which way you will she will light upon her feet. And finding a cloud at the court he made sure of his fair weather in the country, applying himself so devoutly to popular interest, that in succeeding parliaments the prerogative felt him as her ablest, so her most active opponent."

The patriotism and independence of Sir Edward Coke must ever be considered as the brightest feature in his character. It is as a patriot alone that he stands superior to his great contemporary Bacon, with whom throughout the greater part of his professional career he was placed in constant competition. Both had embraced the same profession, both prosecuted it with ardour and success; one attaining the highest, the other the second dignity it can confer; and both lived to experience the instability of the preferment they had struggled so hard to acquire. But the causes which produced the downfal of these illustrious persons were widely different; and he whose integrity was unimpeached rose highest in public estimation after his disgrace at court; while all the brilliant qualities of his rival, when sullied by corruption, failed to procure him the consideration and esteem that to a generous mind form the most gratifying reward of every exertion. As an author, however, Bacon need fear no comparison with Coke. No one can peruse a production, however slight, of each, without being struck by the wide disparity of their intellects. Bacon was in every respect superior to his age; Coke was merely on a level with it: the former was a philosopher, a statesman, and a lawyer; the latter was a lawyer, and little or nothing more. An absurd opinion is sometimes maintained, that those who devote themselves to the study of the legal profession must sedulously refrain from intercourse with every other department of literature and science. Perhaps no more striking refutation of such a doctrine can be named, than the great superiority of Bacon's legal writings over those of his contemporary. As a practical lawyer, Coke was undoubtedly without an equal. All the abstruse learning of the common law, the subtle niceties of pleading, and the voluminous enactments of the statute-book, were treasured in his memory; and from this copious repertory he could always draw wherewithal to supply the emergencies

of a particular case. But he wanted the lamp of philosophy to enlighten the confusion of so many jarring elements. It would have produced such an effect as the first beaming of day is said to have done on chaos; for though in a confined circle he could move with safety, if not with freedom, he was bewildered and lost when he ventured beyond it. His mind resembled a spacious but ill constructed dwelling-house, stored with furniture in abundance and of costly workmanship, which, however, for want of order and arrangement, is deprived of much of its utility, and is often found to be more cumbersome than convenient. The difference we cannct fail to perceive between these distinguished individuals was owing as much to the original dissimilarity of their genius, as to their education and acquired habits of thinking: Coke had not been nurtured in the school of philosophy; and having once fallen into the beaten track of the law, he seems never to have felt a wish to diverge from it: although endowed with a shrewd and penetrating mind, he loved rather to involve himself in the perplexities of detail, and to treasure up a vast number of unconnected facts, than by arranging and combining these, the elements of knowledge, to discover new and hidden truths. He possessed a memory at once powerful and capacious; industry, which no labour could fatigue, and that sobriety and dispassionate temper of mind which no intricacies could disgust, but he was lacking in the higher and more noble faculty of reason, which is the true and only source of all philosophy. In this his great rival, the father of philosophy, eminently excelled; and while Bacon was gaining by a broader and easier ascent, the vantage ground of his profession, he found leisure to indulge the natural versatility of his tastes, and to make those excursions into the fields of literature and of science, by which his fame has become the property of the world.

In none of Coke's writings do we find a single attempt to generalize, to discover those great principles of jurisprudence from which most of the principal enactments of positive law have been deduced, or to lay down rules for the guidance of future legislators. He is content to know that certain regulations have been made, and that certain consequences must follow; but he goes no further, or if

hexameters :

fixit

Pastor agens telis, liquitque volatile ferrum Inscius: illa fugâ sylvas saltusque peragrat Dictæos, hæret lateri lethalis arundo.*

And in a marginal note he compares this wound of the stricken doe to "an evil conscience in the false and furious officer of the forest, if any such be."

His constant disposition to account for every thing by uncommon and singular reasons, is nowhere better exemplified than in his derivations of words. Thus: Parliament, he says, is so called, "because every member of that court should sincerely and discreetly parler la ment for the general good of the commonwealth." (Co. Litt. 110. a.) "The word placitum is derived à placendo, quiù benè placitare super omnia placet; and it is not, as some have said, so called per antiphrasin, quià non placet." (Ibid. 17. a. 303. a.)Towne (ville) villa, quasi vehilla, quod in eam convehantur fructus." (Ibid. 115. b.) "ROBBERIE. Roboria, properly is when there is a felonious taking away of a man's goods from his person; and it is called robberie, because the goods are taken as it were

These lines are thus translated by Dryden.

(neis, book iv.)

Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves,
From street to street the raving Dido roves,
So when the watchful shepherd, from the blind,
Wounds with a random shaft the careless hind,
Distracted with her pain, she flies the woods,
Bounds o'er the lawn, and seeks the silent floods
With fruitless care; for still the fatal dart
Sticks in her side, and rankles in her heart.

de la robe, from the robe, that is, from the pérson; but sometimes it is taken in a larger sense." (288. a.) A hundred other such instances might be quoted.

Perhaps there is no quality more conspicuous throughout the writings of Coke than a constant parade of scholastic pedantry. He seldom discusses a subject, however unimportant, without dividing it according to rule under several distinct heads; and it by no means unfrequently occurs that his awkward attempts to establish complete perspicuity create confusion and perplexity where none existed before. It is evident that he was unconscious of this failing. In his preface to the seventh report he says: In these and the rest of my reports I have (as much as I could) avoided obscurity, ambiguity, jeopardy, novelty, and prolixity. 1. Obscurity; for that it is like unto darkness, wherein a man for want of light can hardly with all his industry discern any way. 2. Ambiguity; where there is light enough, but there be so many winding and intricate ways, as a man for want of direction shall be much perplexed and entangled to find out the right way. 3. Jeopardy; either in publishing of any thing that might rather stir up suits and controversies in this troublesome world than establish quietness and repose between man and man; (for a commentary should not be like unto the winterly sun, that raiseth up greater and thicker mists and fogs than it is able to disperse ;) or in bringing the reader by any means into the least question of peril or danger at all. 4. Novelty; for I have ever holden all new or private interpretations or opinions, which have no ground or warrant out of the reason or rule of our books or former precedents, to be dangerous and not worthy of any observation, for periculosum existimo quod bonorum virorum non comprobatur exemplo. 5. Prolixity; for a report ought to be no longer than the matter requireth; and as languor prolixus gravat medicum, ità relatio prolixa gravat lectorem."

The scholastic method of argument is often clumsily, and sometimes incorthe habit of falling into that dangerous rectly, employed by Coke. He was in error, so common among those who use the mechanism of reasoning somewhat carelessly, of being misled by mere verbal subtleties; and in consequence of this failing his style of arguing is not only often loose and perplexed, but

occasionally vicious. Instances of this sort may be found in his report of Calvin's case, which also contains examples of the defect before mentioned. The principal question of law brought under the consideration of the court in that celebrated cause was: whether the plaintiff, who had been born in Scotland, after the crown of England had descended to James I., was an alien born, and consequently disabled from bringing any action real or personal for lands within the realm of England. It was observed that there were four nouns, which might be called nomina operativa, in the plea, viz.: ligeantia, (allegiance,) regnum, (kingdom,) leges, laws,) and alienigena (alien.) Each of these subjects underwent a separate discussion. On coming to the last, the reporter observes "Now we are in order come to the fourth noun (which is the fourth general part) alienigena: wherein six things d.d fall into consideration. 1. Who was alienigena, an alien born by the laws of England? 2. How many kinds of aliens born there were? 3. What incidents belonged to an alien born? 4. The reason why an alien is not capable of inheritance or freehold within England? 5. Examples, resolutions, and judgments reported in our books in all successions of ages, proving the plaintiff to be no alien. 6. Demonstrative conclusions upon the premises, approving the same." After examining the first five points at some length, he comes to the last head, which, he says, comprises" six demonstrative illations or conclusions, drawn plainly and expressly from the premises." Among these six arguments, it does not require much penetration to discover the unsoundness of the following.

"Every stranger must at his birth be amicus or inimicus; but Calvin at his either birth could neither be amicus nor inimicus: Ergo, he is no stranger born. Inimicus he cannot be, because he is subditus; for that cause also he cannot be amicus neither now can Scotia be said to be solum amici, as hath been said. "Whatsoever is due by the law or constitution of man may be altered: but natural liegeance or obedience to the sovereign cannot be altered: Ergo, natural liegeance or obedience to the sovereign is not due by the law or constitution of man. Again, whatsoever is due by the law of nature cannot be altered; but liegeance and obedience

from the subject to the sovereign is due by the law of nature: Ergo, it cannot be altered."

