gainst Mr. Delamirie !
"It is gratifying, if somewhat surprising, to the professional
lawyer," says Mr. Popplestone, " to find the popular impression of
the law corresponding to some extent with the reality. With the
obvious and important exception of the owner, and the rare case of
treasure trove, finding is keeping against all the world. So that the
2 2 How laymen oft the law distort :
notices exhibited by railway companies, requiring the delivery of
chattels found in carriages and the like to their officials, is only
another proof that corporations have no consciences.
" No pessimist or cynic need, however, regard his principles as
shaken by this instance of popular knowledge. It is but the
exception that proves the rule of a wide and comprehensive
ignorance, equalled only by the confidence with which the popular
errors are maintained. Some of these errors I intend to examine
and analyze in my long-contemplated ' History of Law in Relation
to Opinion.' Two instances (taken at random) will here suffice —
Foreclosure, and Contempt of Court. Foreclosure is the process
by which a person who has lent money, secured on mortgage, may
obtain a decree from a court of equity, cutting off the borrower
from his right to redeem the land by payment of the mortgage
money. Now, how is this obtained ? After proceedings, occupying
at least some months, and possibly a year or two, the mortgagee
obtains from the Court an order to take an account of how much is
due to him. Other proceedings follow in Chambers, and, after
several more months, a certificate is made of the amount due.
Then, after a short interval, another order — the foreclosure order —
is made, by which it is directed that if, in six months from the date
of that order, the amount due is not paid, the mortgagor be fore-
closed from his right to redeem. At the end of that time another
application is necessary to make the foreclosure absolute : and I say
nothing of frequent extensions of time by the complication of
receivers, and 're-opening' of the foreclosure. It is obvious that
this procedure has been framed with the most scrupulous regard to
the protection of borrowers, who can, moreover, obtain an order
for sale of the property, instead of foreclosure. Yet I have seen on
the stage honest, virtuous heroes sentenced to four acts of misery by
a single ' foreclosure notice,' by which a tyrannical and nefarious
mortgagee could at his arbitrary will, and at a moment's notice,
eject them from their homes without right or remedy ! What this
Prose readings on Contempt of Court. 23
mysterious ' foreclosure notice,' with its summary procedure, is, I
have in vain sought to discover in all the books.
" Again : committals for contempt of Court for marrying a ward
of the Court without its sanction can only be made, as the youngest
attorney's junior office-boy knows, by that Court, and when the
husband knew the wife to be a ward, and then only after notice to
him and the hearing of a motion in Court, when he could appear,
personally or by counsel, and make any excuse, or offer any apology,
he thought fit. Yet I have seen (and laughed for three hours con-
tinuously with honest pleasure at) a play, one of the authors whereof
was a barrister, in which a gentleman was sought to be arrested, for
innocently marrying a lady not a ward when he married her, on a
warrant obtained apparently from the nearest magistrate, and with-
out any notice whatever to the gentleman himself !
"Do not let me be supposed to complain of the general ignorance
of these matters. Apart from an obvious reflection with reference
to Othello's occupation, it will readily be supposed that we derive a
flush of pleasure from the reflection of our superior knowledge, which
is one of the consolations too rarely found along our thorny path.
Narrowed, indeed, would be the novelist's licence, were he never
to transport us to a land where wills are not revoked by marriage,
and fraud of all kinds is more easy than in our own. Through a
long life I have derived peculiar gratification from observing the
dogmatic utterances — whether in the tavern bar or the provincial
drawing-room — of those, who, in the language and with the logic
of honest Dogberry, assume that a knowledge of the law, like read-
ing and writing, comes by Nature."
24 Pater son his trust misplaces;
PATERSON v. GANDASEQUI.
(II. Sm.L.C, 378. Temp. 1812.)
When the buyer of goods upon credit becomes bankrupt, the
honest tradesman naturally seeks to make some other and solvent
person liable for the price. Opportunities for this course arise
especially in dealings with agents, and the success of the honest
tradesman depends largely on his knowledge or ignoi - ance of the fact
that his customer bought as agent, and not as principal.
Should you ask me whence these stories,
Whence these tales of Gandasequi,
I should answer, I should tell you,
" From Smith's well-known Leading Cases,
Smith, J. W., the learned ;
Volume two, the ninth edition."
Gandasequi, wealthy merchant,
In Madrid the splendid dwelling,
Came to England, came to London,
Came and called on Larrazabal,
All too late his step retraces ; 25
Menojo, and Trotiaga,
London merchants, they, his agents :
Said, " I'll give you two per centum
For commission on your purchase,
Purchases for Gandasequi."
Then to Paterson a message
They despatched, and he upon them
Called, and with him brought his samples.
In the counting-house he showed them,
Counting-house of Larrazabal.
Gandasequi looked upon them
And debated of their prices ;
Then he ordered many stockings,
Ordered several hundred dozens.
Gladly Paterson despatched them
Invoiced all to Larrazabal,
Till the news upon the market
Spread among the frighted merchants —
" Larrazabal and Menojo,
And their partner Trotiaga,
All are bankrupt, banco rupto ! "
Then did Paterson for payment
Gandasequi press, and sue him.
Ellenborough, Lord Chief Justice,
Tried the case in London city.
" No," said he, " for Larrazabal
26 Loses, though his fig] it was. plucky
To your knowledge was an agent.
You to him the goods have invoiced,
Knowing well for whom he acted ;
You elected Larrazabal
For your debtor." And, so saying,
Straight a non-suit he directed.
Wasn't Gandasequi lucky ? 27
ADDISON v. GANDASEQUI.
(II. Sm. L.C., 387. Temp. 1812.)
In the time when Gandasequi,
Having crossed the stormy water,
Having crossed the Bay of Biscay,
Was in London city dwelling,
Did his agent Larrazabal
Write to Addison the merchant,
Saying, "Show us of your samples."
To the house of Gandasequi
Straight the merchant brought his samples ;
Gandasequi long debated
Of their prices ; six per centum
Did he ask for a reduction,
And he ordered ; gave directions
For the shipment of his purchase
By the good ship Archduke Charles.
Addison the goods delivered
Debited to Larrazabal ;
Larrazabal gave him credit
28 Exeunt they of names fantastic.
For the goods, and Gandasequi
Did he debit with their prices,
And commission two per centum.
Then, when Larrazabal's failure
Was discussed in all the markets,
Addison sued Gandasequi
For the value of the purchase ;
Though he knew that Larrazabal
Was the agent, Gandasequi
Principal and real buyer,
Yet had debited the prices
Unto Mr. Larrazabal, —
Larrazabal and his partners.
Twelve good men and true, the jury,
Gave a verdict for defendant ;
All the learning of the lawyers,
Serjeant Best and Serjeant Vaughan,
Failed to remedy his losses,
Failed to set aside the verdict.
Addison was left lamenting,
" Oh, my money ! Gandasequi ! "
Of the Courts Ecclesiastic. 2 9
THE DUCHESS OF KINGSTON'S CASE.
(//. Sin. L.C., Si 2. Temp. 1776).
" A'cursory acquaintance with English history,"' says Mr. Popple-
stone, " is sufficient to inform the student of the existence, from the
time of the Conquest, of certain Ecclesiastical Courts, or, as they are
sometimes called, Spiritual Courts, or Courts Christian, with a
limited and peculiar jurisdiction. Their powers, indeed, have been,
at former periods, the subject of famous political controversies, with
which we are not here concerned. In modern times their jurisdic-
tion has been of a three-fold nature : first, in proceedings pro
salute aninii of the offender, as in cases of heresy or immorality ;
secondly, in cases of semi-administrative acts ; and thirdly, where
redress is given to the injured party. Of the second class, the
principal divisions are the granting of probate, or official con-
firmation of wills and codicils, and letters of administration of the
estate of persons dying intestate ; and of the third class, matri-
monial causes. The jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts in matters
of probate is a curiosity, peculiar, I believe, to English law ; an
anomaly which (as it has now ceased) will be readily forgiven by
readers of the Doctors' Commons experiences of David Copperfield,
and of the immortal Spenlow and Jorkins. The connection of the
Courts with matrimonial causes is more obvious. For though
Blackstone, with the true common lawyer's jealousy, remarks that
one might ' be led to wonder that the same authority which enjoined
30 'Trix Esmond tvears a ribbon smart,
the strictest celibacy to the priesthood should think them the
proper judges in causes between man and wife,' yet the explanation
lies plainly in the fact that matrimony was one of the seven sacra-
ments of the Roman Church. ' Of matrimonial causes,' to quote
again from Blackstone, ' one of the first and principal is Causa
jactitationis matrimonii; when one of the parties boasts, or gives
out, that he or she is married to the other, whereby a common
reputation of their matrimony may ensue. On this ground the
party injured may libel the other [i.e., commence an action against
him or her] in the spiritual courts ; and, unless the defendant under-
takes and makes out a proof of the actual marriage, he or she is
enjoined to perpetual silence on that head.' Of such suits for
'jactitation of marriage' perhaps the most celebrated is that of
Elizabeth Chudleigh, the beautiful Duchess of Kingston, and the
original of Beatrix in Thackeray's ' Esmond ' — in my humble and
unprofessional opinion, by far the finest novel in the language.
The proceedings in her suit were, as will be seen, called in question
in the subsequent prosecution of the Duchess before the House of
Lords, which forms one of the many curious pages of romance to be
found in the law books. The case still remains in those books,
because of its bearing upon the doctrine of estoppel, that principle
by which a man is at times precluded from asserting or denying
some fact, on account of his previous denial or assertion in the
contrary sense, or by matter of record; 'a head of law,' say the
editors of Smith's Leading Cases, ' once tortured into a variety of
absurd refinements, but now almost reduced to consonancy with
the rules of common sense and justice.' But the legal importance of
the actual decision in the case belongs to the past ; for it should be
added that the jurisdiction of the Spiritual Courts was transferred
in 1857 to the lay ' Court of Probate ' and 'Court for Divorce and
Matrimonial Causes,' which have, in turn, been merged in that
curious, if convenient, conglomerate, the Probate, Divorce, and
Admiralty Division of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice."
Poor Harry bears a heavy heart.
My theme is what the poet's e'er should be,
Woman and love, and haply, too, 'tis marriage.
I cannot often say that of these three
The last is greatest — not that I'd disparage
The holy estate ; — the wayward muse, you see,
Sings not the presents, settlements, or carriage.
Yet, like a shilling horrible, I'll tell
Of marriage here, and bigamy as well. >
There are philosophers, I know, who say
Cherchez lafemmc, whenever there is trouble ;
But I was brought up in a different way ;
"Your griefs you'll halve, your happiness you'll double,"
Was always said upon a wedding-day
When I was young. It may be but a bubble,
A poet's dream — no reader need receive it ;
But I, until I'm forty, shall believe it.
Besides, the proverb isn't true : the books
(Which to a lawyer means the Law Reports)
Are filled, as any one may see who looks,
By breaches of man's contracts, and his torts,
1 As was said of Goethe, on the appearance of his " Stella " :
"His glowing muse, with passion fraught
From dull morality is free ;
Self-murder he's already taught,
And now he's got to bigamy." J. P.
32 Man is but, or soon or late,
His wiles, devices, and his crafty crooks ;
Man's injuries to man fill all the Courts.
But woman's name, that decks the books so fairly,
Appears therein (alas !) but very rarely.
Tom Moore may vow you taught him nought but folly,
And in his melodies lament your sweet
Unreasonableness, O Jane or Polly,
Kathleen or Ellen, Mary, Marguerite ;
But I maintain that nothing is more jolly
Than to learn even folly at your feet.
Besides — to cut short what's already long —
One need not swear the truth of every song.
Let's to our tale. This knock-kneed metre tends
To lead one to diffuseness — heinous crime !
The curtain rises ; on his knee there bends
His Grace of Kingston ; the soft village chime
(Behind the scenes) its sweet enchantment lends.
Will she accept the coronet ? 'Tis time ;
Thrice she's refused a Duke. Ah, if she could
(Much vice in if) accept him, sure, she would !
She, the proud, peerless beauty of her age,
Queen of a world of gallants, wits, and peers —
She whose fair portrait gleams from out the page
Of the great master of our smiles and tears,
Play tiling of a heartless Fate. 3 3
The giant of the tender heart, and sage —
She, tortured there, 'twixt her desire and fears,
Had she spoke all the truth, she must have said,
Like Becky Sharp, " I am already wed."
Alas ! for those who hear Hernani's horn,
When, at the last, the lines in places pleasant
Have fallen, after years of grief forlorn ;
Who find their long-sought joy but evanescent,
And, through the heavy, heavy air upborne,
The Past's relentless summons to the Present ;
For those who soon their whirlwind harvest see,
And watch how Has Been presses on To Be !
And she, Elizabeth Chudleigh, yet a child,
Turned by a trick from her first love, in pique
Or in caprice, had made a secret, wild,
And midnight marriage. Wearied in a week
Or less, they quarrelled, hated, and reviled,
And parted ; he for anxious years to seek —
Anxious to her ; for were her marriage known
She'd lost her post of honour near the throne.
Once, in despair, the proof she had destroyed
Of that much-hated, unacknowledged vow ;
Most of the witnesses were dead ; o'erjoyed
A moment, but a moment only, now
34 " Give us wealth and fame," we cry,
At her imprudence she in fact's annoyed.
The messenger to whom e'en peers must bow-
Seems to have summoned Bristol's Earl, and he,
Her husband, 's heir, and she'd a Countess be.
Quickly she had another record made
Of that same secret marriage ; for, since Fate
That she should be a Duchess still forbade,
'Twas much to be a Countess, though her mate
She hated, for rank has its charms. The shade
Of her ill fortune doomed her yet to wait :
The Earl recovered. It must be unpleasant
To find your ancestor is convalescent,
When you've already discounted your sweet,
Sweet legacy, and have to plunge again
In impecuniosity. And fleet
The years were passing by her, and in vain
Against her secret bonds she'd strive and beat,
"Dragging at each remove a lengthening chain. - '
But after darkness came the dawn, and she
Gained, at the last, some hope of being free.
Since she persisted that her spouse she hated,
So let it be ; he would not more pursue.
Forthwith she sued to have him jactitated,
Id est, that he vain boasting should eschew
Age makes answer, " Vanity ! " 35
That he with her in wedlock had been mated ;
And he, pro forma, said the boast was true,
But did not prove it. So the Court's decree
From her long, weary bondage set her free.
It was a friendly, nay, collusive, suit ;
The Spiritual Courts were not too wise,
Yet here, I think, they showed themselves acute —
A blind eye, on occasion, I advise.
Children of light are rarely destitute
Of wit to cross their t's, and dot their i's,
In this our day. It may be wrong, but such is
Life. Within a month she was aDuch ess.
Vicar of Wakefield ! — champion of the cause
Of pure monogamy — look in my face !
Would you not somewhat loosen your strict laws
Were your Olivia in Miss Chudleigh's place ?
I own I'm glad to see her, spite of flaws,
Duchess of Kingston, wealthy, and Her Grace.
To wed for wealth or rank is doubtless naughty,
But maidens sometimes do it ere they're forty.
Four years or so she had of wedded bliss,
More or less blissful ; then the Duke departed
This transitory life. A past like this
She should have watche'd that ne'er a hint was started
E
3 6 Love we ask, and Death replies,
Of what in her young years had been amiss —
That secret marriage. But the story darted
Through all the town, like sparks when fire is lighted,
And soon for bigamy she stood indicted
Before her peers. The question was, of course,
Whether the Consistorial Court's decree.
That found her marriage void, was here of force
To estop the evidence of bigamy.
They sought the judges — usual resource —
To ask their lordships what the law might be ;
Who answered the decree was not conclusive,
Especially as her suit was collusive.
The Crown, they said, might still proceed to show
That she again had married, while as yet
Her husband lived ; and if they thought that so
The facts were proved, the Crown must on them get
Their verdict. A French jury, as we know,
Had found some loophole in the legal net ;
But all who sat in judgment then upon her
Declared that she was guilty, on their honour.
She pleaded privilege, was straight set free,
And then from England she escaped by stealth.
Her foes had gained a Cadmean victory :
They failed to wring aught from her of the wealth
" Vanity of Vanities !" 37
The Duke had left her. But an exile she
Wandered in search of happiness and health ;
In regal splendour travelling, gratified
Each two-hours-long caprice, 1 and so an exile died.
Constance or Rachel for her children weeping,
A maiden waiting lonely at the tryst
For one the waves have in their cruel keeping,
Her tears fall'n on the ring she oft has kissed, —
These in their grief have something that, up-leaping,.
May sanctify the tears they can't resist
(Prompter, the curtain ! Quick ! I feel a rising,
A fatal tendency to moralizing).
But for the heart (I was about to say)
Bruised by the fate perverse that fortune brings,
That changes fairy Beatrix to clay
Baroness Bernstein— are there healing springs
To wash the grief-stains of the years away ?
Ah me, " the sense of tears in mortal things ! "
Still passion sways our youth : 'tis well that after
(Cabby ! a hansom !) we've the power of laughter.
On the back of Mr. Popplestone's manuscript I find the follow-
ing remarks :
" I have always thought Touchstone was right to put his moral first,
1 She used to say, " I should detest myself if I were two hours
in the same temper."
