The mastiffs of a government,

To worry and run down the innocent."

The secret of De Foe's hostility to the lawyers is found in the fact that he had been put in the pillory for publishing a “scandalous and seditious pamphlet," entitled "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters." We can excuse his violence in consideration of the malice and bigotry of his accusers. He made money out of the hymn, however: just as our distinguished countryman, Mr. Train, finds it to his profit to go about rehearsing his incarceration in an Irish bastile, at the hands of the brutal British Government, for his advocacy of the cause of that down-trodden race whom Ossian describes as "the bare-breeched Fenians."

GAY

addresses his fable, "The Dog and the Fox," to a lawyer, and introduces it as follows:

"I know you lawyers can with ease

Twist words and meanings as you please;
That language, by your skill made pliant,
Will bend to favor every client;
That 'tis the fee directs the sense,
To make out either side's pretense.
When you peruse the clearest case,
You see it with a double face;
For scepticism is your profession:
You hold there's doubt in all expression.
Hence is the bar with fees supplied,
Hence eloquence takes either side.

Your hand would have but paltry gleaning,
Could every man express his meaning.
Who dares presume to pen a deed,
Unless you previously are fee'd?

'Tis drawn, and to augment the cost,
In dull prolixity engrost;

And now we're well secured by law,
Till the next brother find a flaw.

Read o'er a will. Was't ever known
But you could make the will your own?
For when you read, 'tis with intent
To find out meanings never meant.
Since things are thus, se defendendo,

I bar fallacious innuendo."

COWPER.

The "Report of an Adjudged Case, not to be found in any of the Books," is an amiable satire. The character of the case and the organization of the court are stated in the first two stanzas:

"Between Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose;

The spectacles set them unhappily wrong:
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.

So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning;
While Chief-Baron Ear sat to balance the laws,

So famed for his talent in nicely discerning."

After submitting the arguments in favor of the title of the Nose,

"Then shifting his side (as a lawyer knows how), He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes."

The result was, that

"His lordship decreed, with a grave solemn tone,
Decisive and clear, without one if or but,
'That whenever the Nose put his spectacles on,
By daylight or candle-light, Eyes should be shut!""

Cowper was articled to an attorney, and an occupant of chambers in the inner temple for a number of years as a student at law. To this he pleasantly refers in one of his letters, which are among the most charming in the language: "I know less of the law than a country attorney, yet sometimes I think I have almost as much business. My former connection with the profession has got wind; and though I earnestly profess, and protest, and proclaim it abroad, that I know nothing of the matter, they cannot be persuaded to believe that a head once endowed with a legal periwig can ever be deficient in those natural endowments it is supposed to cover." deed, if two of the wisest in the science of jurisprudence may give opposite opinions on the same point, which does not unfrequently happen, it seems to be a matter of indifference whether a man answers by rule or at a venture. He that stumbles upon the right side of the question is just as useful to his client as he that arrives at the same end by regular approaches, and is conducted to the mark he aims at by the greatest authorities."

"In

The case of the Spectacles was originally written in another letter to a lawyer, and was thus prefaced: "Happy is the man who knows just enough of the law as to make himself a little merry now and then with the solemnity of judicial proceedings. I have heard of common law judgments before now; indeed, have been present at the delivery of some, that according to my poor apprehension, while they paid the utmost respect to the letter of the statute, have departed widely from the spirit of it, and being governed entirely by the point of law, have left equity, reason, and common sense behind them, at an infinite distance. You will judge whether the following report

of a case, drawn up by myself, be not a proof and illustration of this satirical assertion."

The poet plumed himself so on this case that he sent it to another correspondent, with the suggestion that poetical reports of law-cases are desirable, for the reasons that they would be more commonly deposited in the memory; divested of the law's infinite circumlocution, they would become surprisingly intelligible in comparison with their present obscurity; "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 so wearisome to by-standers, frequently lulling even the justices themselves to sleep, might be rehearsed in recitation, which would have an admirable effect in keeping the attention fixed and lively, and could not fail to disperse that heavy atmosphere of sadness and gravity which hangs over the jurisprudence of our country." He then relates a story of a lawyer who undertook to put Coke into metre, and cites the following sample of his skill:

:

"Tenant in fee

Simple is he,

And need not quake nor quiver,

Who hath his lands

Free from demands

To him and his heirs forever."

This reminds me of some rules for purchasing lands, found in a book printed in 1586, entitled "A Booke of the Arte and Manner how to plant and Graffe all sortes of trees: "

"Who so wil be wise in purchasing,

Let him consider these points following:

First see that the lande be cleare,

In title of the sellar,

And that it stand in no danger

Of no woman's dowrie.

See whether the tenure be bond or free,
And release of every feoffee.

See that the sellar be of age,
And that it lie not in mortgage.
Whether a tail be thereof found,

And whether it stand in statute bound.
Consider what service longeth thereto,
And what quit rent thereout must go.
And if it be come of a wedded woman,
Think thou then on covert baron.
And if you may in any wise,
Make your charter with warrantise,
To thee, thine heires, assignes also,
Thus should a wise purchaser do."

Of a piece with this law-learning is the following "Canons of Descent:

"1. Estates go to the issue (item)

Of him last seized in infinitum;

Like cow-tails, downward, straight they tend,

But never lineally ascend:

2. This gives that preference to males

At which a lady justly rails.

3. Of two males, in the same degree,

The eldest, only, heir shall be:
With females we this order break,
And let them all together take.

4. When one his worldly strife hath ended,
Those who are lineally descended
From him, as to his claims and riches,
Shall stand precisely in his breeches.