RECREATIONS IN THE LAW.
Gentle reader, we are not about to direct your notice to the Temple Gardens, the olden feasts in our Law Halls—through which men ate their way to eminence—nor to prove that looking to a Chancellorship is woolgathering—nor to invite you to the shrubby groves of Lincoln's Inn, or to promenade with the spirit of BACON in Gray's Inn. All these may be pleasurable occupations; but there is mirth in store in the study of the Law itself, which is not "dull and crabbed as some fools (or knaves) suppose."
In a recent Mirror, (No. 540) this may have been made manifest to the reader in the Legal Rhymes, quoted by our correspondent, W.A.R.;[9] but lo! here is a volume of evidence in "The Cenveyancer's Guide;" a Poem, by John Crisp, Esq., of Furnival's Inn; in which the art of Conveyancing is sung in Hudibrastic verse, and said in notes of pleasant prose. Happy are we to see Mr. Crisp's volume in a third edition, since we opine from this success the bright moments of relief which his Muse may have shed upon the viginti annorum lucubrutiones of thousands of students. We have not space for quotations from the poem itself, in which Doe and Roe figure as heroes, with their occasional friend Thomas Stiles. We can only say their movements are sung with the terseness and point which we so much admire in the great originals, so as to make men acknowledge there is good in every thing. Our extracts are from the Introduction and Notes. First is
A LEGAL GLEE.
"A woman having a settlement,
Married a man with none,
The question was, he being dead,
If that she had was gone.
Quoth Sir John Pratt, her settlement
Suspended did remain,
Living the husband—but him dead,
It doth revive again.
"CHORUS OF PUISNE JUDGES.
"Living the husband—but him dead,
It doth revive again."
A print of Westminster Hall, by Mosely, from a drawing made by Gravelot, who died in 1773, bears the following versified inscription:—
"When fools fall out, for ev'ry flaw,
They run horn mad to go to law,
A hedge awry, a wrong plac'd gate,
Will serve to spend a whole estate.
Your case the lawyer says is good,
And justice cannot he withstood;
By tedious process from above,
From office they to office move,
Thro' pleas, demurrers, the dev'l and all,
At length they bring it to the Hall;
The dreadful hall by Rufus rais'd,
For lofty Gothick arches prais'd.
"The first of Term, the fatal day,
Doth various images convey;
First, from the courts with clam'rous bawl,
The criers their attornies call;
One of the gown discreet and wise,
By proper means his witness tries;
From Wreathock's gang, not right or laws,
H' assures his trembling client's cause.
This gnaws his haudkerchies, whilst that
Gives the kind ogling nymph his hat;
Here one in love with choristers,
Minds singing more than law affairs.
A Serjeant limping on behind,
Shews justice lame as well as blind.
To gain new clients some dispute,
Others protract an ancient suit,
Jargon and noise alone prevail,
Whilst sense and reason's sure to fail:
At Babel thus law terms begun,
And now at West——er go on."
At page 24, of the Poem, there is a happy allusion to the permanence or lasting of a limitation:
"But if the limitation's made
So long as cheating's us'd in trade,
Or vice prevails: 'tis then a fee,
As good as ever need to be:
For tho' 'tis base instead of pure,
Alas it ever will endure."
Upon this passage is the following confirmative note: "Cheating will always prevail, in defiance of all human laws, for it cannot be avoided, but so long as contracts be suffered, many offences shall follow thereby."—(Doctor and Student, c. 3.) In buying and selling, the law of nations connives at some cunning and overreaching in respect of the price. By the civil law, a just price is said to be that, whereby neither the buyer nor seller is injured above one moiety of the true and common value; and in this case the person injured shall not be relieved by rescinding the sale, for he must impute it to his own imprudence and indiscretion.
The origin of Fee-tail estates:
"The expression, fee-tail, was borrowed from the feudists, among whom it signified any mutilated or truncated inheritance from which the heirs general were cut off, being derived from the barbarous word taliare to cut.—(2 Blac. Comm. 112.)
Fines and Recoveries (as fund and refund,) are like the poles, arctic and attractive. Of the latter is the following quid-pro-quo anecdote:
"A physician of an acrimonious disposition, and having a thorough hatred of lawyers, was in company with a barrister, and in the course of conversation, reproached the profession of the latter with the use of phrases utterly unintelligible. 'For example,' said he, 'I never could understand what you lawyers mean by docking an entail.' 'That is very likely,' answered the lawyer, 'but I will explain it to you; it is doing what you doctors never consent to—suffering a recovery.'
Among the notes to Rights and Titles is the following:
"Master Mason, of Trinity College, sent his pupil to another of the fellows to borrow a book of him, who told him, 'I am loth to lend books out of my chamber, but if it please thy tutor to come and read upon it in my chamber, he shall as long as he will.' It was winter, and some days after the same fellow sent to Mr. Mason to borrow his bellows, but Mr. Mason said to his pupil, 'I am loth to lend my bellows out of my chamber, but if thy tutor would come and blow the fire in my chamber, he shall as long as he will.'
In the next page is a note on the Nature of Property, in the perspicuous style of a master-mind:
"There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right. Pleased as we are with the possession, we seem afraid to look back to the means by which it was acquired, as if fearful of some defect in our title; or at best we rest satisfied with the decision of the laws in our favour, without examining the reason and authority upon which those laws have been built. We think it enough that our title is derived by the grant of the former proprietor, by descent from our ancestors, or by the last will and testament of the dying owner; not caring to reflect that (accurately and strictly speaking) there is no foundation in nature, or in natural law, why a set of words upon parchment should convey the dominion of land; why the son should have a right to exclude his fellow creature from a determinate spot of ground, because his father had so done before him; or why the occupier of a particular field, or of a jewel, when lying on his death bed, and no longer able to maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the rest of the world which of them should enjoy it after him.—(2 Blac. Comm. 2)
"The two sheriff's of London are the one sheriff of Middlesex; thus constituting in the latter case, what may be denominated, in the words of George Colman the Younger, (see his address to the Reviewers, in his vagaries,) 'a plural unit.' Henry the First, in the same charter by which he declared and confirmed the privileges of the City of London, (and among others, that of choosing their own sheriffs,) conferred on them, in consideration of an annual rent of 300l., to be paid to his majesty and his successors for ever, the perpetual sheriffalty of Middlesex. This was an enormous price; 300l.. in those days were equal to more than three times as many thousands at the present time.
Here is a lively commentary upon the Inclosure Acts:
"To a pamphlet which was published some years ago, against the propriety of enclosing Waltham Forest, the following quaint motto was prefixed:
"The fault is great in man or woman,
Who steals a goose from off a common,
But who can plead that man's excuse,
Who steals the common from the goose?"
How to decide a Chancery Suit:
"The Shellys were a family of distinction in Sussex. Richard and Thomas Shelly were a long time engaged in litigation; and Queen Elizabeth hearing of it, ordered her Lord Chancellor to summon the Judges to put an end to it, to prevent the ruin of so ancient a family."—(Engl. Baronets, ed. 1737.)
With these pleasantries we leave the Conveyancer's Guide, hoping it may be long ere the witty author sings his "Farewell to his Muse."