3 8 Yet life has its consolations.
and add, ' thereby hangs a tale.' For, whether the tale be pertinent
to the text, or not, we listen thereto with interest : whereas, if the
tale comes first, we generally close our ears to the moral. And the
tendency of morals is not to ' hang thereby.' Even in my uncritical
childhood, I used to think that /Esop's deductions were at times a
little strained. And I am conscious that my concluding couplet
hangs very indifferently by the preceding rhymes. But I hope an
old man may be forgiven for tacking on, even where it is not very
appropriate, a moral so comforting to old age. I fancy we all of us
find with some surprise, when the romance of our life is over,
whether it end in disappointment or realization, that there is (after
a little while) so much zest and interest left in life. To quote the
refrain of one of Mr. Andrew Lang's best ballades, ' Life's more
amusing than we thought.' The sentiment is newer, as well as
truer, than the
'" O mihi pneteritos referat si Jupiter annos'
of our sighing youth.
" That tag is trite. I always felt uncomfortably like Mr. Jermyn
in ' Felix Holt ' on the, I fear, not infrequent occasions when I have
repeated a saying so 'extremely quoted,' to round a paragraph, or
impress an alderman on his way home from the Town Council.
'Tis pity that the best things are so hard worked ; so irrevocably
committed before our time to the index expurgatorins of sayings
which, as Sir George Trevelyan puts it, are 'too hackneyed for
quotation.' I remember, at the Athenceum, 1 a young debater had
made a speech which favourably impressed the audience ; but when,
in conclusion, he compared Mr. Gladstone, or Mr. Disraeli, or him-
self, or some one to
" ' some tall cliff which lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm,'
1 Doubtless the Stourmouth r Athenreuni and Working Men's
Institute.- -Ed.
Popplcstone on trite quotations. 39
his peroration was drowned in shouts of laughter, which, to this
day, the poor fellow does not understand.
"It is interesting to note the artifices by which various authors
contrive to introduce these too familiar but useful sayings, and
themselves escape the responsibility. Mr. James Payn, in his ' A
Confidental Agent ' (where, mirabile dictu, there is a solicitor who
is represented as neither dishonest nor ridiculous), has a scholar so
sensitive and averse to these ' common forms ' of speech, that, when-
ever the talk turns in a way which renders their introduction
possible, lie shudders and says, ' he ' — the other character — ' is
going to say — I know he is going to say, " Rara avis," or " Sweets
to the sweet " ' — and so says it himself to show his horror of the
offence ! Mr. Justin McCarthy, in his best novel, ' Maid cf Athens,'
speaks of ' our friend Tristram ' (though I daresay that, like Mrs.
Harris, there never was no sich person), on whose convenient
shoulders the dramatis persona put all the Millerisms and trite
quotations they are moved to repeat. This is ingenious, but there
is something in it a keen sense of literary equity will not approve.
But we are digressing. Reveno?is a nos moutons. "
Mr. Popplestone here breaks off abruptly. It need only be
added that the reader desirous of further details of the Duchess of
Kingston's case and life, will find the facts (and a good deal not
coming within that category — some of the fact?, as well as the fiction,
being, it must be confessed, little to her credit) in the contemporary
"Authentic Detail of Particulars relative to the Duchess of King-
ston ....," in Horace Walpole's and Mrs. Montagu's Letters,
in the Annual Register, xii., xvi., xix., xx., xxi., and xxx. ; in
the State Trials ; and in a far more accessible source, an excellent
article in the Cornhill Magazine for February 1SS7. The trial,
which lasted four days before the House of Lords, and in which
seven counsel appeared for the prosecution and nine for the defence,
is reported at some length in these authorities and elsewhere.
40 Cutter sails but — Fates a mocker .'-
CUTTER v. POWELL.
{II. Sin. L.C., I. Temp. 1795.)
The ait and mystery of quantum meruit.
'Twas in Jamaica's bay
The Governor Parry lay,
A good ship and well found.
Now Captain Powell, he
Commanded her, and she
For Liverpool was bound.
Said Powell : "I will pay,
Well, thirty guineas, say
(Thirty-one pounds, ten, nought);
That is, provided you
As mate shall duty do
Until we're safe in port.*'
Then Cutter said, said he :
"Your note promissoree
I do accept, and so
Goes to Davy Jones s locker, 4 1
Let's hoist the flowing sail,
And whistle for a gale
For Merry England, ho ! "
Alas ! old England's shore
Should Cutter ne'er see more —
He sailed but to his death ;
And deep beneath the wave
He found a sailor's grave
(September twentieth).
The voyage was not o'er
Till some nine days, or more,
October's course had run.
The widow said : " My late
Spouse was your second mate —
Alas ! my only one.
" I pray you give to me,
Who am poor Cutter's le-
gal representative,
A portion of the pay
That to him on this day
You had agreed to give."
Said Powell : " Cutter died
Before he had complied
With the agreement made ;
4- Mourn we o'er the claim rejected!
Which was as mate to do
Duty the journey through.
This claim cannot be paid."
And when they went to law
Judges upheld him : " For
If you contract," said they,
" That you'll do such and such,
And do but half as much,
You nought can make us pay,
" Unless the agreement made,
Or custom of the trade
(And here no custom is),
Provide that you may sue
On a quantum meru-
it. This suit we dismiss."
Hcres a dame the Court protected. 43
STRATHMORE v. BOWES.
(/. White and Tudor 's Leading Cases in Equity, 604. Temp. 17S9.)
Frauds on marital rights — Who seeks equity must come with
clean hands.
"The law of baron and feme, or husband and wife," says Mr.
Popplestone, "as it was known to our ancestors until this century,
and in large part even to us, will be regarded by our descendants
as conclusive proof of the completeness of our barbarism. That
law has been compendiously stated thus : husband and wife are
one person, and the husband is that one. There is truth in the
epigram. The wife's rights almost ceased to exist. She became
incapable of ordinary legal acts. The husband on marriage took
her personal property absolutely, her choses in action if he went to
the trouble of getting them, and her real property for life. He
might (and, perhaps, may) administer to her 'moderate correction,'
and might 'confine, but not imprison her.' If she sustained injury
she could bring no action for redress without his concurrence ; and
he received the damages when they were obtained. Where he was
concerned, she was even incapable of being a witness. 'So great
a favourite^ says Blackstone, 'is the female sex of the laws of
England.'' The remark was not ironical ; but one needs to be a
very devout Blackstonian to take it quite seriously. Even the
utmost devotion known to civilized men, the love passing the love
of women — the affection, I mean, of a commentator — can't quite
stand this. One of Blackstone's editors, Mr. Christian (afterwards
Judge of the Isle of Ely, and unkindly said to have died, ' in the
44 Ladies won ere Mrs. Wei don,
full vigour of his incapacity'), adds (13th ed. i. 445) a note which I
take the liberty of appending : —
" ' Nothing, I apprehend, would more conciliate the goodwill cf
the student in favour of the laws of England than the persuasion
that they had shown a partiality to the female sex. But I am not
so much in love with my subject as to be inclined to leave it in
possession of a glory which it may not justly deserve If the
baron kills his feme, it is the same as if he had killed a stranger, or
any other person ; but if a feme kills her husband it is a much more
atrocious crime. And, therefore, the law denominates her crime a
species of treason, and condemns her to the same punishment as if
she had killed the king.' The learned editor goes on to point out
other differences of the law, among them being that as to benefit of
clergy. However learned a woman, she might, prior to the 3 & 4
W. & M., c. 9, have been executed for larceny, bigamy, <S;c., on
the first offence ; while her husband had only to read
" ' his neck-verse at Haribee,'
or elsewhere, in order to obtain exemption from all but nominal
punishment ; and the editor thus concludes : ' From this impartial
statement of the account, I fear there is little reason to pay a com-
pliment to our laws for their respect and favour to the female
sex.'
"However, we gradually escaped from the trammels of the old
doctrines. The Court of Chancery may claim the credit of having
been the means by which, gradually enough — as, indeed, was well,
even in such matters— and in piecemeal fashion, the law was brought
more into accord with lay opinion. The story of the emancipation,
and of the rise and progress of married women's separate estate, is
one of the most curious chapters of our law. But this is not the
place to tell it. Needless to say, the change was consummated by
the Married Women's Property Act, 1S82, which was passed—a
'Neath Thurlow's rule and doubtful Eldon. 45
curious commentary on the efficiency of a ' Democratic ' Parliament 1
— unknown to the outer world ; so that it might be said of this same
emancipation that it was achieved, as it has been said that we
conquered the world, in a fit of absence of mind.
" But let us not be unjust, even to the common law. It could give,
we must acknowledge, some sort of reason for the faith that was in
it. If a man took his wife's property on marriage, he became
liable, too, for her ante-nuptial debts ; and, since he was bound to
provide for her, it was fair, said the law, that he should take her
estate. For this reason the intended husband's concurrence was
necessary to any settlement made by his wife in contemplation of
marriage ; and the Court of Chancery was accustomed to set aside,
as fraudulent, settlements made secretly, by which the husband was
deprived of his control over her means. Such settlements were
known as frauds on marital rights, on which 'Strathmore v. Bowes'
is the chief authority. Like many leading cases, ' Strathmore v.
Bowes,' to which, after this long and prosaic proem, we turn without
more ado, while stating the rule, itself establishes an exception.
The facts, as reporters say, appear in the — doggerel, which here
followeth :—
My Lady Strathmore had a mind to wed,
And betrothed herself to Mr. Grey ;
She ordered her trousseau, and fixed the day,
And then to her attorney said :
"Come, draw me a settlement, for I choose
My fortune to have to my separate use."
Grey's consent was quickly won,
The deed was signed, and the thing was done.
/ Mr. Popplestone was a high and dry Tory. — Ed.
46 " Woman s faith and woman 's trust"
" Oh, Lady Strathmore, have they told you yet?-
Oh me ! my fright I shall never forget —
The Editor of that newspaper cruel,
Whose slanders well my lady knows,
Has been made to fight a duel
With our gallant Mr. Bowes ! "
(The duel that Bowes fought, I grieve
To say, was hut a make-believe,
Intended to prepare the way
For Bowes to take the place of Grey).
" What say you ? Bowes has fought for me?
Oh ! is he hurt ? I long to see — "
The artful Bowes, be sure, was near
When he was wanted to appear ;
Into the room he came, and she.
Who was betrothed to Grey so lately,
Fell on his neck affectionately.
''My gallant Bowes with joy I see;
Oh, come, my only beau to be.
Grey is too cold a tone for me ;
You love me, sure, far more than he ;
To-morrow, by special licence, we,
At yonder church, will married be ! "
And so they were, and history tells
How they married the Bowes without the bells.
In haste was said the fateful sentence,
Weigh, Sir Walter says, as dust ; 47
But leisurely was their repentance.
For Bowes was often heard to swear
That when the brave had won the fair,
'Twas fair that he the purse should hold.
His injured wife deemed him not meet,
Who cheated her with counterfeit
Of love, to get her sterling gold.
And when Bowes found how her fortune was settled,
He was (perhaps naturally) nettled.
Sad is the sight,
At dead of night,
By candle-light, 1
That wicked Bowes,
With a pistol goes,
Puts it to the nose
Of his frightened wife,
And threatens her life,
Unless she executes a deed
(Which he hardly gives her time to read),
Revoking the settlement she had made ;
Frightened and trembling she obeyed.
Next day she left her cruel spouse,
And, at safe distance from his house,
She filed a bill to set aside
The deed thus signed. A jury tried
48 Man's, methinks, are sometimes worse ;
The issue, and the deed, the jury's
Finding said, was got by duress,
And therefore void. On mischief bent
Did Bowes a bill forthwith present
To set aside the settlement !
Clad in his wig, and his robe trimmed with fur, lo i
Comes to give judgment Lord Chancellor Thurlow.
" Since husbands must for wives provide,
The law declares that on their side
'Gainst fraud they must be protect;
Fair dames who are about to wed
Must have their bridegroom's full assent
To execute a settlement.
And should the lady secretly
Assign away her property,
Husbands must come to us, and we,
Who sit as judge in Equity,
Our aid will lend the luckless wights
'Gainst frauds on their marital rights.
But here, 'tis clear,
To interfere
Would be unjust, for on the day
My lady made this settlement
She was engaged to Mr. Grey,
And Grey had given his consent !
His are measured by a purse. 49
'Tis plain to every one who knows
The facts, there was no fraud on Bowes,
Who was not her intended spouse
Till after it was signed.
And how 's
A man who wins his wife by fighting
A mock-duel to be inviting
Equity to help his hurt ? He
Who comes here with hands so dirty
Will not get our aid, and this,
His petition, I dismiss."
50 This theme might have inspired his lays
MANBY v. SCOTT.
(//. Sm. L.C., 466. Temp. 1660.)
Whether the wife's contract shall bind the husband, or not.
Sir Edward Scott, once in assumpsit sued,
Made resolute resistance, and his plea
Was non assumpsit. Long, in London pent,
I lounged with idlers in the old Guildhall,
Where men of old took counsel who maintained
Our English rights against the Court and King,
And heard the lawyers striving, and anon
At Westminster, where, o'er the thrice-told tale
Of love and quarrel, and of doubtful right,
With vast deliberation and debate,
The judges sat. Thence as I passed away,
O'er all my clouding senses came a doubt
If this were law, or that : as when a mist
Obscures the land, and sea, and hill, and house,
And he who gazes knows not what he sees,
I scarce distinguished which was right, which wrong.
For, from the hour when first in youth I pored
O'er records of conflicting precedent,
Who sang the Household Angd's praise. 5 :
And doubtful statute, and construction strained,
There came at times a dream, wherein I saw
And heard, yet knew not if I rightly heard,
Or saw aright ; and all my mind was filled
With doubts if this were stablished law or no.
Yet after, for from youth I oft had turned
From books and sports, to pass an idle hour
Tuning an echoing, imitative lay,
I framed the lawyers' story into this :
Sir Edward Scott, grown old and amorous,
The good Sir Peter of a tattling world,
Turned eyes of wedlock countryward, and found
One seeming suited to be made his wife ;
And wooed, and won, and, quickly wedded, wore
Blithely his flower. Till when they sought the town.
He found his Margaret, his country girl,
Changed ere one season to a London wife,
With London pleasures tastes, expenses, whims,
And vanished all his air-built towers of bliss,
And in their stead vexations ; then, at last,
A quarrel, that was healed, yet left its scar ;
And others followed, as the gathering clouds
After the rain, and, last, a standing feud.
Perchance — it matters not — thereafter came
Some titled spark, some younger man, who drew
F
5 2 But who the household's praise shall sing,
Her love away. Certain, she left him ; went
Her diverse path. Thenceforth they met no more.
Thus far by various tongues the tale was told,
When, through the open windows of the Court,
The sound of maidens, singing at their work,
Came floating, and thus sadly ran their strain : —
" The wind that stirs the summer leaves to laughter
In autumn shall be chill.
Thy kiss, my love, is very sweet, but after —
Say, wilt thou love me still
" The rose thou gav'st me yestere'en is shattered,
( I kissed the drooping leaves) :
Say, shall our loves lie one day fall' n and seattered
And I as one who grieves, —
" As one whose voice is harsh for very sorrow 1
Ah, love me, dear, to-day !
I dread the coming shadow of the morrow
When love shall pass away."
Enrapt I listened, but the judge austere
Cried, " Sheriff, still that squalling wench without ! "
And so the rest resumed. Twelve lonely years
That brought no tidings, or of import none,
Passed since Sir Edward lost his dame. At length
Came bills, accounts, and many a crying claim
When quarrels conic and love takes wing? 53.
For price of chattels that the dame had bought
Upon his credit. Straight the knight forbade
All men to deal with her, and debit him ;
Forbade the plaintiffs likewise. Natheless they,
Out of perverseness, or to test the law,
Sold of their mercers' wares, wherewith to deck
Her over-ripening beauty, two score yards
Of silks and velvets, and the furbelows
A woman loves ; then prayed him for the price,
Some forty pounds; and sued him now, and urged
It was his duty to have paid the bill
To Manby and Another. But when doubts
Obscured the law, the jury found the goods
Were fit and suited to her quality,
And left the matter to renewed debate
Who most in law and judgment should prevail.
Thereafter, for the cause's vast import
Throughout the land, again and yet again
'Fore all the judges was the question stirred,
Whether the contract of the wife should bind
Her husband. E'en they differed, and at first
In equal parts, but after others joined
The husband's party, and 'twas he prevailed.
Yet he who held the plaintiffs right, maintained,
With erudition and vast eloquence,
The failing cause. Else were our England shamed
54 The Angel driven out from your house
And done, he said, that here, here, here alone
The wife had nor authority nor power,
Without her lord's assent, to purchase one
Poor crust, wherewith to keep the life He gave
Who made the woman as the man ; nor robes
To guard her frame against the angry skies,
Nor roof to shield her from the winter's snow.
So should the wedding-rite be but th' accurst
Delivery of fair slaves to tyrants stern,
And that fair ring, the sign of endless love,
But the hard bond of an unequal fate.
For when the woman mates, she gives her all,
Her chattels, and the rent that issues forth
From out her lands : so with her hand
Goes all it held. And if the man refuse
Her maintenance, then must she starve. For, mark,
If she shall work, the pittance that she earns
Is not her own, but his. Her will lies lost
In his. Methinks the law should have regard
To her necessity, that knows else no law.
Your reasoning, O my brothers, may be true ;
The brain may yield you an enforced assent ;
Yet stands my heart a rebel 'gainst your law.