The false positions contained in these arguments are not the less glaring for being delivered under the form of syllogisms. It will be remarked that in each of them the minor is open to exception. The whole of Calvin's case is an excellent specimen of the pedantry with which not only Coke himself, but by far the greater portion of his legal brethren were infected; and if any one would form an opinion of the cumbrous and unprofitable learning with which lawyers in those days were wont to load their discourses, he can do no better than read it in Coke's report. It was an occasion of very great display, as appears by his account of the vast interest excited, and the elaborate discussion it underwent. All the fourteen judges, (there being then five in both the King's Bench and Common Pleas,) with the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, argued it, apparently at much length, for only two were heard in each of the eight days during two successive Terms that the debate lasted. Every judge took his own course, as Lord Coke informs us; and yet he confesses there was not much difficulty in the case, but that its importance only made the judges of the King's Bench carry it into the Exchequer chamber, where thirteen of the fourteen were, with the chancellor, clear one way. It was evidently made the occasion of an exhibition, a grand legal exercitation, much to the taste of those times. Now, not only is the discussion filled with the most useless and inapplicable learning, but there is really very little that can be called argument in it. Farfetched analogies, quaint allusions, quibbles upon words, quotations from the scripture and from profane authors, both classical and legal, abound in it; but there is a total want of close reasoning upon principle where principles are introduced. Its only value now lies in the remarks made incidentally upon other points of law foreign to the case at bar.

It is impossible to mention this celebrated case without noting the great interest which the argument upon it, especially from the bench, appears to have excited in Westminster Hall, and the enthusiasm with which Lord Coke regards it in his report. He seems quite elevated with conscious satisfaction and professional pride when he

considers how eminently the judges had distinguished themselves; and speaks as one, not merely relating a very important decision in the law, but as one recording a great triumph of the science and its professors. "It was observed," he says, that there was not in any remembrance so honourable, great, and intelligent an auditory at the hearing of the arguments of any Exchequer chamber case, as was at this case now adjudged. It appeareth that juris prudentia legis communis Angliæ est scientia socialis et copiosa; sociable, in that it agreeth with the principles and rules of other excellent sciences, divine and humane; copious, for that quamvis ad ea quæ frequentius accidunt jura adaptantur; yet in a case sc rare, and of such a quality, that loss is the assured end and practice of it, (for no alien can purchase lands but he loseth them, and ipso facto the king is entitled thereunto, in respect whereof a man would think few men would attempt it,) there should be such a multitude and farrago of authorities in all successions of ages, in our books and book-cases, for the deciding of a point of so rare an accident." This may serve as a specimen of the manner in which Coke's enthusiasm for the law is wont incidentally to display itself in his writings.

Although Lord Coke doubtless reckoned the account of Calvin's case his masterpiece as a reporter, deeming the argument itself the first sample of juridical learning and ingenuity, there are many of his cases in every respect far more worthy of commendation. If one were to be selected for the subtlety of the argument, and indeed the importance of the principles to the law, it perhaps would be that of Shelly; nevertheless, this too is disfigured by very puerile matter. For instance, when to prove that the date of the use must be referred to the recovery suffered, and not to the execution of the use, reference is made to the case of a man while insane giving himself a deadly wound, and afterwards dying while in his senses, which is by many authorities shown not to make him fclo de se; a thing so self-evident that we are left in doubt, whether most to admire the serious foolery of those who could gravely discuss and decide it, or of those who could cite it for a purpose so foreign. Perhaps, however, upon the whole, Chudleigh's case may

be taken as the best example of legal acuteness in those who argued it. Although not above twenty years before the case of the Postnati, it should seem that the taste of the bar had been much infected with the growing pedantry of the times during that interval.

If, indeed, we merely look to the merits of the Reports, it is not to any of the great cases, the renowned names, that we should resort. Beside those which have been cited, Corbet's and Mildmay's, Taltarum's, Mary Portington's, Clue's, Albany's, are all more or less open to the charge of prolixity, though very much less liable to it than the more celebrated ones of Shelly and Calvin. But the less pretending ones, which shortly give the resolutions of the court upon certain questions, and with little or no argument beyond what is necessary to explain the decision and its grounds, afford by far the best specimen of the learned reporter's ta lents for abstracting and recording. Indeed, the vast number of points resolved in these cases, and the generality with which they declare the law in dependent of peculiar facts, and unincumbered of those circumstances denominated by Lord Eldon specialties, after the language of the Scottish bar, present a most remarkable contrast to the decisions of modern times, wherein it is oftentimes hardly possible to ar rive at a rule through the maze of details and qualifications that beset the course of the judgment.

It must not, however, be supposed that every short notice of a case in the Reports is free from learned lumber and extravagance. The case of Swans is little enough in bulk, and trifling enough in import, yet is it sufficiently chequered with nonsense, hardly exceeded by the case of Mares in Scriblerus's Reports. "The truth of the matter was that the Lord Strye had certain swans which were cocks, and Sir J. Charlton certain swans which were hens, and they had cignets between them; and for these cignets the owners did join in one action; for by the law the cignets do belong to both owners in common equally, sc. to the owner of the cock and the owner of the hen, and the cignets shall be divided betwixt them. And the law thereof is formed on a reason in nature, for the cock swan is an emblem or representative of an affectionate and true husband to his wife above all other fowls; for the cock