Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/529

fifty manuscript folio volumes by Fearne, the stigma, however, need attach to any member learned author of " Contingent Remainders." of the Middle Temple, so far as opportunity Fearne, great lawyer as he was, was not a is concerned. There is an excellent collecman whose whole horizon was bounded by . tion of standard English works, in prose and the beauties of a demurrer or the intricacies poetry, from Chaucer and Hooker to Charles of a real property settlement. When he Lamb and Tennyson. The biographies alone might have been making .£15,000 a year, he number two hundred and seventy-six, and was contented to earn only a competency, the histories, ecclesiastical and civil, are wor and to spend his time on all sorts of inge thy to rank with them. The Greek and nious inventions, dyeing morocco leather, op Latin classics are there too; not, it is true, tical glasses, a new kind of musket, besides in the latest or choicest editions. Aristotle writing a treatise on the Greek accents. and Lucian and Demosthenes have to be ex These he called his " dissipations," and prob plored in mighty folios; still, they are ac ably many such schemes might be found cessible, which is a great thing. But scholar among these fifty manuscript volumes. ship, alas! is becoming a tradition of the past. In modern law treatises and text-books What advocate in these days would ever and in law reports, ancient and modern, the dream of launching a classical quotation at library is well equipped, though at the be a judge or a learned opponent, as Erskine ginning of the century it was not so. It did and Law and Scarlett did every day of their not even boast at that time a complete col lives. The relish for these things has gone, lection of Reports. The American Reports unless it is on the principle on which Becky are also very fully represented, and there is a Sharpe routed Miss Pinkerton by replying fair collection of American text -books. In to her in French, which that lady did not deed, English lawyers could ill dispense with understand, though she superintended those such works as Story's " Equity Jurispru who did. But here, while we are exploring, is an dence " or " Conflict of Laws," — our native sort yields nothing so good, — Bigelow on interesting document, the warrant under Estoppel, Greenleaf on Evidence, or May on which John Bunyan was arrested and con signed to durance vile in Bedford gaol : Insurance. But why, if the American Re ports are there in such abundance, should not To the Constables of Bedford, and to every the Reports of the courts of our own Colo of them : nies find a larger place in the library? Sure Whereas informacon and complaint is made unto ly this is a "hiatus valde dcflendus"1 In us that, notwithstanding the Kings Maj'w* late Act the matter of foreign codes, too, civil and of most gracious gen'll and free pardon to all his subjects for past misdemeanor that by his said criminal and translations thereof; and in the clemencie and indulgent grace and fav they might matter of foreign legal periodical literature, bee moved and induced for the time to come more there is also a good deal to be desired. Our carefully to observe his Highenes laws and habites insular habit still clings to us. We care far and to continue in theire loyall and due obedience to his Majtie, yett one John Bunnyon of yo' said towne, too little to know what other nations are do Tynker, hath divers times within one Month last ing and thinking in the domain of jurispru past, in contempt of his Maj'ies good Lawes, dence and sociology. preached or teached at a Conventicle meeteing or A lawyer without literature, it has been assembly under colr or p'tence of exercise of Re justly said, is a mere mechanic. No such ligion in other manner than according to the Liturgie or practise of the Church of England. These are 1 It seems that this deficiency is now being supplied.