" 'Tis more than reason," saith the wise divine,
" That goeth to persuasion." Then he touch'd
(Or to my wandering fancy seemed to touch)
Must be the A ngel in the Poor-house. 5 5
On instances from all the glorious past
Chivalric, and from legendary lore,
Of faithful love ; repeating oft the praise
Of distance, and of Enid, and the fame
Of patient Ithacan Penelope ;
And all the names which bright-bejewelled shine
In the embroidered records of true love.
Now mourned he o'er Francesca, Juliet,
And those who found love's current turned awry ;
Now praised the equality of the wedded state.
Had he wed Kate, and been Petruchio,
He thought nor cold nor hunger should have
served
To force a milder mood : perchance he erred,
Yet ever sought an equal, ideal love —
The man to manly vigour adding grace
And tenderness ; the woman taught by him
To native beauty so to join his strength.
So differing, yet equal, each to each,
As each to each was needfui ; for no man
Without some woman ever yet was wed,
Without some man no woman e'er was wife.
Scarce had he ceased, when once again the voice
Of some fair maiden sounded, singing now
The song, the wailing song, the fair Iseult
Breathed to her love, afar in Brittany : —
56 What wight have been, is lie re our theme ;
" The sea-gull's breast gleams white against the sky,
As vainly for her wandering mate she cries :
The cliffs give but an echo for reply,
And in the heavy throbbing air it dies.
" Ah, Tristram, lord and love, the bitter sea
Is calm as on that day when we did drain
The magic draught, that filled Iseult and thee
With love whose vast intensity is pain.
11 I might, perchance, have loved the man I wed,
Hadst not thou, hi uglier, borne me o'er the wave ;
And thee I love and have not. Were I dead,
My heart would ache, ah, even in the gravel'
" Methinks the maid, who braves our sheriff thus,''
Said one of those who deemed the plaintiffs erred,
" Reminds my learned brother there are things
Affect the wife's authority, which yet
He has not noticed. Long the dame has left
Her spouse, nor now returned. Might such things be,
Wives should bestow their beauty and their youth
On wandering loves, reserving for their lords
The lean and wasted form, the biting tongue
And acrid shrewishness of life's decline.
Yet for the matter's import, let us probe
Deeper its reasons ; let us search the root —
Best helped, methinks, by law, not sentiment.
Here of iv hat might be we dream. 57
I have no sentiment in office hours,
But stand by logic, reason, and the books.
'Tis said the husband shall be straitly bound
By contract of his wife, as by his own.
Is 't so? A man, 'tis true, may well contract
Himself, or by an agent. What shall make
An agent then ? Truly the word express,
Or word implied of him, the principal.
Here are no words express. Is aught implied
By the mere fact of marriage ? This, I trow :
Since woman's place is home, or so the law
Old-fashioned, like an ancient grandsire, deems —
Howe'er our modern jays may strut abroad —
And since a woman is, or should be, skilled
In household rule and home economy,
The law implies that she has power to bind
Her husband's name and credit for the price
Of necessaries. So, it may be said,
The plaintiffs' suit stands justified. Nay, mark :
As one may make an agent, so may he
Revoke the agency ; and that the law
Implies in married women, so may be
Revoked whene'er their lords shall please. And here
Sir Edward Scott expressly had forbade
His dame for aught to pledge his credit ; yea,
Expressly had forbade the plaintiffs e'er
58 Plaintiff's hopes of victory fade.
To treat her as his agent : yet they did.
There is no magic in the name of wife
For legal purposes. So stands the wife
As bailiffs or as servants, who may pledge
Their master's credit, if he so command,
But only so, and only till he bid
Them pledge no more. Here agency had ceased.
These are the reasons, not empirical,
But founded on the fabric of our law,
And stablished in the eternal fitnesses,
For which I hold defendant here is right,
Entitled to our judgment. One might add
Much more : as that the jury has o'erstepped
Its province, touching what are necessaries.
So should a jury choose our wives' attire,
And husbands be the common enemy.
Yet more I add not, lest with manv words
Counsel be darkened. Let the judgment be
Signed for defendant."
So he ceased, and I
Stepped from the Court to the serene night air.
And, o'er the rampart leaning, gazed upon
The city's soul, the river, as it flowed
Past fane, and wharf, and spire, and portico,
Breathing a calmness that was half divine,
And meditation and sweet restfulness.
Legacies arc sweet if paid. 59
SCOTT v. TYLER.
(//. Tudor 's Leading Cases in Equity^ '120. Temp. 17S8.)
Said Richard Kee : " I fear I go
Upon life's last eventful journey ;
I wish to make my will, and so
Fetch hither my attorney.
" To my god-daughter I will give
A cool ten thousand, as I live ;
A cool ten thousand ! — ay, but tarry,
I'd have you give it to her so
That half of it shall elsewhere go
If, under age, she's asked to marry,
And she says ' Yes ' when her ma says 'No.'
The other half, if she's alive
And single still at twenty-five,
Shall then be hers."
He signed and died.
The maiden wept for him, but dried
Her eyes, and joined for aye her lot
Ere twenty-one to Mr. Scott ;
And her mother's consent — she had it not !
6o See, site loses every groat.
Lord Thurlow sat in the Chancellor's chair,
Seven counsel in wigs and gowns were there.
The Court pronounced : " Had it been said
That Mrs. Scott should never wed,
'Twould have been clean against the law.
But were it said that she should not
Be married to a Hottentot ;
Or, till her prudent mother saw
That she, who was not yet of age,
Had made for spouse selection sage,
Restraint so slight
Were good and right.
And, since she chose to marry while her
Worthy mother, Mrs. Tyler,
Had not given her consent,
One-half the lady's fortune went
To better hands ; and for the other,
That also goes unto her mother;
For that she cannot single be
At five-and-twenty
Proof there's plenty,
Since she's married and done for at twenty-three !
(So Mrs. Scott,
She lost the lot.)
Ashhy, too, Jias lost his vote. 61
ASHBY v. WHITE.
(14 State Trials, 695. Temp. 1704.)
Ubi jus, ibi rcmedium.
Sing, Muse, our rights and liberties !
Proclaim in loudest, proudest note,
The Englishman's prime blessing is
To give his parliamentary vote.
The tale of outrage tell, O Muse !
(Yes, come and tell us all about it),
How once a vote they did refuse,
And how the men got in without it.
'Twas in the year seventeen-nought-three,
Sir Thomas Lee and Samuel Mayne
Were candidates for Aylesbury :
They kissed the babes their sires to gain,
Shook grimy hands (they do it yet),
Electors' thirst, it may be guessed,
They quenched, and glad were they to get
Matt. Ashby's vote and interest.
62 This his augry passion rouses ;
Matthias Ashby seeks the poll !
To give his vote for Mayne and Lee,
With head erect and glowing soul,
He goes where, with his colleagues three,
Sits wilful, wayward William White
(Returning officers were they),
Who, when M. Ashby claimed his right
To vote, said " Pooh, sir ! go away."
(The reasons do not now appear
Why they poor Ashby's vote denied ;
Upon the record it is clear,
That he was duly qualified.)
But Lee and Mayne, 'tis worthy note,
Did not depend on him to win,
For e'en without M. Ashby's vote
'Twas they who finally got in.
To avenge his thus infringed right,
Matthias Ashby brings his action.
The jury against William White
Et alios gives satisfaction
With damages two hundred pounds, —
Ample the solace he obtained :
The air with arguments resounds,
But in the Lords' his right's maintained.
"Zounds! a plague on both your houses /" 63
The Commons angrily declare
That with elections they alone
Are competent to deal ; but their
Single voice was never known
To alter law. This case has long
Been held the one wherein we see
The maxim shown that, where there's wrong,
There, too, there is a remedy.
Maid deserted by her lover ;
Man assaulted by his mate ;
Loss of wife, when from above her,
Falls the careless hundredweight ;
Trespass, libel, defamation,
Or whate'er the ravage is,
This the law's great consolation,
Damage — " heavy damages."
" Students of Constitutional History will remember that the case
of ' Ashby v. White and others,' or, as it is often called, ' the case of
the Aylesbury men,' was the cause of one of the most serious of the
quarrels which have occurred between the two Houses of Parliament.
The Commons claimed the exclusive right to deal with elections,
the Lords replied that neither House alone could deprive a subject
of his legal right ; and the long story of committals for contempt,
habeas corpus, writs of error, resolutions of both Houses, con-
ferences, and the ultimate prorogation, by which the parties in
prison were discharged, but a great constitutional question left for
the time unsettled, is told in the books. I refer to it here," says
64 Follies in the zvorld are plenty ,
Mr. Popplestone, " to mention that Lord Chief Justice Holt de-
livered, in the Court below, a dissenting judgment in support of the
view which ultimately prevailed in the Court above. This privilege
of delivering a dissenting judgment, or of recording a protest as a
peer, is the sole reason for which I ever wished to be a judge or a
lord. Without, I hope, the unreasonable factiousness ridiculed in
the specimen dissenting judgment given in that very clever little
book, ' Scintillse Juris,' there are innumerable matters of principle
and practice in our ordinary life from which it would be a satis-
faction to express one's dissent. If I were to choose my own
epitaph, I think it should be 'Popplestone, J., dissentiente.'
The wisdom of our ancestors and the folly of their descendants
alike invite protest. Yet the points of dissent are small ; the
great principles of life are settled past discussion. The desire to
clear the board, to reconstruct society and start the world on fresh
principles, rarely survives five-and-twenty. But the small points are
innumerable. Take, for instance, the popular belief, which might,
indeed, be formulated and added to the Creed, without straining the
conscience of one man in a hundred, that all lawyers are rogues.
It is not for me to insist on, but this is obviously capable of dis-
proof. I have observed that an unsuccessful litigant invariably
expresses the opinion that his opponent's professional adviser is
' an unprincipled attorney,' or a 'pettifogger.' Judges anxious to
finish their list, to get away early from their duties, have been
known (in times past) to express the same opinion. This may
relieve their feelings ; but how about ours ? And what "neves me
most is the deviation from accuracy. The dislike of solicitors is as
discreditable to our intelligence, and should be as extinct, as the
persecution of Jews or witches. But superstitions die hard. Take,
again, that example of popular prejudice, the ridicule thrown on
people who mark books, or make notes in their margins. Provided
the books are his own, there is nothing a reader can do which
Popplcstone dtssentientc. 6$
displays better sense. At worst the marginal notes act as an index
to the book ; they call the owner's attention on re-reading to what
before appeared to him its beauties, or salient points. Even if the
reader be a foolish person (as Mr. Carlyle put it, in a conscious
understatement of his meaning), the wise man who reads after him
will be glad to note the effect which the work produced on such a
one. For the second comer— the wise man to wit — is then reading
not one, but two minds. I have always regretted that I was pre-
vented from publishing my treatise, ' A Defence of Bookmarkers,'
with its motto, which will have occurred to the reader, from Lamb's
Essay on ' The Two Races of Men,' by the calls made on my time
by the suit, commenced just after I had finished the work, of The
Mayor, d-v., of Stoitrmouth v. The Corporation of the T?-inity
House of Deptford, Strom!, which went to the House of Lords.
Vet again : what folly could be greater than the popular aversion
to speaking of one's own death ? ' If anything should happen to
me,' they say ; I wish something would, when I hear them say it.
' If anything should happen to me,' indeed ! — there's a pretty
euphemism for you ! We know at once they mean ' if I should
die ' — and how much more direct and forcible that is ! Think of the
effect of substituting the popular phrase in such places as Mr.
Dickens's pathetic lines !
" 'And when I die, oh, let me lie
Where trees above me wave :
Let wild flowers bloom above my tomb,
My quiet country grave.'
Even Silas Wegg himself, in his inspired moments, hardly murdered
a metre more effectually than would the colloquialism destroy the
music of this verse. Yet I daresay a good many would prefer the
alteration. It might run in this way : —
66 Will some people take a hint ?
'"If anything should happen to me,
I request you to bury me under a tree.
I leave my spirit to its maker,
My body to the undertaker.'
Dr. Watts is largely responsible for our tolerance of doggerel.
Poor fellow, he repented on his death-bed ; yet I find it hard to
forgive him. Once more ; think of the folly of folks who, in an
answer to a casual ' How do you do ? '—which no more requires an
answer than 'twice two are four'— enter into an endless description
of all their ailments since childhood, with special particularity as to
the diseases of the last ten years or so, their symptoms and dura-
tion ! ' A mad world, my masters ! ' '
Wilkes s character and squint. 67
WILKES v. WOOD.
{instate Trials, 1 154. Temp. 1763.)
Of General Warrants, dark and direful spring
Of deeds unconstitutional, I sing.
Come, Courtly Muse, from Hampton or from Kew,
Nor let me vainly for thy favour sue ;
Come teach me— though presumptuous the hope ! —
Some distant echo of the verse of Pope.
For sure the Muse that did at dunces mock
And made an epic of the stolen lock,
That sang of patches, paduasoys, and silks,
Might make a passing hero of Jack Wilkes ;
Wilkius, whom Pope alone could have portray'd,
But he apportion'd duly light and shade,
Whose various features he alone could trace,
As Congreve witty and as Chartres base ;
True to no woman, faithful to no friend,
Serving with public gold a private end,
With loud-voiced virtue making hustings ring,
Flatt'ring the people, fawning on the King ;
G
68 Passions there were, as well as rhymes,
Th' applause he gain'd repaying with a sneer,
Playing Lothario with a squint and leer ;
Medmenham monk, and champion of the cause
Of Public Virtue, Freedom, and the Laws —
Yet match'd with foes (for such the fates' decree)
Less wise and scarce more honest men than he ;
Thus to himself Man's smallness to reveal
Heav'n through one's baseness serves the common
weal.
Sing first, O Muse, what mov'd fierce Wilkius' spite
In the North Briton of the King to write,
Nor aiming at his Ministers alone,
To dare to dub Him Liar on the Throne.
Fell Party Spirit ! of the numerous woes
Which our much-doctor'd constitution knows,
Of half the cause, the embitt'rer of the rest,
The groundless hatred and the brutal jest,
Thou first the slander whisper'd from thy den,
And thy crook'd fingers guided Wilkius' pen.
Ah, fatal number ! — fatal forty-five !
What tragic memories at thy sound revive !
Then mourn'd North Britain o'er Cullodeiis field,
Yet now a pen as then a sword must wield,
With libel now as then with war must ring,
As then it fought so now malign its King ;
And puff, and patch, " in tea-cup times." 69
See through the town the hateful libel fly,
And joy or anger gleam in every eye ;
See it repeated, at the Palace gate,
To Halifax, the guardian of the State ;
See him peruse in wrath the fateful page,
Swell with alarm commix'd with boundless rage,
Then for revenge as lawlessly engage ;
Unchecked by prudence, by no law confin'd,
At once the General Warrant he has sign'd.
Nor ever lack'd a tyrant for a tool,
A despot's palace is a crowded school.
"Go search," he said, nor e'er a culprit nam'd,
" Arrest the wretch who has great George defam'd,
Seize papers, presses, where or whose 't may be
And bring them in safe custody to me."
Wood at his bidding on the errand sped,
And seized the servants, nor would spare the head ;
And Wilkes, arrested in an evil hour,
Was flung within Augusta's moated Tower.
As, when in pain upon a sick-bed laid,
The godly pray as ne'er before they pray'd
And e'en the scoffer through the midnight air
To Heav'n for health ejaculates a pray'r,
So Wilkes, while drag the dull and dreary hours,
By mortals foil'd, invokes the higher pow'rs ;
70 Then Johnson talked, and Burke, and Bozzy,
Whom late the town a bold law-breaker saw
Turns now a humble suppliant to the law.
Swift at his call great Themis see appear !
Hark to his plaint, and lend a listening ear ;
Fleet through the air attendant spirits go
South to the Temple, north to Bedford Row,
And summon all the num'rous legal throng
That e'er maintain'd a right, aveng'd a wrong.
As cits to dinner, or as boys to sport,
Swiftly they fly from all the Inns of Court,
Eastward they turn and soon the Tower gain,
Far from the purlieus of lov'd Chantry Lane.
On wings of papers, sails of parchment, flit
Motion and Judgment, Praecipe and Writ,
Knights of the Post, and all the numerous Pleas,
Bills, Declarations, Warrants and Decrees,
Stern Informations, and Indictments dread,
While o'er them Habeas Corpus lifts his head.
The motley groups swift to the Tower repair,
And round the goddess hold their conclave there ;
Then, into orderly procession fall,
And westward move to Rums' famous hall.
Yet those who in supernal aid rejoice
To mortal men must plead with human voice :
And Noll, and Reynolds, and Piozzi. 7 1
Who seeks in law to win a jury's ear
In person, or by counsel, must appear.
Inspired by Themis, fee'd by Temple, see
Six counsel 1 plead for Wilkes and Liberty;
And guard our rights, as oft they've guarded been,
In horsehair wig and gown of bombazine.
Against them stand a num'rous legal throng, -
Stiff to defend, as erst to counsel, wrong ;
Twelve honest men the doubtful strife decide,
Penn'd in a box — our constitution's pride.
First Wilkius' counsel do bemoan his pain,
Himself imprison'd and his chattels ta'en ;
Next Wood replies the warrant gave him right ;
The first rejoin and wage a wordy fight
Proof followed proof, and speech to speech replied,
While vict'ry wavered long 'twixt either side ;
Three hours ere noon the combat had begun,
And midnight sounded when 'twas barely done.
