dared to collect the common law of Ger many, although very recently the study "des deutschen Rechts " has experienced a new impulse in some of the German univer sities. In the case of V. v. Scheffel an additional reason for his incapability of grasping the sterile principles of the Roman law must be sought in his poetical turn of mind, of which he speaks so pleasantly that I cannot withstand the temptation of quot ing a few lines more from the same book : "Oftmals sass ich bei der Lampe, Sass ich briitend ob dem Codex, Lass die Gloss und den Cujacius, Bis mich Kopf und Haupthaar schmerzten. Doch dei Fleiss blieb ohne Segen. Lustig flogen die Gedanken Von den Lettern in die Weite Zu des strengen Herrn Cujacius Schoner Tochter, die dereinstmals Gliicklicher Pariser Jugend Vom Catheder ihres Vaters Hefte suss melodisch vortrug. Statt Usucapion und Erbrecht, Statt Novella hundcrtachtzehn Schaut' ein schwarzgelocktes Magdlein Griissend aus dem Corpus Juris. Cujacius' pretty daughter sealed his doom. The German jurists find more leisure to do literary work than our American lawyers and judges. Tradition precludes the enter ing upon business enterprises, and judges are very seldom found to change their vocation. Those who have quitted practice in order to embark in politics as members of the opposition, as Eugen Richtcr, are the rare exception. More common is the pre liminary theoretical study of jurisprudence with a view of entering the " Staatsdicnst," the civil service. Most of the heads of great municipalities, even, are jurists. To the American reader such jurists as have been prominent in the world of letters are undoubtedly of greater interest than local celebrities who occasionally penned a poetical line. This consideration chiefly influenced the writer in making his selec tions. Goethe as poet towers above the score or
more who have studied the pandects and achieved fame in literature. His intellectual bent was in any other scientific line rather than in that of jurisprudence. He studied it in Leipsic and Strassburg merely to please his father, obtaining from the latter university the degree of doctor juris. Al though in one of his letters to Fraulein von Klettenberg he says: "Jurisprudence begins to please me very much. Thus it is with all things as with Merseburg beer; the first time we shudder at it, and having drunk a week, we cannot do without it," * his in structor, Professor Bohme, had given up all hopes " of making him another Heineccius." To be sure, he discharged afterwards the duties as president of the Council of the small duchy of Saxe-Weimar to the full satisfaction of all concerned; yet he was never after legal facts and principles : •• Ein schoner Wahn, der mich entziickt, Wiegt eine Wahrheit auf, die mich zu Boden driickt."2 was his motto. And then, he had too many other mistresses, studying alchemy, medicine, philosophy and theology besides jurisprudence. His experience at the Kammcrgericht at Wetzlar, where he went to "learn the practice," was anything but en couraging to a man of genius. " Imagine a German chancery.3 In no country known to me chancery moves with railway speed, and in Germany even the railways are slow. Such a chaotic accumulation as this Wetzlar Kammergericht presented was perhaps never seen before. Twenty thousand cases lay undecided on Goethe's arrival, and there were but seventeen lawyers to dispose of them. About sixty was the utmost they could get through in a year, and every year brought more than double that number to swell the heap. Some cases had lingered 1 Lewes, Life of Goethe, vol. I., p. 59. 2 Delusion sweet, caressing, Outweighs a truth oppressing. 3 I quote from Mr. l.ewes' book (vol. I., p. 70), still the best Goethe biography extant.
