A Modern Judge on Portia’s Judgment
The Home Secretary lately ventured to assert that Lord Bramwell entertained so vast a reverence for all kinds of property that if he had been called upon to decide the legal dispute in “The Merchant of Venice,” he would infallibly have declared that Antonio’s pound of flesh must be given to his creditor. Lord Bramwell, with the frankness which usually characterizes him, has met Sir William Harcourt’s little joke by an answer delivered from the judicial bench. In the course of an Appeal Court case the learned judge took occasion to respond to the witty illustration of the Home Secretary. Far from expressing the slightest shame or penitence for the views which he holds as to the sacredness of property of all descriptions, Lord Bramwell actually seems to glory in them. The session of the Court of Appeal was probably the earliest opportunity that was presented to him of answering Sir William Harcourt’s banter; but at all events, he seized on the opportunity and turned it to the best account. Portia’s statement of the case would, Lord Bramwell tells us, have induced him to give the pound of flesh to the usurer, except for one little flaw in her argument. The flesh had not been “appropriated,” and could not, therefore, be regarded as property to which Shylock had a good legal right until it had been cut from Antonio’s quivering body. Supposing Lord Bramwell to have been sitting in banco with the Doge of Venice on the occasion of the famous trial, and the pound of flesh had been lying on a table ready cut; in that case the decision of the English judge would have been in favor of the plaintiff’s claim to the possession of the horrible piece of “property.” But then, as Lord Bramwell truly remarks, in order to get the flesh, assault, and even murder, would have had to be committed, and therefore the contract was null and void from the beginning. The moment Shylock had advanced toward his victim, knife in hand, he would have been technically guilty of an assault with intent, and would have been obliged to appear at the police court of the period next morning to hear what the sitting magistrate thought of the offence.
A Legal Dilemma
At an examination for admission to the bar of Ohio, the examiner propounded this question: “A great many years ago there lived a gentleman named Lazarus, who died possessed of chattels, real and personal. After this event to whom did they go?” The student replied, “To his administrators and his heirs.” “Well, then,” continued the examiner, “in four days he came to life again; inform us, sir, whose were they then?” Which interesting inquiry we submit to the lawyers. I am not a lawyer, but I see no difficulty in the inquiry. Lazarus died and was buried. As soon as he died, his property, if he left no will, vested in his heirs. The law gives no man the right to die for four days and then come to life again. Legally Lazarus couldn’t rise. I have no doubt the Supreme Court would decide that the Lazarus who rose was not the Lazarus who died; he was a new Lazarus. The new Lazarus would, of course, feel within himself that he was the old Lazarus, and go around boring his legal friends talking about his legal wrongs; but every lawyer would leave him as quickly as possible, saying, in parting, “It’s a hard case; but if your heirs can prove your death, and they came in legally under the statute, there is no way to make them disgorge. All you can do is this—you’re a young fellow about sixty; hire out as a clerk, try to save something from your salary so as to go into business again, build up a grand estate, and perhaps your heirs will recognize your identity.”
Virgil’s Æneid Dissected
In an English college journal our old and highly polished friend P. Virgilius Maro is quite thoroughly shaken up. After a little general discussion of the poet, the writer proceeds to quote a large number of passages in which Virgil is inconsistent and oftentimes contradictory. Take, for instance, the following:
“Down comes blind Cyclops to the shore—
‘Postquam altos tetigit fluctus, et ad æquora venit,
Luminis effusi fluidum lavit inde cruorem.’
‘He washes with its water the gore that trickled from his scooped-out eye.’ Now would anybody but a madman go and bathe a bleeding wound in the sea—the sea, of all places? Why, he would have made his head smart for a year; but Virgil wanted him down on the shore, and must make him do something. Note, too, ‘fluidum cruorem.’ Now, in line 645 of the same book (III), the fugitive tells Æneas that they put out the Cyclops’s eye three months ago, and so, according to Virgil, the wound bleeds incessantly for three months (three days of bleeding would, according to modern doctors, have taken the life of even a stout Cyclops), and then the giant comes down to the shore and bathes in salt water.... Again, in the celebrated athletic sports in Book V., everybody is rewarded with a prize. One man gets a prize because he comes in first; the second man gets one because he would have been first if something hadn’t happened, and the last man gets one because he fell down. The only parallel to such a practice is one afforded by Artemus Ward, who, in command of a volunteer force, makes all his men captains, to prevent jealousy. In V, 456, Virgil, after carefully telling us that Dares is wonderfully nimble and Entillus wonderfully slow, lets the slow man chase the fast one, æquore toto, hitting him all the while.”