Last Camden comes, its passions to assuage —
Camden, the pride of his and ev'ry age.
1 To wit, Serjeant Glynn, Mr. Recorder Eyre, Mr. Stow, Mr.
Wallace, Mr. Dunning, and Mr. Gardiner.
2 Videlicet, Sir Fletcher Norton, S.G., Serjeant Nares, Serjeant
Davy, and Serjeant Yates.
72 Like poor Churchill, let its sing,
" Freemen," he spake, " now to my words attend,
'Tis yours the rights of freemen to defend.
That Wilkes was injured Wood has not denied,
But by the Warrant says he's justified ; —
A warrant that disclos'd no culprit's name,
But points to me, and you, and all the same.
Such warrants stand not in good law or sense ;
For where should Liberty then find defence,
When, at a minister's or bailiff's spite,
Who rose a freeman lies in gaol ere night ?
A General Warrant is a fitting tool
For Nero's or the Inquisition's rule,
But hated here while heaves one freeman's breast.
Nor boots it now that Wilkes the law transgressed
The wrongs he did to punish be our care,
Be 't yours the wrongs he suffered to repair."
The jury listen, and with one accord
Their verdict to the plaintiff they award,
And Themis, ere again she seeks the sky,
On Wilkes bestows the wreath of victory,
While all the nation thunders with applause
Of him who kept our liberties by laws.
Happy the land whose judges merit trust,
As Mansfield learned, and as Camden just,
" Enough of Wilkes" and end the thing. 73
Where peer and peasant to maintain their right,
Not on the field, but in the forum fight ;
Whose people from their leaders early learn
Each tempting illegality to spurn,
And most who, by experience render'd wise,
Have learn'd their would-be fiatt'rers to despise !
There Freedom shall her choicest blessings pour.
May thine, Britannia, be the happy shore !
So, ruled by Heaven and our equal laws,
Even a demagogue may serve our cause.
74 Hopes of marriage fallen through,
FROST v. KNIGHT.
(L.R.. 7 Ex. in. Temp. 1872.)
I.
' ; He loves me — nay, he loves me not ! "
She tore the petals two by two
From off the stem, and idly threw
Them from her, 'plaining of her lot.
She stood by the untrodden ways
Where they in other times had met ;
With cheek and eyelash all unwet
She mused of love and other days.
She watched the fading autumn leaf,
The sky was grey, the wind a-cold ;
Her heart grew with the season old,
And nursed an angry, tearless grief.
" My love," she said, "is turned to hate,
My love that should have crowned his life :
He lightly wooed me for his wife,
And now he seeks a richer mate."
When the injured maid may sue. J 5
ii.
" Stands not the woman higher than
The dog that follows at his heel ?
Shall she before her tyrant kneel
Whom Nature equalled with the man ?
" He took my love, nor recked the cost,
My heart was warm to him, my Knight :
He took away the warmth and light,
And left me an unchanging Frost.
" I know him now. I never knew
Till now how false his suit could be.
He says he ne'er will wed with me,
And shall not I for vengeance sue ?
" But when ? 'Twas when his father died
He vowed that he with me would wed ;
I would his father now were dead,
But still he treads the hither side.
" And must I wait the uncertain day
He passes from our moaning shore?
Or may I sue the son before ?
Counsel's opinion is, I may.
J 6 Solace for the maid despairing.
" Already he derides me : ' Lo !
Thy path and mine shall never meet.'
He makes my bitter wrong complete.
The writ is ready : let it go ! "
in.
" We rate too highly, says the sage
Who knew our little nature's strife,
The power of love, whereto our life
Is less beholden than the stage.
" Perchance our spirits, from the flaw,
The taint of earthly mould, made free,
Shall know how great our love may be ;
For great is Love, yet greater Law.
" Love did the wrong the law redressed,
I take the gold the jury gave ;
No more the love he vowed I crave,
The gold I have, methinks, is best.
" This truth the student shall recall,
Who reads of Angelina Frost,
' 'tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.' "
Notes upon the art of swearing. 7 7
OMICHUND v. BARKER.
(/. Sm. L.C., 455, 7th Edition. Temp, 1745.)
An cath, not being a distinctively Christian institution, may be
administered according to any form binding on the conscience of
the witness, provided he believe in a deity who will reward or
punish him according to his deserts.
The dusky Gentoo
(Whoe'er he may be),
The obdurate Jew,
And the heathen Chinee,
Though he swear in a manner peculiar,
To swear as he chooses is free.
For in Orient clime,
When they meant to be true,
The men of old time,
Looking up at the blue,
Ey the powers immortal they sware it —
We swear by the deity too.
7 8 Like Jack Absolute lefs say,
From Homer of old
To Grotius the sage,
The vows are enrolled
Of each varying age ;
And an oath is e'er sacred in Tully,
And Tillotson's eloquent page.
What matters the rite,
If we kiss with our lips
The Gospels, or light
Touch the hand and the tips
Of the toes of a reverend Brahmin,
Or request to be broken in chips,
Like the saucer we break,
As we speak it ? Ah ! no ;
Little odds that will make,
If we think that below
Hereafter the bad will be punished,
But the good with the good niggers go.
So the dusky Gentoo,
And the far Carribee,
The obdurate Jew,
And the heathen Chinee,
Though he swear in a manner peculiar,
To swear as he chooses is free.
Reader, " damns have had their day." yg
"I hope that not even the most flippant of articled clerks is
capable of supposing the statement, that one ' to swear as he
chooses is free,' to apply in law, any more than in morals, to the
ungentlemanly and profane use of expletives. lie were a wight,
if ever such wight were, who might by a reference to Jacob's ' Law
Dictionary,' for instance, convince himself of his error. Swearing,
we are there told, ' is an offence against God and religion, and a
sin of all others the most extravagant and unaccountable, as having
no benefit or advantage attending it.' (I hope the reader will
appreciate the thrifty morality — which, indeed, has the sanction of
holy George Herbert — that finds a sin a little less blameworthy if
only it be profitable.) ' There are several good laws and statutes,'
continues the compiler, ' for punishing this crime By the
statute 21 Geo. II. c. 21, if any person shall profanely curse or
swear, and be convicted, by the oath of any one person, before any
justice of the peace, &c, he shall forfeit as follows— viz., every
day-labourer, common soldier, common sailor, and common seaman,
is. ; every other person under the degree of a gentleman, 2s. ; every
other person of or above the degree of a gentleman, $s. ; a second
offence double, and every other offence treble.' The National Debt
might have been paid off by this time, had this statute been enforced
strictly, and profane swearing, perchance, had been as extinct as
duelling or the dodo. 1
" The swearing to which the leading case refers is, of course, the
juramentum assertionis, the oath of a witness to tell the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I am not sure that much
1 It was doubtless under this Act that proceedings were taken
when, as is recorded in "The Ingoldsby Legends" of "the
Accusing Byers " and the Archangel,
" They booked Uncle Toby five shillings for swearing,
And blotted the fine out as;ain with their tears." — Ed.
8o Gones the oath that's referential,
reverence can be predicated of even this form. It is probably true,
as the poet Cowper suggests, though his adjective is ambiguous,
that
" ' thousands, careless of the damning sin,
Kiss the book's outside, who ne'er look within,'
and I fear they will hardly learn reverence from the hurried and
breathless formula of the usher, combined with directions to take
off the right glove and kiss the book. I remember that, as a boy,
I was often bewildered by the unpunctuated gibberish of the clerk
in Judges' Chambers who swore me to affidavits thus, as I tendered
a coin to pay his fee of eighteenpence : 'Swear thishyername
handwritin', 'tents thishyerafdavit true s'helpyer God half crown ?
haven't-got-change go-downstairs-an'-get-it ! ' Things, I trust,
are mended now. For those were the 'jolly ' days when gentle-
men measured their wine, not by glasses, but by bottles ; when
three judges came down, glorious after dinner, to take summonses
in Judges' Chambers, and the poor attorney's clerk would stagger
into the room, much the worse for something less expensive than
Burgundy, and hiccupingly address their lordships as his learned
brothers, which familiarity the same brothers good-naturedly put
up with till he rolled under the table, and was thence promptly
ejected.
" I notice that ' Omichund v. Barker ' has disappeared from the
current edition of the Leading Cases. I suppose this must be
taken as a sign of the decaying importance of the oath. Of old it
was thought that he who bore witness, first uttering the invoca-
tion 'So help me God at His holy dome !' could not fail to
speak truth ; for would he not else expect every minute that
' punishment would fall from heaven and that God would be the
revenger ? ' But that must have been when the world and men
were young. Later on, men found that the tower of Siloam fell
Going now, the evidential. 81
not on the unjust more than on the just ; perjury went unpunished,
and
" ' Oaths are but words, and words but wind,
Too feeble instruments to bind.'
So that the oath has lost force and picturesqueness, and must now,
methinks, be regarded as a lingering relic of antiquity, soon to be
placed with the patria po'estas, compurgations, divine right, and
much else, in the world's great historical museum. Yet, while the
oath survives, it is well for our reputation for tolerance, and for
wisdom as rulers of a great empire, that the law is as stated in the
leading case. And here one would naturally expect a rounded,
rhetorical eulogium of Blackstone's to conclude the whole matter.
Yet I have failed after reference to find that he, who praises every
other feature of English law, has said aught in praise of this.
He is gone, and in succeeding times ' laudatory De Lolmes gave
way to objurgatory Benthams,' and at least one excellence of the
Common Law will go to its grave unsung." — J. P.
S$8&Q9&
8 2 Reader, please to note the fact,
CALYE'S CASE.
(/. Sin. L.C., 132. Temp. 1579.)
"Shall I not take mine ease at mine inn?" — Henry IV.
" Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,"
Whate'er his road, or " line," has been,
Must oft have grumbled, I'll be bound,
" How large the slippers at an inn !
" The sheets are damp where'er I roam,
The frequent tips I count a sin ;
'Tis true, there is no place like home,
I'm tired of staying at an inn."
Yet he, perchance, has mused with joy.
And lapsed into a meaning grin,
" My goods should any steal, destroy,
He's liable who keeps the inn.
"Although I leave my door ajar,
And thieves should take the goods within
The room, unchanged his duties are
To guard my chattels at his inn.
This was ere the Innkeepers Act. S3
"But if I send to yonder field,
Which, better than the stable bin,
A luscious meal my steed will yield,
The horse is not within the inn ;
- And, be he stolen, if I should sue
The landlord, then I shall not win ;
His liability, 'tis true,
Ends with the precincts of the inn."
Three hundred times since Calye's case,
Our earth has ta'en its annual spin ;
Yet Calye holds his ancient place,
And tells the law that rules an inn,
Whate'er thy lot or race may be,
"Commercial," Nizam, Mandarin,
To all who pay perforce is free
The vaunted comfort of an inn.
So on that thrice-blest August day
The Long Vacation does beein
I'll take the first express away
And find my lodging at an inn.
H
84 What troubles oft the man betide
SMITH v. MARRABLE.
THE FAMOUS CASE.
(11 M. &* IV., 5, Temp. 1S43.)
A landlord in letting an unfurnished house is not presumed to
warrant that it is reasonably fit for habitation. To this rule of the
common law an exception has been made by The Housing of the
Working Classes Act, 1885, in the case of houses let "for habita-
tion by persons of the working classes." And it had been already
decided in the following case that the rule does not apply to the
letting of houses furnished.
Brunswick Place is in Brighton
Leads to Brunswick Square ;
And Brunswick Square looks right on
To the sea that's there.
The Marrables went to Brunswick Place ;
Sir Thomas the Knight, in the year of grace
Eighteen hundred and forty-two,
Wrote, " Yes, I think the house will do ;
I'll take it furnished for a space.
We'll come at once : the bargain fix —
I'll take it for five weeks or six.
Who lodges by the salt sea side ! 8 5-
But when begins my ditty ?
Six-and-forty years ago,
To see the Marrables bitten so
By insects, was a pity.
s !
They crawled in jugs, they filled the mugs,
Lay hidden in the folds of rugs,
Worried her ladyship's favourite pugs,
Till the beasts had never a moment's ease ;
Some were slow as lazy slugs,
And some were light and quick as fleas.
In beds and chairs they sheltered snug,
Into carpets and hassocks dug.
In vain was every patent drug,
Their safe retreats they still would hug.
Powder, pastes — all, all were tried
That chemists or the Stores 1 supplied :
A hundred came for one that died.
The cook complained, the children cried,
The nurse gave notice ; and beside
The bedrooms were the worst infested,
And no one slept or in them rested,
1 I fancy this reference to the Stores is an anachronism, but
Mr. Popplestone would doubtless have urged that De minimis nou
curat lex. He loved a legal maxim as Mrs. Poyser loved a pro-
verb. — Ed.
86 Plagues are here worse than Egyptian,
Save one where they'd not penetrated ;
The rest were thickly populated.
There was the cimex lectularius,
And all the cimicidce various :
Some of all the kinds there are
In genus hepteroptera.
There were black ones, red ones, brown and
yellow,
Young and frisky, old and mellow,
Of all ages, kinds, and stations,
And each had hundreds of relations !
Sir Thomas said, with shuddering shrug,
There were some of every kind of ;
In fact, you'll see, if you've caught my meaning,
'Twas worse than a severe spring cleaning.
None suffered so in all the land ; it
Was worse than the vilest Spanish bandit ;
'Twas plain they couldn't, wouldn't stand it.
Three wretched days had o'er them sped,
But ere the fourth was gone they fled ;
Sent a note to the landlord that within he
Would find the key, and each golden guinea —
'Twas eight in all — that for a week
Was due ; but Smith
Went off to seek
Sir Thomas ; found him ; said forthwith,
Sufferings that defy description ! 87
" Go, if on going you are bent, sir ;
But first, if you please, my five weeks' rent, sir."
" Five weeks ! " Sir Thomas, angry, said ;
"Why, man, if we stayed on here five
Days we'd be consumed alive,
And on the sixth be eaten dead !
Worse impudence I never heard ;
The thing's, as Euclid said, absurd.
If more you want, why you must sue, sir."
Three months in pleading by them flew, sir,
And then the judges, in their ermine,
Sat grave to hear, and then determine,
If for a furnished house, where vermin
Made life a burden quite unbearable
To Sir Thomas and every other Marrable,
Full rent was due. And Smith contended
The law implied no warranty
A house when let from fault was free,
Or that 'twas fit for habitation,
Or suitable for occupation,
And that when let his duty ended
Save to collect the rent ; and then did
Sir Thomas answer, "Yes, that's true,
Of houses let unfurnished : you
Have let yours furnished, which implies
The house you let is fit to live in,
8 8 Hoiv vexing are life's little ills !
That's plain to every man with eyes.
That's all the point, and if you give in,
It follows that who lets may flit
Whene'er he finds the place unfit
From vermin, or unpleasant st— nks
Arising from defective sinks,
Or what not, for him to reside in."
That day Smith was a luckless wight :
The judges took the view the knight
Had urged, that warranty's implied in
A furnished house, that it's fit to abide in.
Smith caught the five express repentant,
And judgment followed for defendant.
So, reader, let you and me be breakers
Of agreements for hiring, if we're the takers
Of houses infested ; and, whether a beating
We give or get, remember Keating ! "
Ah! vie, those unpaid tailor s bills! 89
CUMBER v. WANE
A ROUNDEL.
(/. Svi. L.C., 366. Temp. 17 19.)
Who pays a part in lieu of all
Knows not the mystic legal art ;
For on him for the rest they'll fall
Who pays a part.
Once Wane had touched his Cumber's heart
" Give me a third your debt : I'll call
It settled," said he, in the mart;
Yet sued and gained the rest. The Hall
Rang loud with plaints : " Ah ! well-aimed dart !
He pays the rest with rising gall
Who pays a part."
" It is difficult," says Mr. Popplestone, "within the narrow, but
seductive, limits of the French forms of verse, to convey to the
reader a just conception of the legal doctrine of consideration. I
know not certainly, yet believe I am right in saying that no system
of laws has insisted so strongly as our own on the necessity for
some substantial ground or cause for a promise — for some mutuality
90 Save in deeds, you all sJiould know,
in a bargain. Methinks our national shrewdness, our hard-headed
demand for a penny's worth for our penny, is here reflected in our
laws. For the consideration, say the books, ' is the material cause,
or quid pro quo, of a contract, without which it will not be effectual
or binding.' So that though I promise to give you my calf-bound
Shakespeare, yet if I hand it not to you thereupon, the law will not
afterwards compel me to give it you ; for there is no consideration,
no equivalent passing from you to me, and a consideration ' ought
to be matter of profit to whom it is done, by reason of the charge
or trouble of him who doth it.' So in the leading case, what con-
sideration gave Wane to Cumber for his promise to accept in
discharge less than his just debt ? None. For it can be no con-
sideration to pay a man part when he is entitled to all.
"One exception to the need for consideration, the industrious
student or curious layman should, indeed, notice. For if an agree-
ment be made by deed, by writing under the seal of the maker, 1
then, though there be no consideration, yet it is binding. Had
poor Wane obtained a promise by deed from Cumber to take ,£5
in lieu of the ^"15 due to him, he had been safe — and had lost his
sole title to remembrance by posterity.
" Strange at first sight this strength lying hidden in a wafer !
