TAYLOR.

In the works of John Taylor, the Water Poet, we find a beggar's prayer for a lawyer:

May the terms be everlasting to thee, thou man of tongues; and may contentions grow and multiply; may actions beget actions, and cases engender cases as thick as hops; may every day of the year be a Shrove Tuesday; let proclamations forbid fighting, to increase actions of battery; that thy cassock may be three-piled, and the welts of thy gown may not grow threadbare !”

PEPYS.

The diarist, good Mr. Pepys, records that he went "to the office, where Mr. Prin come to meet about the Chest business; and till company come, did discourse with me a good while in the garden about the laws of England, telling me the main faults in them" (of course, that took a good while); "and among others, their obscurity of long statutes, which he is about to abstract out of all of a sort; and as he lives and parliaments come, get them put into laws, and the other statutes repealed, and then it will be a short work to know the law." What a pity Mr. Prin couldn't have been immortal! By a singular collocation, the only other topic touched upon in this paragraph is the plague, which, he blesses God, "is decreased sixteen this week." I suppose the Mr. Prin referred to was William Prynne, who lost his ears on account of some ungallant reflections on Queen Henrietta Maria, in his screed against play-actors, entitled "Histrio-Mastix:" if this supposition is correct, and

Pepys correctly reports him above, he certainly could well spare something from his ears.

THOMAS FULLER,

in his character of "The Good Advocate," says,

"He not only hears but examines his client, and pincheth the cause where he fears it is foundered. For many clients in telling their case rather plead than relate it, so that the advocate hears not the true state of it till opened by the adverse party." "If the matter be doubtful, he will only warrant his own diligence. Yet some keep an assurance office in their chamber, and will warrant any cause brought unto them, as knowing, that if they fail, they lose nothing but what long since was lost, their credit. He makes not a Trojan siege of a suit, but seeks to bring it to a set battle in a speedy trial. Yet sometimes suits are continued by their difficulty, the potency and stomach of the parties, without any default. in the lawyer." "In trivial matters, he persuades his client to sound a retreat, and make a composition. When his name is up, his industry is not down; thinking to plead, not by his study, but his credit. Commonly, physicians, like beer, are best when they are old; and lawyers, like bread, when they are young and new. But our advocate grows not lazy." "He is more careful to deserve than greedy to take fees." "Yet shall he, besides those two great felicities of common lawyers, that they seldom die either without heirs, or making a will, find God's blessing on his provisions and posterity."

These are the sentiments of a wise, just, and sensible man. From his character of "The Good Judge" we extract the following: —

"He harkens to the witnesses, though tedious.”

"Many country people must be impertinent before they can be pertinent, and cannot give evidence about a hen, but first they must begin with it in the egg. All which our judge is contented to hearken to. He meets not a testimony half-way, but stays till it come at him.” "If any shall brow-beat a pregnant witness on purpose to make his proof miscarry, he checketh them, and helps the witness that labors in his delivery. On the other hand, he nips those lawyers, who, under a pretense of kindness to lend a witness some words, give him new matter, — yea, clean contrary to what he intended.” “His private affections are swallowed up in the common cause as rivers lose their names in the ocean."

QUEVEDO,

a Spanish satirist of the first half of the seventeenth century, was much given to "Visions," and in one of the Day of Judgment has the following uncomfortable allusion to lawyers: "I had to pity the eagerness with which a great crowd of notaries and lawyers was rushing by, flying from their own ears," a long journey for some of our profession, it must be confessed,- "in order to escape hearing their own sentence: but none succeeded in this, except those who, in this present world, had had their ears cropped off as thieves; but these, owing to the neglect of justice, were by no means in the majority."

As an offset to this, I do not discover that Dante gives us any place in his "Inferno." The nearest approach to it is a reference in the argument preceding the twentysixth canto, as translated by Wright, to evil counselors." But aside from the natural doubt whether that phrase

means lawyers, it does not seem to be supported by any thing in the poem, - the reporter's syllabus is not borne out by the decision. It is hardly worth while, on the other hand, to examine whether the poet gives us a place in Paradise: his age was not Christianized enough for such a stretch of charity.

SELDEN.

The learned Selden, in "Table-Talk," has an interesting section on law, in which the most striking observation is, "Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him."

OWEN FELTHAM,

A

in his "Resolves," thus expresses his opinion: "Questionless there are of this profession (the law) that are the light and wonder of the age. They have knowledge and integrity; and by being versed in books and men, in the noble acts of justice and of prudence, they are fitter for judgment and the regiment of the world than any men else that live. And their honesty, truly weighed, is the gallantest engine that they can use and thrive withal. faithful advocate can never sit without clients; nor do I believe that man could lose by it in the close that would not take a cause he knew not honest. A goldsmith may gain an estate as well as he that trades in every coarser metal. An advocate is a limb of friendship, and farther than the altar he is not bound to go. And it is observed of as famous a lawyer as I think was then in the world, the Roman Cicero, that he was slain by one he had defended when accused for the murder of his father.

Certainly he that defends an injury is next to him that commits it. And this is recorded, not only as an example of ingratitude, but as a punishment for patronizing an ill cause. In all pleadings, foul language, malice, impertinence, and recriminations are ever to be avoided. The cause, more than the man, is to be convinced. Overpowering oratory is not ever to be practiced. Torrents of words do often bear down even trophies of truth, which does so fret and anger the party overborne, that the resort is no more to paper and pleadings, but to powder and steel.”

PUCKLE.

Of James Puckle little is known save that he wrote a curious book, first published in 1711, entitled, “The Club: in a Dialogue between Father and Son," with the motto, in vino veritas, in which various characters are described, alphabetically, and with but one character to each letter, by the son, who tells his father that he met them at the club the night before, where they all got drunk; whereupon the father moralizes. The letter L affords an opportunity to describe a lawyer. The other characters are Antiquary, Buffoon, Critic, Detractor, Envioso, Flatterer, Gamester, Hypocrite, Impertinent, Knave, Moroso, Newsmonger, Opiniator, Projector, Quack, Rake, Swearer, Traveler, Usurer, Wiseman, Xantippe, Youth, Zany. So we are placed among what cannot, on the whole, be called good company. The dialogue on Lawyer is as follows:

"Son. A wit of the law, that made it as much his care and business to create feuds and animate differences as the Vestal Virgins used to maintain the sacred fire, growing drunk, boasted himself an attorney. That