Accordingly our arrangements were made, and the next day I attended at his chambers; with a firm and as I supposed not to be shaken determination to become one of the greatest lawyers the world ever beheld.
The first book I was advised to read, as a historical introduction to and compendium of law, was Blackstone's Commentaries. This author had acquired too much celebrity for any man of liberal education to be ignorant of his fame. I therefore began and continued to read him with all the prepossession that an author himself could wish in his favour. The panegyric he makes on English laws, and the Constitution of Britain, gave me delight and animation. The reproof he bestows, on gentlemen who are ignorant of this branch of learning, and on the perplexities introduced into our statute-law by such 'ill-judging and unlearned legislators,' and his praise of the capacity they would acquire for administering justice, to which sacred function they are so often called, were this ignorance removed, gave dignity to the study I was about to pursue.
Then the account given of Servius Sulpicius! who, according to my learned author, 'left behind him about a hundred and four-score volumes of his own compiling!' How wonderfully did it move my admiration! I previously knew that in most countries, which are denominated civilized, law was voluminous: but I had never till then imagined that one man could himself compile a hundred and fourscore volumes! And, as it seems, could compile them at his leisure too: for his chief business was that of oratory! Beside which it lives on record that, being a firm patriot, he was a wise and indefatigable senator! But it appears that Sulpicius could devour law with greater ease than Milo, or perhaps even than Cacus himself, could oxen.
Neither was it recorded that this prodigy of legal learning began young. And should I then despair of equalling him? No, no: get me into one of my trances and, had he compiled as many thousands of volumes, I should scarcely have suspected that I could not compile as fast as he.
As I read on, how did I deplore the quarrel between Vicarius and his opponents: or, in other words, between the pandects and the common law of England: with the ignorance that had nearly been the result! How rejoice in the institution of those renowned hot-beds of law, the Inns of Court: by the aid of which, had not the rage for enacting laws kept pace with the rage for studying them, there were hopes that the whole kingdom would in time have been so learned in the science that every man might indeed have become his own lawyer.
How did I regret that I had not studied common-law while at college! How sympathetic with my author, when he exclaims—'That a science, which distinguishes the criterions of right and wrong; which teaches to establish the one, and prevent, punish, or redress the other; which employs in its theory the noblest faculties of the soul, and exerts in its practice the cardinal virtues of the heart: a science, which is universal in its use and extent, accommodated to each individual, yet comprehending the whole community; that a science like this should ever have been deemed unnecessary to be studied in a university, is a matter of astonishment and concern!'
How did I bless the memory of Mr. Viner, who had found a remedy for this evil, by establishing an Oxford professorship; and how promise to make myself master of his abridgment, till I had every case it contained at my tongue's end! What were four and twenty volumes in folio? Compared to Sulpicius, it was a trifle!
The eulogium that I next came to on a university education, how grateful was that to my heart! I was not, as my oracle described, though one of the 'gentlemen of bright imaginations, to be wearied; however unpromising the search.' Neither was I to be numbered among those 'many persons of moderate capacity, who confuse themselves at first setting out; and continue ever dark and puzzled during the remainder of their lives.' The law being itself so luminous, there was no fear of that with me.
I met indeed with one overwhelming assertion. 'Such knowledge as is necessary for a judge is hardly to be acquired by the lucubrations of twenty years!'
But this to be sure must be meant of dull fellows. As to the limits of genius, they were unknown.