And obvious, easy fun, of course, the satirist makes of the formalism
of the thing. The reason for which strange rule, we are told, is
that the affixing of a seal is an act in its nature so solemn, so por-
tentous, that it implies due care, and so great thoughtfulness, that
the doer sho.tld be bound by his act, though he received nothing in
1 The reader will recall the lines in " Rejected Addresses: " —
" The solicitor reads,
And, merit of merit !
Red wax and green ferret
Are fixed at the foot of the deeds
There must be a quid pro quo. 91
return. The deed is, in short, the ' formal contract ' of English
law. The Romans, with their vaunted system of jurisprudence,
were far more given over to the tyranny of forms, with their many
witnesses, their bronze and scale, their balance-holder, and so forth !
Nay, the commonest of agreements, the stipulatio, is curious, with
its indispensable question and answer, whereof one without the
other was valueless, and even a combination of both was of no
effect ! So that, ' Do you, Titius, promise to pay to me, Maevius,
100 aurei?' with answer, 'I promise,' was valid; but ' I, Titius,
promise to pay to you, Maevius, 100 aurei,' was void. As if all
business were to be transacted by a perpetual course of Hangnail's
Questions !
" I could discourse at length upon seals. Their history, from
their first use among our people by Edward the Confessor, in the
grant of Westminster Abbey, to our own degenerate times, forms a
tempting theme ; yet I forbear. I say, ' degenerate,' since the sight
of the massive appendages to old muniments, those seals three
inches wide, imposing and curious in design, should make us
ashamed of our modern, attenuated blobs of sealing-wax, or mere
paper wafer, carelessly affixed. Well may our angry philosopher
call this an age of formulae and simulacra ! Our seals — the portraits
of ourselves by which we commit our memory to posterity — have
lost all individuality and character ; they do but bear the attorney's
initials, or, perchance, not even so much ! Nay, the ample seal,
with its armorial bearings, its crest, its motto, have dwindled to a
mere wafer, that we buy for sixpence a-hundred, each as like to
other as two peas ! It is idle to lament. Tenipora mutantur, nos
et mutanutr in illis."
LAYS OF THE LAW.
Of Legal Fictions, Quirks and Glosses,
Attorneys' gains, and Clients' losses,
Of suits created, lost and won,
How to undo, and be undone,
* * * it-
Things which few mortals can disclose,
In verse, or comprehend in prose,
I sing — do thou, bright Phoebus, deign
To shine for once in Chanc'ry Lane.
The Pleader 's Guide.
Hear our wailmg de profundis
ODE TO A JUDGE IN
CHAMBERS. 1
O thou !
(Odes should begin " O thou ! " whatever follows) ;
I say, O thou,
My lord, who now
Dost sit in these dark Chambers, do make haste !
Why should we all this glorious sunshine waste ?
Tis half-past one, and still the man who holloas
Out the list, says, "Counsel are not finished."
What time I wonder, then, shall we be taken ?
1 For the unprofessional reader, I may explain that most of the
numerous applications to the Court, which precede and follow the
trial of an action, are heard in a private room by a Judge, sitting
without the pomp and panoply of wig or ermine. The list of cases
coming before him is called over by an official, and the parties to
the actions go before the Judge in turn. The more important
summonses are attended by counsel, and are heard first. After-
wards those summonses are taken which are attended by solicitors
or their clerks, one of whom emits the following appeal.
g6 Work ! work ! work ! from morn on Mondays
The counsel list is scarcely yet diminished
By more than two or three. This place forsaken
By all but us poor wretches, doomed to stay
In Fleet Street on a fine, June Saturday,
Here in this gloomy hall, until we shiver,
Might stand for Erebus.
But who e'er thinks of us,
Limbs of the legal limbs,
Victims of all the Rule Committee's whims ? —
Just as I wanted, too, to get away
And join the Jones's picnic up the river !
Thou great dispenser of thirteen-and-fours,
Do hurry up !
Had ever judge a patience such as yours
In listening to these long-winded bores ?
Ah me ! the cup
Slips from my lips just as I dreamed of drinking.
I wonder if Hal Jones is of me thinking
Now as he's bending careless at the oars.
I say, you've been an hour reviewing this taxation !
It's clear I'm booked another hour or two —
I might ere this have booked at Waterloo ;
Of course, that may not matter much to you,
But I had said I'd meet them at the station.
Till close on the ensuing Sundays ! 97
Judge !
What fudge,
What cotton-wool objection is he making,
I wonder, now?
Come, will he never budge ? —
I mean that learned counsel who is taking
Your time and mine, till I am nearly mad.
Shakespeare was right : some grave and reverend
brow
Will argue for a Plea, however bad,
And comment gravely on a Declaration,
Or, in his time, I dare say Replication
Or Surrebutter.
One can't e'en smoke to lessen one's vexation,
Or whistle, or do anything but mutter !
My lord, I do not generally swear —
The form is bad, whoever may display it;
But at the present moment, I declare,
If I knew what was bad enough, I'd say it.
Past two o'clock !
Of course I can't get down there now to lunch ;
Well, I've a biscuit here that I can munch :
That is at least some sort of^satisfaction —
The pigeon-pie to me's the least attraction.
98 You to rhyme, my Gappy, you !
Come ! this is worse than an old Fleet Street block
In days pre-Griffinite !
Why did Fate mock
With visions of picnickian delight ?
I wonder whether Mabel Trevor's there ;
Young Trevor calls her " Mabel, dear," or " Sis "
(He's our young "article") ; and "she is fair,
And fairer than that word." Of course she's Miss
Trevor, to me — at any rate at present.
And if she goes, I wonder will she wear
That sailor dress — I mean the blue and white one—
The grey she wore at tennis, 'twas last Monday,
The white the girls all raved about on Sunday,
Or has she some new wonder to delight one ?
How well she'll look while rowing, when her hair
Strays from its coil ! It must be jolly pleasant
Down there just now, till shines the silver crescent.
(" Crescent " is good ; such flights with me are rare).
I hoped I might have met her in the Booking
Office, or on the platform. Oh, but he,
Her cousin (who's confoundedly good looking —
To make it worse, one cannot even hate him) •
He will be there. No hard fate will belate him.
If you are quick /may get down to tea.
Doubtless he will be there, and help her cooking
The tripod kettle ;
What has love ivith law to do f 99
Yes, that's what he'll be doing.
Cousins should be prohibited from wooing ;
They don't leave us a chance, — he calls her " Mabel."
We don't start fair : would that I too were able !
Nil desperandum ! — we will try his mettle.
I caught her eye in church last week ; the sermon
Had left her thoughts less distant than Mount Hermon.
■ -,'
My Lord, this is irrelevant, I know,
And not in evidence, of course. But then
Even the most professional of men
Have lucid intervals. I hope I show
Proper respect : your law, no doubt, is sound,
But you do not move fast.
Past two o'clock ? It is a quarter past !
Confound !
If I should dream to-night, then I should dream
Of lobsters and of law-courts, crime and cream ;
Of your grave looks and Lesbia's merry beam ;
Of secret whispers, and Discovery plain ;
Attachments that wake no responsive strain ;
Of Interrogat'ries of law and love,
And courting, too, where there's no " court above,"
Except an angry father ;
.(I know of one, methinks, and he'll
1
I oo Quaere, did he catch his train f
Be obdurate as you to an Appeal,
Yet I would face him, — rather ! ) ;
Of drowsy gentlemen in nice, snug billets,
The water's lullaby, the law's sharp quillets,
And kisses it's legitimate to steal.
You see, my lord, I rhyme
To wile away the time,
And yet it is a weary, weary while.
I really think if you don't hurry I'll
Haste to the Jones's boat, and go aboard her,
And leave the Plaintiff here to get his order,
Vainly for me at the " first call," to seek !
While you're sitting
I'll be flitting.
But then there'd be an awful row next week !
No, I must stay.
While fades the beauteous day
Away.
Oh, do make haste, I say.
What's that I hear ? all cases stand adjourned !
My lord, you are a brick, all thanks be to you !
How goes the time ? Confound! the half-hour's turned —
Cabby, drive quick ! — We must not lose a jiffy ;
This half-crown's yours, and this beside it, if I
Catch the two forty-three at Waterloo.
Saublc, soon our names sJiall wane. I o I
BALLADE OF OLD LAW BOOKS.
To R. S. F.
" ' I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Coppei field,
said Uriah. ' I am going through Tidd's Practice. Oh what a
writer Mr. Tidd is, Master Copperfield ! '" — David Coppn-jield.
The law books are standing in dingy array,
They fill every shelf from ceiling to floor,
Old guides to a silent and grass-covered way
Which never a traveller now shall explore,
Save delvers for antiquarian lore,
Who painfully search where their treasures lie hid,
In pages that else had been closed evermore,
Forgotten for aye, like the wonderful Tidd !
( ireat Blackstone is put up aloft, far away
(The Whig, first edition, in calf, volumes four) ;
The doctor and student alike are at play ;
And Perkins is now but a profitless bore. .
I O 2 Dryasdust for ever slumbers.
Old Viner's Abridgment is over the door
'Mid dust-begrimed wines that fetch never a bid ;
Even Fearne ox Remainders we vainly deplore,
Forgotten for aye, like the wonderful Tidd !
Oblivion has fallen on the frequent ca. sa.,
And Cursitor Street is untrod as of yore ;
We turn not the leaves of Les Termes de la Lev,
Or these ancient Reports, ah, many a score,
Of a dulness as deadly as dread hellebore ;
Of their Latin and law we are joyfully rid.
Let them stand, as we peacefully slumber and snore,
Forgotten for aye, like the wonderful Tidd !
ENVO I '.
How quickly the summers and winters are o'er !
They linger not now as in childhood they did.
Soon we shall be treading yon shadowy shore,
Forgotten for aye like the wonderful Tidd !
Sing the praise of perfect numbers. 1 03
THE SPLENDID SIX-AND-EIGHT-
PENCE.
"There be many who know not how to defend their causes in
judgment, and there are many who do, and therefore pleaders are
necessary so that that which the plaintiffs or actors cannot or know
not how to do by themselves, they may do by their Serjeants, attomies,
or friends. Countors are Serjeants skilful in the laws of the realm
who serve the common people to declare and defend actions in
judgment, for those who have need of them, for THEIR fees." —
The Mirrour of Justice.
Blest six-and-eightpence ! six and eight, fourteen,
Twice seven, the perfect number from of old,
Of Rabbi and of Sanhedrin esteemed ;
How welcome thou, to every toiling son
Of Themis ! thou, like mercy, doubly blest
And doubly perfect ! Of a sovereign, thou,
Whether the fourfold shield and ancient crown
Surmounting all; or, in fierce combat bent,
Unarmed, save for his helmet and his sword,
O'er the prone dragon fiercely wars the saint,
1 04 Sing a Sojig of Six-and-eiglitpcncc,
Once George of Cappadocia, now for aye
Saint George of England, on the reverse stand ;
Or whether from far Sydney Mint (where shines
The Southern Cross by night, resplendent) comes
That sovereign, still art thou its equal third !
The third of that famed sovereign, whose power
From east to west, from orient Cathay
To realms beyond the famous fabled isle.
The far Atlantis, and from frigid zone
To torrid clime, unquestioned still prevails.
I sing thy praises, and the happy wight
On whom thy favour fair and frequent shines
Irradiant. But to me, alas ! how rare
Thy visits, though in blankest verse besought !
Here, as I sit in unattended state,
Up to this topmost stair there mounts nor step,
Nor human voice, save when, with weary load,
The postman, travelling his dull round, perchance
May bring the casual circular, or when
The urgent mendicant, miscalled the poor,
Of me, yet poorer, wins a grudging alms.
Here, as from morn to weary night I sit,
Sad-visaged tomes that erst were fair and new,
The last edition, in disorder fallen,
Stand, me confronting : as — but, ah, how changed !-
They stood in other, happier days, when yet
Pockets lacking adequate pence. I O $
Examinations were a thing of dread,
As yet unpassed ; like to the Rubicon,
Which he who crosses, crosses to his doom, —
Conquest, perchance, but death. When often I,
Escaped with joy e'en from that lighter toil,
Would hasten southward while yet summer breathed
Ambrosial odours, past the Oval Gates,
Where upward swelled the long-resounding cheer,
And there beheld the Great Leviathan,
Black-bearded, stalwart, drive the lusty four,
Or the fell Demon shatter England's hopes,
With balls unplayable, beyond compare.
How changed in likeness ! Here yet Chitty stands,
"Infernal Chitty," whom the poet sang,
Who sang not long, but sweetly ; by his side
Addison's Torts, meet dam for such a sire,
And Prideaux, dull but serviceable jade ;
The facile Digest, and the long array
Of Statutes, Orders, Precedents of Costs
(Alas ! uncut) ; the thousand-tongued Reports
Of others' suits that nothing profit me,
Deemed yet unworthy to be joined in fame
Woodfall and Pollock, and the ofl-read page
Of Williams ; Tudor and far-famed Smith,
Jarman, still treating of man's latter end,
Russell and Lindley, Phillimore and Fry,
io6 Dreams of wealth, awakenings rude ;
And Blackstone, father of the numerous brood.
Why should I more? for who will still be guide
When none will follow ? Day succeedeth day,
And still I gaze through the thick-dusted pane
Across the Inn, hight Furnival's. And still
I wait thy coming and relenting Fate.
Here as I sit, when haply in a dream,
I do behold thee, or to my blest gaze
Thy lordlier brothers, great thirteen-and-four,
Majestic guinea, come, too soon it fades,
The beatific vision fades from view.
And in its stead a direful figure, grim
Of plague and famine breathing; close-nipped he
With frost, though snorting fire ; bent-browed he seems,
And threatening ruin me-ward. Firm he grasps
His fatal scissors and the hapless bill, —
Fell Taxing Master ! He it is whose guile
Stirred up with envy (though no wrong have I
Or mine e'er rendered him), shall fierce reduce
The scanty pittance by the Rules yclept
Remuneration; whom nor prayers nor tears
To pity move : nor may aught e'er avert
His fatal wrath ! Bereft of thee I turn,
And take my unremunerated way.
* * * •:!:•
Legal maxims misconstrued, 107
LEGAL MAXIMS, ETC.
1.
Nullum tciupiis occurrit regi.
" No time shall run against the King." Ah ! me,
Were that but true, he were a King indeed ;
Who keeps, as years unto the years succeed,
Undimmed his youth, and as at first can see
And taste the joys of life ; the open, free
Spirit of him who grows in wealth, not greed ;
Who still with zest life's various book can read,
Nor knows the cynic sneer, nor long ennui.
And yet, methinks, the years would still recall
The grief the gods award, the tears, the strife,
Wer't but the memory of her he saw
And loved when first he lived. Ripe fruit must fall
And dearer, though less splendid, is our life
Than the cold, distant ideal of the law.
10S Sti// these tyrants sJww their faces !
ii.
Cujus est solum, ejus est itsqzte ad ceclttm.
Quicquid planiatur solo, solo cedit.
THE SONG OF THE TYRANNICAL LANDLORD
I am monarch of all I survey,
The land is described in my deeds ;
And I gloat over them every day
The long-winded scrivener's screeds !
I am seized in demesne as of fee ;
An absolute ruler am I,
If not from the land to the sea,
At any rate up to the sky.
The little birds up in the trees.
Are mine if I only can catch 'em ;
My tenants' improvements I seize
If I get but a chance for to snatch 'em.
Things put on the soil I opine
Are given, though folks say that I steal 'em.
To the uttermost depths of the mine
It is mine, and right usque ad ccelum.
It is mine, then, right up to the sky,
The soil and above and below it.
Some folks make abatements, but I
Knock off never a pound, if I know it !
Songs of Coggs, and casks, and cases. 109
If my rents are a day in arrear
I instantly levy distress,
While I " roll " in my thousands a year,
As described in the Radical press.
in.
COGGS v. BERNARD.
If Bernard moveth Coggs's casks
But lets them break, and spill the brandy,
When Coggs for that lost liquor asks,
Bernard must pay the damage ; and he
Still must pay although he prove
He was not paid those casks to move.
IV.
LAMPLEIGH v. BRAITHWAITE.
Although I ride to Royston town
To save my friend condemned to die,
And "see the King in his golden crown,"
Yea, win the royal clemency, —
Yet, though it may seem rather hard on
Me; who went and got the pardon —
I cannot in the by-and-bye
Compel my friend to pay for this.
i i o Who would maxims ne'er forget,
Actiotis for payment will not lie
For voluntary courtesies.
But had I gone at his request
For payment then I might have pressed.
MERRYWEATHER v. NIXAN.
If you and I commit a tort,
But when the sufferer brings his action
He sues me only, and, when fought,
I only give him satisfaction,
I cannot make you with me share
The loss that I have had to bear,
Though both of us have caused it ; for a
Maxim students ought to know
Thus declares : Ex turpi causa
JVon oritur actio.
VI.
Qui facit per alium, facit per se :
The master must suffer for faults of the man,
'Twas Alfred's opinion, Justinian's decree,
Qui facit per alium, facit per se.
Let him try a triolet. 1 1 I
Perchance on defendant the maxim may be,
Rather hard — but then find me a better who can
Qui facit per alium,facit per se,
The master must suffer for faults of the man.
VII.
Id cerium est quod cerium reddi potest.
That's certain already
Which can be made certain.
Youth's obstinate, heady ;
That's certain already.
He'll find if he's steady,
Law's principles curt in,
" That's certain already
Which can be made certain."
VIII.
Caveat emptor : simplex commendatio uon obligat.
Fine marrers, mum, taters, green peas !
All the best, mum. Come, go it, my moke !
There nowheres ain't fresher than these,
Fine marrers, mum, taters, green peas !
What ! yesterday's had some disease,
And were hard 'uns ? O, lor ! I shall choke.
Fine marrers, mum, taters, green peas !
All the best, mum. Come, go it my moke !
I I 2 Trust, oh ! trust, your cause to mc,
MY CLIENT.
i.
My client, O my client, let me call you by that name,
As sweet as e'er to poet's ear the first fresh breath of
fame,
As welcome as to sailors lost in yon lone Indian sea,
The sail that tells of home, is your retainer unto me.
The world may call you usurer ; — say, have / found it
kind ?—
May rate upon your usances, be to your merits blind ;
And yet methinks its bitt'rest taunt, however it may
spurn, he
Has not yet known, who's ne'er been called " a rascally
attorney."
When first you did that little loan (you charged me cent.
per cent.),
"We little thought a nearer tie was e'er to join us meant.
" N' oseres-vous inon bel ami ?" 113
Yet time brings his revenges (and I, perchance, may
whine) ;
And in sweet union on one writ our names may yet
entwine.
Your nose is in the foreground, your face the middle
distance,
Yet think not that on this account you less need my
assistance.
Two heads — you know the proverb. Nay, no delusion
hug,
A mouse may serve a lion, and you, a Gentile pug.
My brethren may not like it, perchance at me may rail,
Who count your name a shining light among their
clie?itcle ;
They may withdraw their friendship. Amen. I shall
miss it, or
At any rate I shall not care, if I am your solicitor.
My Hebrew money-lender ! come, let me act for you,
And I will draw your mortgages, and on your bills will
sue.
We will not heed the bitter sneer, the lip in scorn up-
curled.
We two will stand together, we two against the world.
I 14 Popplesto)ie feels some vexation ;
11.
The sunset dies,
The east is gray ;
From where hope lies
I turn away.
The wretch is gone.
And, ah ! worse still,
(I might have known)
He'll tax my bill.
111.
Bloxam, my master, O taxing-master,
Judge not too hardly this poor, short bill,
Search not keenly a chance excess.
Thy fatal pen moves fast and faster
Yet stay a moment that hard, swift quill ;
How shalt thou profit, though I get less ?
O taxing-master, O hard, keen master,
The left-hand margin is fair and white,
Leave it, I pray thee, yet white and fair.
Be not a "hard, ungracious pastor,"
Vex not with queries the anxious sight,
Let not thy taxings be frequent there.
Just " impatience of taxation" I i 5
Master, the coming Long Vacation
Calls thee away to the land of pleasure,
Bids thee away to the sunny south.
Kill not the sweet anticipation,
Fill not with sorrow thy hours of leisure,
Tax not the bread from a waiting mouth.
List not to every slight objection,
Quench not of hope the lingering ember,
Make not the page with thy taxings wet.
Little he merits thy high protection :
To tax my bill he may remember,
But, ah ! to pay it he will forget.
1 1 6 I've often zuished that I had lent
SONNETS ON THE MORTGAGEES.
It is notorious that the actual effect of a mortgage deed of land or
houses is widely different from the agreement appearing in the deed
itself. In form the deed is merely a conveyance of the property by
the mortgagor, or borrower, to the mortgagee, or lender, with a
provision that upon repayment of the money lent, on a fixed day,
generally six months after the date of the deed, the property shall be
reconveyed to the borrower. In default of this payment, the
property would appear to belong to the lender. In fact, a long
series of decisions of the Court of Chancery, since embodied in
statutes, has reduced the effect of the deed to the requirements of
commercial life ; and it operate?, in short, only to give the mort-
gagee certain rights over the property to secure his loan and interest,
the ultimate ownership remaining in the mortgagor. Upon default
being made, after notice to the mortgagor to repay the loan (for it
is rarely intended that the loan shall be paid off on the day named),
the mortgagee may sell the property and repay himself, or he may
take possession of the property and receive the rents. If he takes
the latter course, he must strictly account for his stewardship, "the
plight of a mortgagee in possession," as Professor Frederick Pollock
puts it, 1 "being one of the most unenviable known to the law."
It is obvious that if, in spite of the danger, he takes this course, the
1 At page 129 of his admirably lucid book, " The Land Laws," in
the English Citizen Series — the best book devoted to the difficult
task of explaining our laws to laymen.
Some thousands, — safe, — at Jive per cent. 117
respective rights of mortgagor, mortgagee, and the tenant of the pro-
perty will require careful definition. They have been determined by
decisions, two of which are mentioned subsequently. The mortgagee
has a third remedy open to him, which has the disadvantage of
being slow and expensive : he may sue in the Chancery Division
for an order that, unless the mortgagor within a fixed time pays the
amount due on the mortgage, he may be foreclosed, or cut off from
his right to redeem the property.
The allusion in the last line of the first sonnet is to the best known
books on the law of moi-tca^es.
TO WORDSWORTH.
Wordsworth ! who, of all music, loved the sound
Of sonnets most, and to their strains would sing
The song that called us from the sordid thing
We make our life, to Nature's wider bound ;
Who e'en wiihin the gloomy city found
Some gleam of beauty ; and didst cause to ring
Thy self-doomed prison with thy carolling,
Making its " scanty plot" a holy ground :
Forgive me that I seem, profane, to mock
The melody of thy clear, silver lute,
To turn awry the key that did unlock
The master's heart, singing the loud dispute,
The weary wrangle of the court, the dock,
Old Fisher's learning, and the lore of Coote.
i 1 8 KeecJCs wrath ami Hall's disaster.
ii.
KEECH v. HALL.
(I. Sm. L. C, 546. Temp. 1779.)
Tenancy created after the mortgage.
They did not err who, when the mortgagee
Had ta'en possession of the charged estate,
And finding one whom, since the mortgage date,
The mortgagor admitted as lessee,
Or yearly tenant, straight declared that he
Might thence eject him ; needing not to wait
His term's expiry, nor, by the gate
Of Equity, foreclosure's slow decree.
So Keech, his interest failing, forthwith went
To take the warehouse in fast mortgage bound ;
And finding Hall, no tenant when he lent
His money, fierce commanded, " Leave the ground !
Then, stern rejecting Hall's oft-proffered rent,
Sued in ejectment, and fit triumph found.
Pity a poor poetaster ! 119
in.
THE CONVEYANCING ACT, 188 1.
Sad is his lot, of legal themes who sings
With hard-found rhymes, that scarce arrest the eye
Of general readers. Heedlessly pass by
Alike fair maidens, hasting to the springs
Of old romance, and he who slowlier brings
His gaze upon divine philosophy :
A thankless task ! and ere the ink be dry
Swept to the limbo of forgotten things.
So Keech v. Hall, that long unquestioned stood,
Found in the Act of 'eighty-one its end ;
And mortgagors may lease now as they would
Had they not mortgaged, if they but attend
To details dull, which (even if she could)
The Muse to specify should ne'er descend. 1
1 But the curious reader may find them in section iS of the
Conveyancing and Law of Property Act, 1SS1.
120 How oft a difference zee see,
IV.
MOSS v. GALLIMORE.
(/. Sm. L.C., 604. Temp, 17S0.)
Tenancy created before the mortgage.
"If you must sue me, let it be for nought
But for the rent I owe you, Gallimore ;
Not for the rent which had accrued before
You took possession. I have always thought
That when a mortgagee possession sought,
(Though little learned I in legal lore),
But from the date the which his notice bore
The rent he claimed when he his action brought."
So Moss, but erring. And, unpaid his rent —
That rent which at the notice-date was due —
To make distress hard Gallimore has sent
The brokers in, and sold his chattels few.
And Moss for trespass, on revenge intent,
Vainly — ah ! worse than vainly — does he sue.
' Tzvixt mortgagor and mortgagee ! 121
ON A MORTGAGEE IN POSSESSION.
As one wrecked in mid-ocean, who surveys
From his lone islet how the boundless main
Bears neither help, nor hope that e'er again
His foot shall tread the city's crowded ways ;
And, sinking, sees, with memory's inward gaze,
The white sails filling seaward, and the strain
Of mast and spar, and so recalls with pain
Youth's golden vision of Saturnian days ;
So stands the man surrounded by a sea,
Whose perils scarce with pain he shall surmount,
Who takes possession as a mortgagee.
Beati possidentis ? Nay, the fount
Of evil shall possession to him be,
From whom the law exacts a strict account !
o o
Be you joyous, be you frantic,
OLD FATHER ANTIC, THE LAW
Old Father Antic, seated high
Above the Babel of the Court,
Unseen, surveys with twinkling eye
The world of Contract and of Tort.
On Common Law and Equity,
That scarce suggest the poet's dreams,
Ceaseless he looks, yet ofttimes he
Invokes the Muse to legal themes.
Less favoured than the beauteous nine,
She foots a Hudibrastic jig;
With failing voice and halting line
Is wooed the Muse that wears a wig.
And Justice, since we deem her blind,
To Father Antic gives to wield
Her two-edged sword ; and bids him bind
" Fiat justitia" on his shield.
Never a jot cares Father Antic. 123
A tricksy, not ill-natured knave,
Full oft he turns the blow away,
Delays to strike, or will but wave
The brand, while slinks the culprit by.
He errs not with an ill intent
(More aged is his brow than wise),
Save when, on Puck-like mischief bent,
He's heedless of the suitor's cries.
And hinting yet another doubt,
Some puzzled jury he'll beguile
Or at their sober sense will flout
With paradox and cynic smile.
Our little nature well he knows,
And, seated o'er the crowded Court,
Upon our fevered joys and woes
He smiles, and makes of them his sport.
,0
124 Heavy though the premium be,
BALLADE OF THE HONEST
LAWYER.
To E. B.
The " noble savage " of long ago
Within a hundred tomes we find ;
The foreigner acute we know,
And "general readers' " looks resigned:
The " law of nature," left behind
By a simpler age, has ceased to be
Aught but examination grind :
The u honest lawyer," where is he ?
" Macaulay's schoolboy " is a show
To spur the laggard's step designed ;
And the New Zealander, we trow,
Who comes to sketch our fate unkind ;
The " man in the Peckham 'bus " confined,
And Mrs. Grundy o'er her tea —
These, these with memory's threads are twined :
The " honest lawyer," where is he ?
Honesty s best policy. 125
The things that are " gone with last year's snow,"
And the Grecian Kalends, are well defined ;
The " missing link " is voted slow,
Too oft we've with " Duke Humphrey" dined;
The " social contract," that once was signed,
The " light that was never on land or sea " —
All these and more we call to mind :
The " honest lawyer," where is he?
ENVOY.
Prince, my name, if you're inclined,
Within the " Law List" you may see ;
Yet still the world asks — dull and blind ! —
" The ' honest lawyer,' where is he ? "
i 26 The stuff whereof my dreams were made
MY SIDE-BAR RULE: 1
BEING
ANOTHER LAWYER'S FAREWELL TO HIS MUSE.
My side-bar rule ! my side-bar rule !
When you and I acquaintance made
I was a grass-green lad from school,
And fresh to all your complex trade.
Now you are gone and I decayed,
A notice now is all that needs,
Forgotten all that Tidd e'er bade :
Such are the changes that Time breeds.
Lease and Release 2 alike are gone,
Demurrers 3 even are of yore ;
1 A side-bar rule was an order of the Court, granted, as a matter
of course, by an officer without formal application. Its place is
now taken, generally, by a notice given by the one party to the
other.
- Two deeds which constituted the most common form of con-
veying landed property for more than two hundred years.
3 A document by which a party to a suit objected that the
previous pleading of his opponent did not contain matter which in
Has taken silk ; the play is played ; 127
Acknowledgments 1 are following on,
Rules nisi soon will be no more ;
Fines and Recoveries,- and their lore
Are lost ; no Fearne grows on our path,
Who've flung away the harvest's store,
And reap law's scanty aftermath.
And thou, my once familiar friend,
Joy of my youth, O great John Doe, 3
Thou hast achieved the common end ;
And thou, my crony, Richard Roe,
Thou all too soon wast called to go
Where plaintiff nor defendant be ;
And I alone lament below
The memory of the Last Vouchee. 4
law entitled him to the relief he asked, or did not raise a valid
defence.
1 i.e., acknowledgments by married women that their deeds were
executed free from the control of their husbands.
" Fictitious lawsuits used for conveying landed property, which
are among the most curious incidents of legal history.
3 John Doe and Richard Roe were fictitious persons, who
constantly appeared in ancient lawsuits as nominal plaintiffs, defend-
ants, sureties, &c.
4 One of the dramatis persona in recoveries, supposed to have
warranted the title of the vendor to his land. A man of straw, such
as the usher of the Court, was selected, and innumerable judgments
were recorded against him.
128 The lights arc oat, the music still ;
Exchequer and the Common Pleas *
Have ceased from out their ancient place ;
No Postman ~ gathereth his fees,
The Tubman's memory fades apace ;
The Barons 3 are a dying race,
Vice-Chancellors have ceased to be,
And vanished is the stately grace
Of Masters in the Chancery. 4
The Petty Bag 5 is closed for aye ;
Distringas ' J now doth not distrain ;
1 Two of the great Courts of Common Law, now merged in the
Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice.
2 Postman and Tubman were two barristers (so called from the
place where they sat), who had pre-audience in certain matters in
the Court of Exchequer.
3 i.e., the Barons, or Judges of the Court of Exchequer.
4 Masters in Chancery were officers subordinate to the judges,
most of whose duties are now discharged by the Chief Clerks.
5 An office under the control of the Master of the Rolls, where
certain orders were made and whence certain writs issued. It was
so called from a bag in which the orders were at one time
kept.
6 A writ principally of use to enforce charges, Sec. , on the public
stocks. The Sheriff was commanded to distrain on the Bank of
England to compel obedience to the order of the Court. A notice
has taken its place.
The wild wind whistles cold and shrill, i 2 9
No actions on the case 1 we lay ;
And we — we fade like them. In vain
The fevered strife, the toil, the strain
For fame wherein we waste our breath ;
The verdict we, perchance, may gain —
The Postea" is given to Death.
My side-bar rule ! said I "Farewell"?
It should not be " Farewell," but " Hail!"
The Preacher of my years doth tell
That pleasure and desire shall fail,
When eyes are dim, when cheeks are pale,
When tasks that once were light deter,
When limbs that once were stout shall quail
Before the burdening grasshopper.
I go, as I have lived, alone —
There is the less I must resign ;
'Tis well perchance I ne'er have known
A heart that beat response to mine,
1 An action which was not cast in any of the old stereotype
forms, but was said to arise from the facts of the case.
2 The formal engrossment of the verdict and proceedings of the
Court, which was given to the party entitled to judgment.
130 Close behind tlie ride r pale is,
Write zae then, " Hcbc est ftnalis
Or loving arms that fond would twine
About my neck. That joy extreme,
The hope love's light on me should shine,
Is but the memory of a dream.
Come, let us still this mournful strain !
What recks the world a jester's woes?
The motley's off, and ne'er again
The bells shall sound. The darkness throws
Her mantle o'er the sea's repose ;
And I — I turn me from the strand,
As one who takes his cloak and goes
By night into an unknown land.
«9 •
POSTSCRIPT.
ON THE COMEDY OF THE LAW.
Singing so merrily — Trial-la-law !
Trial-la-law — Trial-la-law !
Singing so merrily— Trial-la-law !
W. S. Gilbert, Trial by Jtiry.
( 133 )
ON THE COMEDY OF THE LAW.
Sanitonella. Do you hear, officers ?
You must take special care that you let in
No brachygraphy men to take notes.
First Officer. No, sir?
Sanitonella. By no means.
We cannot have a cause of any fame
But you must have scurvy pamphlets and lewd ballads
Engender'd of it presently.
Webster, The DeviPs Law Case.
" Man," says Hazlitt, " is the only animal that laughs
and weeps ; for he is the only animal that is struck with
the difference between what things are, and what they
ought to be. We weep at what thwarts or exceeds our
desires in serious matters : we laugh at what only dis-
appoints our expectations in trifles." If this definition
of the source of humour be accepted, one would expect
lav/ to be, as it notoriously is, a frequent cause of
laughter. For it is only rarely that a litigant's mishaps
are serious enough to cause us to pass the border-line
which separates our smiles from our teais. Man, the
sport of a Fate which seldom wounds, but constantly
i 34 The Comedy of the Law.
makes him ridiculous, is the spectacle daily shown in
the Courts. But it is curious, as a writer in a recent
Spectator' 1 has pointed out, "how little of this legal
comedy has been crystallised into literature." This is
the more surprising when we recollect " to what an
extent the forms of legal institutions, conceptions and
claims of strictly legal right, and even the fictions of
legal speculation, have entered into the very bones
and marrow of the history of our country." Doubtless,
by search among the ancient ballads and broadsheets
which Webster denounced two hundred and fifty years
ago, the files of newspapers, odd volumes of remin-
iscences and biography, and forgotten annuals, one
might find material for a portly volume of curious cases,
such as that which provoked Thackeray to his ballad,
•' Damages Two Hundred Pounds." And every jest-book
contains stories of eccentric juries and specimens of
the good things attributed to counsel, witnesses, and
(especially) to judges. But, of the books devoted to the
humorous side of law, only three or four, at most, can be
said to have obtained a general, or even a widespread
professional, popularity.
It is easy, of course, to conjecture explanations of this
fact. Counsel, it may be said, observe the humorous
1 For September 24, 1887.
The Comedy of the Laic. 135
side of law only during a period of enforced and un-
welcome leisure, when their powers are not matured,
when as yet —
The grave attorney, knocking frequently,
The tittering clerk, who hastens to the door,
The bulky brief, and corresponding fee,
Are things unknown to all that lofty floor. 1
And they are little likely, in busier days, to wish to recall
by publication their Songs of Idleness. While, as for
solicitors, we are bound over to hold our peace, under
penalty of professional failure. The lack of opportunity
has, perhaps, destroyed among us the inclination to
literature. Most solicitors of a generation ago would
have said (possibly quoting, let it be confessed, like me,
at second hand) —
One Chancery cause in solid worth outweighs
Dryden's strong sense and Pope's harmonious lays.
And this unwritten prohibition and want of inclination
apart, we are caught too young and caged too closely to
possess, save in exceptional cases, the time or the equip-
1 From the excellent parody of the " Elegy in a Country Church-
yard," by Mr. Justice Hayes, "Written in the Temple Gardens,"
which the reader, who has overcome his objections to this form of
" debasing the moral currency," would certainly wish to include in
any anthology of the Comedy of the Law.
136 The Comedy of the Law.
ment necessary for literary success. But the reason
which will most readily occur to the reader is the maxim
laid down by Goldsmith, but suggestive rather of the
wise sententiousness of Dr. Johnson, "Explained wit
makes but a feeble impression." Every writer of verse
on legal themes will have experienced the force of this
saying. However anxious he may have been to make
his rhymes themselves expound the law, unless he is
content to have his work very obscure, or very long and
very feeble, he will have found it necessary frequently to
" condescend to prose " for their elucidation. And he
will have been fortunate if he have not also found that
his explanatory notes tend to assume a proportion to the
text, which recalls FalstafFs immortal meal at the Boar's
Head, in Eastcheap.
On the other hand, the law has, no doubt, been
sufficiently presented to the world of readers, in its most
striking aspect, a trial. From the classic case of Mr.
Pickwick to the latest novelette on the bookstalls, there
has been no lack of causes, described often with melo-
dramatic force, and almost constantly with refreshing
originality in matters of procedure. But these are not the
" pure flower of pure law." They raise only questions of
fact for the jury ; they are mere nisi firius cases, ungraced
by the presence of a reporter, unnamed in the Law
Reports. And these apart, it may be said that, for the
The Comedy of the Lazo. I 37
general reader — the general reader who has not forgotten
his Cowper, and is old enough to have attended Penny
Readings, — the contribution of law to literature consists
of the contest between the eyes and the nose ; and the
strife of Bullum and Boatum. some familiar passages in
Mr. Gilbert's comic operas, and — if he possess Dodsley's
Poems, or a set of Elegant Extracts — of Blacks tone's
obviously insincere "Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse."
Mention of Blackstone reminds us that one book, at
least, of legal facetia? seems to have obtained a fairly
wide popularity — "The Comic Blackstone" of Gilbert
a' Beckett. This has been described, in the Spectator
already quoted, as a " comic Corpus Juris" and there is
little fault to be found with the description. The book
is a laboriously humorous reproduction of the great
Commentaries ; recapitulating such of the heads of law
as afforded the most ingenious and persistent of punsters
opportunity for pun, or quip, or quibble, or burlesque of
law Latin or law phrase. The task has been carried out,
as every one must admit, with unflagging spirit, and,
considering the unpromising materials, with surprising
success. Opening the book anywhere, sentences charac-
teristic of the author's style may be taken, almost at
random : —
Municipal law is a rule of civil conduct, and it is to be regretted
that government clerks pay so little regard to it.
138 The Comedy of the Laic.
The King .... it is said, can do no wrong ;" may ceo,"
says the old Norman jurist, "est un grosse Monsonge ;" for, he
adds, in the quaint dog French of his time, "boko de Peers sont
tray Movais."
A maxim is always supposed to contain the maximum of
wisdom.
We now come to private relations, including .... Guar-
dian and Ward— the latter being a sort of relationship which is
seen upon the stage, where a choleric old man with a stick is always
thwarting the affections of a young lady in white muslin.
This may, perhaps, recall the led-up-to joke of the circus
and the nigger minstrel, yet of its kind the fooling is often
excellent. But the fact is that to read the whole two hun-
dred and fifty pages is a weariness to the flesh, a task that
recalls the story of Guiccardini and the galleys, and the
criticism on the " Faery Queen." Like every persistent
punster, the author sometimes stoops to amazing depths.
It is possible to dissent from Dr. Johnson's dictum —
The man who'd make a pun, said he,
Would perpetrate a larceny,
And punished equally should be,
Or my name isivt Johnson, —
and Dr. O. W. Holmes's criticism on puns is here
irrelevant; but it is impossible not to be reminded of
what Macaulay said of Southey's jokes about Bishop
Spratt and Quaker Bugg. The truth is that the comic
side of law is momentary, episodical : it is not sus-
The Comedy of the Law. 1 39
ceptible of continuous treatment. A swallow -flight, per-
haps even the short and inglorious ascent of the law's
loved "good, fat capon," is all its singers may attempt.
No one has better realized the advantage of brevity,
and certainly no one has less deserved the last un-
gracious comparison, than that " apprentice of Lincoln's
Inn," now widely recognized as a master workman in
the craft of legal authorship, who in 1876 published
the "Leading Cases Done into English." 1 It is of
Professor Frederick Pollock, — for the veil of anonymity
was always somewhat diaphanous — that the future writer
of law cases in verse will be most tempted to utter his
Pereant isti qui ante nos nostra dixerint. Of the plan of
his book he may doubtless say with Mr. Puff, and truly,
that there can be no plagiarism ; two people happened
to hit upon the same idea, and Shakespeare made use
of it first. From the time of Lord Hardwicke, and
indeed, far earlier, to our own time, many writers must,
like Mr. Popplestone, have found to their chagrin that
what they imagined a novel conception had long been
common property. But in knowledge of law, in deftness
of presentation, and excellence of workmanship, they
1 London : Macmillan and Co. The work has been for some
time out of print, and is, unfortunately, somewhat difficult to ob-
tain.
1 40 The Comedy of the Law.
will find it difficult to rival Professor Pollock. Perhaps
this excellence is due to the rigorous suppression of all
but the author's best work. Unlike the authors of the
''Rejected Addresses," he has been at no pains to '"dimin-
ish the tenuity " of his book ; and sixty-four, not crowded,
pages suffice for the twelve pieces it contains. At ease
in any metre, Mr. Pollock is happiest in the old ballad
form, and especially in his refrains: —
The birds on the bough sing loud and sing low,
What trespass shall be ab initio.
Fair and free is the King's highway.
Sing sorrow for money had and received,
And alack for the common counts, O.
But the fortunate student who has yet in store the
pleasure of a first perusal of the book will better
appreciate its nature from the judgment of Lord Holt,
C.J., in the case of Coggs v. Bernard, upon the " sixfold
coil of divers sorts of bailments " —
whose woof of ancient wit
I first of all men born in all this land
Shall now in seemly wise and ordered speech
Spread forth, and through this undistinguished field
Drive the clean ploughshare of dividing mind,
Ox-wise returning to and fro, till all
Be ready for the seed that springs to fiuit
Of iudgment.
The Comedy of the Law. 141
It may be said, parenthetically, that the student's
conceptions of bailments, after reading the judgment,
will remain disastrously vague. But no such charge
can be made against the other cases, the ballads, the
English hexameters which expound the law of fixtures,
or the more difficult imitation of Mr. Browning's style,
which, in its success, recalls Calverley's immortal parody.
Of the concluding dedication to the " J. S " of the
older books, "a kind of cousin of John Doe and
Richard Roe, but more active and versatile," now
forgotten and fallen on evil days, every line invites
quotation ; but the concluding stanzas must suffice : —
Yet I pour you the drink of my verses,
Of learning made lovely with lays,
Song bitter and sweet that rehearses
The deeds of your eminent days:
Yea, in these evil days from their reading
Some profit a student shall draw,
Though some points are of obsolete pleading,
And some are not law.
Though the Courts that were manifold dwindle
To divers Divisions of one,
And no fire from your face may rekindle
The light of old learning undone,
We have suitors and briefs for our payment,
While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas,
We talk moonshine with wigs for our raiment,
Nut sinking the fees.
142 The Comedy of the Law.
The only rival worthy of comparison with the " appren-
tice of Lincoln's Inn" comes from the north of the
border. In 1851, Mr. George Outram, the editor of the
Glasgoiu Herald, printed for private circulation a hundred
copies of his " Legal Lyrics and Metrical Illustrations of
the Scotch Forms of Process," which were subsequently
made public, and, after a sale of several thousand copies,
reprinted, in 1888, in an admirably illustrated edition,
under the title of " Legal and Other Lyrics/' 1 An
Englishman, while acknowledging the difficulty of the
task, may well envy the Scotch author the archaic
and picturesque forms of process commemorated in
"The Multiplepoinding," "Soumin and Roumin/' and
"The Process of Wakenin." "The Annuity" is the
best known of the lyrics, but its theme is not strictly
legal; and the best piece in the volume — the best, I
think, of all verses on law — is " The Process of Augmen-
tation." It is too long to quote, but the reader may
be assured that the humour is indescribably rich ; and,
while the process would be possible only in Scotland,
it is fortunately such as a Southron can appreciate.
The "lyrics" are written to the airs of old songs, and
possess an ease, a lilt, and a " catchiness," which
1 Wm. Blackwood & Sons : Edinburgh and London.
The Comedy of the Law. 143
are admirable, and appear, as everywhere, in " The
Law of Lien."
If ye've been up ayont Dundee,
Ye maun hae heard about the plea
That's raised by Sandy Grant's trustee
For the mill that belang'd to Sandy.
For Sandy lent the man his mill,
An' the mill that was lent was Sandy's mill,
An' the man got the len' o' Sandy's mill,
An' the mill it belang'd to Sandy.
A' sense o' sin an' shame is gone,
They're claiming noo a lien on
The mill that belang'd to Sandy.
But Sandy lent the man his mill,
An' the mill that was lent was Sandy's mill,
An' the man got the len' o' Sandy's mill,
An' the mill it belang'd to Sandy.
"The Law of Lien" is, unfortunately, a fragment, and
the author might, one would think, have easily doubled
the contents of the volume, which, as it is, will leave
most readers with a somewhat resentful appetite for more.
The influence of Outram is unmistakeably strong in
the pleasant volume of " Law Lyrics," of which a second
edition appeared in 18S7. 1 The title-page gives no
1 Alexander Gardner: Paisley and London.
144 The Comedy of the Laze.
clue to the authorship, but the contents of the volume
suggest that it is the work of one possessing long, and
probably judicial, experience, with a sturdy patriotism,
and that confidence in his opinion on extra-judicial
subjects, which judicial authority is apt to beget; and
the author has been conjectured by a critic, with every
appearance of probability, to be among the sheriffs.
Whoever he may be, he possesses the facility which
comes of much practice, and boasts, justly enough, tha
his old goose quill,
In summons or in sonnet, sirs,
Can make the paper sing.
In his book, as in Outram's, the songs of the law are
interspersed with verses inspired by more conventionally
poetic themes, and it is in these that, unlike Outram, he
is happiest. The sonnet is better than the summons.
The national fare, and the national gallantry, suggest the
author's best efforts ; witness his description of Scotch
Porridge : — ■
'o v
In boilin' water, salted weel,
'Tween fingers, rin the ruchsome meal,
While the brisk spurtle gars them wheel
In jaups an' rings —
Ae guid half-hour, syne bowls may reel
Wi food for Kings.
The Comedy of the Law. 145
Nae butter, syrups, sugar brown,
For him wha sups shall creesh thy crown,
But milk alane, maun isle thee roun',
Till thou dost soom,
Then a' man needs is ae lang spoon,
And elbow room.
The courage with which the author invites comparison
with Outram on legal themes hardly meets with com-
mensurate success. He has not Outram's sly fun, or his
richness of melody. Yet one would be sorry to lose the
o-enuinely good rejoicings over his countrymen's shrewd-
ness, as displayed in the process of arrestment of
foreigners, by " a good-going plea ad fundandae" the
'< Juryman's Carol," " The Table of Tees," or the song
" In Praise of Ink," the technical accuracy of which will
delight the professional reader.
Take black ink for the virgin draft,
And scarlet to revise it,
Take purple for a hindmost touch
And blue to emphasize it ;
Then of the various stoppered streams
Yield up the laurels triple
To mildly flowing blue-black ink,
Thou Prince of lawyers' tipple !
But there is, it must be confessed, more of the national
argumentativeness than lyric inspiration in the author's
controversial mood ; and it is with some surprise that one
1 46 The Comedy of the Laic.
finds in these "lyrics," protests against capital punish-
ment, deer-stalking, and oaths. And the arguments in
favour of local option, of conferring divorce jurisdiction
on the sheriff, and of power to order security for costs in
actions on tort set down for trial by jury — in verse —
surprise even one accustomed to the singing of legal
themes.
It must be admitted that Scotland claims a surprisingly
large share of the humour which has grown up around
legal institutions. From Ireland, with its litigious
peasantry, and America, with the increased importance
of the legal elements in its society, one would have
expected more. But no American production seems to
have become generally known on this side of the Atlantic,
and Ireland's contribution, so far as a cursory glance at
catalogues shows, is confined to "The Law Scrutiny," 1 a
scurrilous account of the Dublin attorneys of the day, the
nature of which, in the presence of laws against libel,
amply explains the author's resolute desire for anonymity.
But the wits of the Scotch bar seem to have been long
accustomed to amuse themselves with squibs and satires,
such as have been recently collected by Mr. James
1 "The Law Scrutiny : or Attornies' Guide." Dublin: John
Barlow. 1807.
The Comedy of the Law. 147
Maidment in "The Court of Session Garland." 1 The
" Songs in the Justiciary Opera," there reproduced, in
which Boswell had a hand, bring to mind " The Beggar's
Opera," and the " Trial by Jury " of our own time ; and
the " Directions to Writers' Apprentices " are an imitation
of Swift which would not discredit their original ; the bur-
lesque Royal Speeches, which from time to time amused
the Outer House, still repay perusal ; and the humour of
the Diamond Beetle Case is worthy of Outram himself.
It will be noticed that, while the Scotch authors have
celebrated only imaginary or passing cases, their English
rival, Mr. Pollock, and his latest follower, " Touchstone,"
in the "Legends of the Leading Cases"- — written generally
in the Ingoldsby metre, which lends itself with a perhaps
dangerous facility to such themes, and written, certainly,
as the Spectator critic says, "with a certain Ingoldsby
smartness " — have followed the facts of cases recorded
in the Reports. English writers have, indeed, especial
reason to bless the name of Smith. For, while it is an
obvious advantage to celebrate a cause of permanent
importance rather than a hypothetical one, or one of
1 London : Hamilton, Adams & Co. Glasgow : Thos. D. Mori-
son. 18S8.
2 " Legends of the Leading Cases ; or, Law and Laughter." By
''Touchstone." London: Reeves & Turner. 1881.
M
148 The Comedy of the Laic.
only fugitive interest, how much greater is the advantage
of versifying any case rather than a treatise will be seen
by comparing their books with those of earlier writers
dealing with some branch of law as a whole. A case has
a natural rise, progress, and culmination. And if its
actual conclusion, the entry of judgment, tends to be
feeble (as Anthony Trollope said the last chapter of a
novel tends, when the story is in fact complete, and only
the " so they lived happy ever after " has to be recorded
with a futile and painful attempt at freshness), yet the
narrative is there ; while a treatise limps to a lame and
impotent conclusion, or might be said to do so but that
those characteristics in no way distinguish the conclusion
from the rest of the work. An apparent exception to this
tendency is found in " The Pleader's Guide,'' by John
Anstey, which first appeared in 1797, and ran through
probably more editions than any similar book. But the
exception is only apparent. For, as was plaintively
pointed out by the author of " The Conveyancer's Guide,"
of pleading u The Pleader's Guide " says nothing. " The
student after reading it will know as much about special
pleading as he did before ; " and any inclination to tedious-
ness is avoided by devoting a large part of the book to the
fictitious cause of John-a-Gull versus John-a-Gudgeon.
" The Pleader's Guide " has received high praise, and the
The Comedy of the Lazv. 149
unique honour of quotation by a Lord Chancellor. It
has been described as a " work of exuberant wit," while a
more grudging critic allows it " a great deal of humour
(unkindly adding, " though chiefly of a legal kind ") ; and
Porson is said to have known it by heart. The openings
of the various books are especially good —
Yet once more, O ye pleaders, and once more,
Ye plodding clerks, with fingers never weary,
I come your pleas and pleadings to explore,
And through the confines of your cloisters dreary
Following the Process 'bove th' Aonian steep
I have presumed with inky thumbs to sweep
The golden Lyre.
And the author's appeal for himself to his judges —
Some Mercy still, and Justice show him,
And purchase, ere you damn, his poem —
will awake an echo in the breasts of those who at
respectful distance imitate his lays.
'"The Conveyancer's Guide,'" 1 said its author, after
referring to Anstey's book, "is not a competitor; it pro-
fesses to teach the principles of conveyancing in an
amusing manner." Certainly it is no competitor, and
1 " The Conveyancer's Guide ; or, The Law Student's Recreation.
A Poem." By John Crisp, Esq., of Furnival's Inn. London:
A. Maxwell. 1832.
150 TJie Comedy of the Law.
only by charitable construction can it be said to have
performed its modest professions. There is instruction,
no doubt, but little amusement in such lines as these : —
"By flue comme ceo the cognizee
Gains a clear seisin of the fee ;
A use arises which, by deed,
May either be declared or lead ;
For any purpose well it suits
And which the statute executes.
And there are about 2500 such lines as these. The
subject is, in fact, an impossible one, and Mark Tapley
might have sucked melancholy from the song. 1
1 In the copy of these two guides in the library of the Incorporated
Law Society, there appears the following inscription : —
PRESENTED
TO THE
3ncovporatc6 law Society;
BY
EDWD. FOSS,
B. HOLME,
A t the Anniversary Dinner of the Society.
On the 30th January 1834 ;
AND THEREBY HANGS
A TALE.
The names are remembered as those of generous donors to the
Library, but the tale has vanished with the flavour of the port which
it suggests. It is lost as completely as that good story of the "ould
grouse in the gun-room," which Goldsmith possibly invented for
the perplexity of future commentators.
The Comedy of tJic Laze 151
Even before the happy conception of a collection of
" Leading Cases," there existed, however, one storehouse
of reports, the State Trials, whence it would seem the
poet might easily have derived his fable and drawn an
inspiration. Such has not been the common view, but
in 1838 one student ventured to dress in the garb of
poesy the figures which move through the tragic pages of
those reports. 1 The cases which Mr. Moile selected
were three in number, those of Anne Ayliffe, Sir William
Stanley, and Mary, Queen of Scots. It is evident that in
the trials of such persons, and for such crimes as heresy
and treason, the element of law can be only slight.
The poems are historic rather than legal. The solemn
exhortations and awful vengeance of Holy Church ; the
figure of a faltering maiden, now sinking before the
horrid visions of the torture chamber, now inspired
almost to wear the crown of martyrdom by recollections
of her childhood's faith ; the breathless suspense that
1 " State Trials, Specimens of a New Edition." By Nicholas
Thirning Moile, Esq., of the Inner Temple, Special Pleader
London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co. The poems are ascribed in
the preface to an obviously unreal, deceased pupil. The authors of
legal jeux cfesprit seem often to desire what the defendant in
Montagu v. Benedict achieved, a pseudonymous immortality " The
Pleader's Guide," by a similar legal fiction, purports to be published
by the executors of one Surrebutter, the author.
152 The Comedy of the Law.
heard an attainted traitor accuse of treason the coun-
cillor at the King's right hand ; the beauty and the sor-
rows of such as Mary, " poor Queen that was," flashing
out, even in that dark hour, one gleam of queenliness ;
the whisper of love ; the softened glow of evening light
upon cathedral towers — these are themes for songs
beyond our singing ; they challenge judgment by a loftier
standard than may in justice be applied to the lowly
laureates of the law. The scale of presentation, too,
which in a volume of four hundred pages permits of the
inclusion of three cases only, is clearly unfitted to the
momentary inspirations of the Muse of Chancery Lane.
For brevity is one of the most prominent characteristics
of her lays. It is curious that there has been no attempt
to burlesque law as a whole, nor, so far as I know, has
any one essayed the easier task of commemorating
seriously the rise, progress, and triumph of Law. Yet
there lies on the surface of legal history much that sug-
gests epic treatment, and were not the fashion of epics
passed away, one might yet expect the announcement of
a. great Epic of the Law. The poem, for example,
might begin when, through the clearing mists of primal
chaos, Themis perceives the anarchy, the tribal feuds,
the private war of primitive or prehistoric society. The
debate on Olympus, the resolve to establish order, and
TJie Comedy of the Law. i 5 3
the descent of the goddess to the earth would naturally
occupy the first book. The birth of Law, the child of
Intellect and Conscience, and the gift to him by the
goddess of immortality would follow ; and the youth of
the hero might be described with sufficient incident to
enforce the need of his regenerating mission to the
world. In the next book, finding his unripened strength
unequal to the ask of reorganizing society, Law would
call to his aid Habit, Convention, and Legal Fictions,
who, by insidious arts, would weaken the hold of Force
on mankind. It might be convenient after a general de-
scription of this to bring the hero, Law, to Rome at the
promulgation of the Twelve Tables, and then make a
rapid passage to Caesar, Cicero, and Hortensius, and take
a bird's-eye view of the triumphs of Law's lieutenants,
Gaius, Ulpian, and Justinian. Over all this classical
allusions (Numa Pompilius — Egeria — the sacred grove,
and so forth) might be sprinkled according to taste,
regard being had only to the cost of paper and printing.
The transition to Byzantium would give an opportunity
for a burst of oriental colour, and the first part of the
pcem would conclude with the triumph of Law, and the
publication of the Code.
In the next part we should see the journey of Law to
Britain (naturally introducing here Brutus, the Druids,
154 TJie Comedy of the Lai,
and Augustine) ; then, eliminating from our consideration
a few centuries, we should have a description of the
Feudal System, wherein Law, growing weary of his task,
allows a false friend, Formalism, to impair the justice of
his rule and the felicity of his subjects. Here there is
obvious opportunity for a picturesque digression on, or
apostrophe to, Don Quixote —
Behind thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack,
Thy lean cheek striped with plaster, to and fro,
Thy long spear levelled at the unseen foe,
And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back —
the decay of feudalism, and the Renaissance. From
this we should return to Olympus, and the debate of the
gods on the decline of Law, the second mission of Themis
to the earth, and the birth and beauty of Equity, designed
as a helpmate for Law. We should see how Formalism
misrepresented the divinely gifted maiden and her
purposes to Law, whose jealousy and resentment being
aroused he prepared for war, but, disdaining to fight with
a woman, he turned and left her long in injured and
resentful possession of her Kingdom. The reawakening
of Law to his better self, his mighty strife with the
traitor Formalism, who, assisted by Inflexibility, attempted
to assassinate the King, and the death of the traitor
would be followed by the reconciliation of Law with, and
The Comedy of the Law. i 5 5
his wooing of, Equity. Here lyrics might be introduced
with advantage —
Sweet maid who walk'st by Lincoln's Inn,
or,
O thou who guard'st the unwritten right
And deem'st what should be, now is done.
The penultimate book would be filled with the magni-
ficent celebration of their nuptials (by mortals profanely
called Fusion) under the Judicature Acts, performed at
the New Law Courts by Lord Selborne, C, assisted by
Parliamentary draftsmen, cousins of the bride. The
concluding book would contain a description of the
wedding-breakfast, and the song of a seer (in default of
more appropriate persons such as friends of the author,
say, the Senior Registrar of the Chancery Division), who,
with the aid of a chorus of successful litigants, would
proclaim the crowning triumph of Law, the spread of the
blessed spirit of legality, and the return of the divine
pair to the clouds amid the acclamations of the ghosts of
the parties to the Leading Cases, after the closing of the
law courts of the United Kingdom owing to the absence
of any dispute in that golden age. The locality of this
last scene should be laid in Ireland. In the American
edition there might be an additional passage, describing
the triumph of Law in the prairies and savannahs and the
156 The Comedy of the Law.
disuse of revolvers in the Far West, introducing allu-
sions to Columbus, Washington and the Stars and
Stripes, and concluding with the peroration of the
Pogram Oration.
This outline of the argument is, of course, crude ; but
such as it is, it is at the disposal of any bard willing to
bear the expense of publication. But it behoves him to
hasten, if, indeed, he has not been born an age too late,
when the world has heard enunciated the astonishing
proposition that nothing can be a poem, strictly so called,
which cannot be read, without disturbance to one's
mental laziness, at one sitting.
But, putting aside the epic conception, and abandon-
ing any unreasonable anticipation of pastoral simplicity
or the true lyric grace, and judging law verses by the more
cognate standard of vers de societe, it must be confessed
that their general popularity cannot at any time be
confidently predicted. Notwithstanding what Mr. Moile
says, in his admirable preface, of " the pure poetry of
our system of pleading," one must admit that some-
thing of the brightness, the lightness of touch, which is
the essential virtue of society verses, is gone. " Our
humour," it may be said, though not quite in Roche-
foucauld's sense, "is apt to be more at fault than our
understanding." That "heavy atmosphere of sadness
The Comedy of the Law. i 5 7
and gravity," which, Cowper complains, " hangs over the
jurisprudence of our country," has depressed even its
irresponsible songsters. The "gentleman of sprightly
parts and very respectable talents of the poetical kind,"
who, in 1742, achieved the task of turning "Coke's
Reports " into verse, 1 must, one would think, have lost
in the effort something of his sprightliness ; and the
fellow-student of Lord Campbell, who commenced a
rhymed edition of " Tidd's Practice," is not recorded to
have persevered beyond the first couplet.
Perhaps it is due to this heavy atmosphere that no-
where, so far as I know, has any very successful attempt
been made to personify Law. Occasional references to
limbs of the law, to counsel, to judges are numerous;
but no characterization of law as an individual entity
seems to have gained the public ear, though a near ap-
proach to success is made in that dedication to "J. S."
in the "Leading Cases done into English " already quoted.
References to John Doe and Richard Roe are naturally
plentiful; these worthies appear in the "Law Lyrics," in
Outram, and in Crisp, and they furnish an effective con-
clusion to a book of " The Pleader's Guide." But these
represent only one phase, and that a passing one, of law.
1 The volume was reprinted in 1825.
158 The Comedy of the Laic.
It would be possible, assuming a hostile position, to apply
to Law the lines from " Childe Harold" —
A little fiend that scoffs incessantly
There sits in parchment robe arrayed, and by
His side is hung a seal ;
but these are appropriated by their author to the half-
sister science of Diplomacy. Butler refers, not, I think,
very happily, to " the old, reverend gentlewoman, the
law;" it was, I believe, Mr. Weller who enunciated the
common, but hasty and inaccurate generalization, which
declares the law an ass ; and every one will recall that
apotheosis of law in Hooker which graces all dictionaries
of quotations. But, for combined humour and insight,
nothing seems to me so felicitous as Falstaff s " Old
Father Antic, the Law." Here, as so often elsewhere,
the laboured efforts of authors who " abide our question "
seem blundering and inapt by the side of a chance
word of Shakespeare's.
INDEX.
29 ; on Baron and i
Addison v. Gandasequi ........
After" (a song)
Anstey, J no., his "Pleader's Guide"
"Apprentice of Lincoln's Inn, An." See Pollock, Prof. /•'.
Armory v. Delamirie ...... ■
Art of being a family solicitor, Mr. Popplestone's lecture on
Ashby v. White et al. ........
Attorneys find the world a hard one, x ; Mr. James Payn on, id.
abuse of, 9, 64 ; the one honest verse in literature, 9 ; attorneys
in fiction and on the stage, 9-1 1. See Solid lor.
Aylesbury Men, The Case of the
Bank-note, stolen, title to
Blackstone, on the Ecclesiastical Courts
43 ; his Farewell to his Muse
Blackstone, The Comic
Book-markers, a defence of
Case, the famous.
Ca lye's Case .
Caveat emptor
"Chambers, Ode to a Judge in "
Chancery, Court of
Chattel personal, title to
Christian, Prof. Ed., on "a partiality to the female sex
Chudleigh, Miss. See Kingston.
Client, My
Coggs v. Bernard, 109 ; Prof. Pollock on
Coke's Reports in verse
" Comedy of the Law, On the " ....
Common Law, "let us not be unjust even to the "
Consideration, doctrine of
Contempt of Court, popular conception of .
Contract, renunciation of, when right of action arises
Conveyancing Act, The, 1881 ....
" Court of Session Garland, The "
PAGE
27
52
148
17
xii
61
61
i37
i37
64
84
89
in
95
116
3
44
112
140
157
133
45
89
23
74
119
147
41
1 60 Index.
PAGE
Crabbe on Attorneys 10
Crisp's " Conveyancer's Guide " ....... 149
Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum 108
Cumber v. Wane 89
Cutter x. Powell 40
Deeds 9°
Doe, John 127, 157
Duchess of Kingston's case, the, 29. See Kingston.
Ecclesiastical Courts, the 29
Epic of the law, a suggested 152
Equity, he who seeks, must come with clean hands ... 43
Estoppel, law of 29
Euphemisms, Mr. Popplestone's opinions on .... 65
Female sex, the (see Husband), the law's partiality to . . - 44
Finding's Keeping 17
Foreclosure, 22, 117 ; summary procedure for, on the stage . . 22
Frauds on marital rights 43
Frauds, the Statute of 6
Frost v. Knight 74
General warrants 67
" Honest Lawyer, Ballade of the " 124
House unfurnished, not warranted fit for habitation ... 84
Husband and wife, the law of 43. 5°
Id certum est quod certum reddi potest in
Innkeepers, liability of 82
Iseulte, Queen, the song of 56'
Jactitation of marriage 30
•;j. s." 141. 157
"Judge in Chambers, Ode to a " 95
Keech v. Hall 118
Kingston, the Duchess of, her case, 29 ; the original of Thackeray's
"Beatrix," 30; her secret marriage, 33; prosecution of, 36;
exile and death 37
Lampleigh v. Braithwaite 109
" Law Books, Ballade of Old" 101
" Law Lyrics " 146
" Law Scrutiny, The" 146
Lawyer, the Honest, Ballade of, 124 ; "The Character of". . ir
Index. 1 6 1
PAGE
Lawyers and marriage ......... xv
Leading Cases in Verse, 1-92 ; Ballade of, 1 ; definition of . . xx
" Legal and other Lyrics," Outram's 142
Legal Maxims, &c 107
Letter-box, the martyr of the ....... xviii
Lickbarrow v. Mason ......... 12
Manby v. Scott 5°
Marriage, Restraint on 59
Married Women, rise and progress of their separate estate, 45,
their contracts .......... 5°
Merry-weather v. Nixan . . . . ■ ■ ■ .110
Miller v. Race 3
Moile's "State Trials, Specimens of a New Edition " . . . 151
" Mortgagees, Sonnets on the," 116 ; in possession . . . 121
Mortgages, difference between form and effect of . . . . 116
Moss v. Gallimore .... ..... 120
" My Side-bar Rule " 126
Novels, Mr. Popplestone's opinions on, xiii, 30 ; attorneys in, 9 ;
law and trials in 126
Nullum tempus occurrit regi ........ 107
Oath, the, how administered, 77 ; declining importance ot . -79
" Old Father Antic, the Law " 122,158
Omichicnd v. Barker ......... 77
Outram's " Legal and other Lyrics ...... 142
Paterson v. Gandasequi ........ 24
Payn, Mr. James, on attorneys, x ; and trite quotations . . 39
Peter v. Compton .......... 6
" Pleader's Guide, The " 148
Pollock, Prof. F., his "The Land Laws," 117 ; his "Leading Cases
Done into English" ......... 139
Poppleston, John, memoir of, ix ; an attorney, ib.\ articled in
London, x ; becomes town clerk of Stourmouth, xi ; a bachelor
by conviction, sed qu., xv ; writes his " Lays " in youth, xi, and
revises them in old age, xix ; his projected works, xix, 22, 65 ; he
dissents, 64 ; on novels, xiii, 30 ; on popular conceptions of law,
21 ; on book-markers, 64 ; on euphemisms, 65 ; on oaths and
profane swearing, 79 ; on trite quotations, 38 ; on consideration.
89 ; on seals, 91 ; his farewell to his Muse .... 126
Principal and agent 24, 27
Profane swearing, statute against 79
162
Index.
Quantum meruit, the art and mystery of
Quicquid plantatur solo, solo cedit
Qui facit per aliiim, facit per se
Quotations, trite
Remuneration, our scanty
Roe, Richard. See Doe, John.
Roman Law ....
40
108
no
38
106
9i. 153
" Sarah. To," a valentine
Scotland claims large share of the comedy of the law .
Scott v. Tyler
Seals, the gentle reader spared a dissertation on .
" Side-bar Rule, My "
Smith v. Marrable
Solicitor, on the art of being a family, xii ; his profession one of the
second-best, xii ; should he marry? xv ; rarely successful in litera-
ture, 135 ; discreditable prejudice against, 64. See Attorney.
" Sonnets on the Mortgagees "
Spectator, the, on the Comedy of the Law .
" Splendid Six-and-eightpence, The " .
" State Trials, Specimens of a New Edition "
Stoppage in transitu .....
Stourmouth, Mr. Popplestone becomes town clerk of, xi ; its
institute, ib.
Strathmorc v. Bozocs .........
Taxation of solicitor's costs, the man who asks for, lost to all sense
of shame ........
Tidd's Practice, 126, 157 ; Mr. Heep's opinion on
Touchstone's " Legends of the Leading Cases "
xvi
146
59
9i
126
84
. 116
134, 137, 147
• 103
Ubi jus, ibi remedium .......
Valentine, Bishop, lack of biographical information as to
his benevolence, xvii, and martyrdom
Watts, Dr., his doggerel and repentance
Wilkes v. Wood ........
Wordsworth, sonnet to
xvi
43
114
101
147
61
66
67
117
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