ness at and around Atlanta. Occasionally I took part, also, in short terms of camp duty as a mem ber of the militia. In 1864, about the time Gen eral Sherman left Atlanta on his march to the sea, I was appointed to the office of Supreme Court Reporter. After reporting two volumes, the 34th and 35th Ga., I resigned that office. This was in the spring of 1867. From that time till I was appointed to the Supreme Bench in 1875, I prac tised law continuously in Atlanta. Such education as I received in my boyhood was acquired at the village academy of my native
county, an institution of meagre resources and a limited range of instruction. Although in the course of a somewhat studious lifetime I have added considerably to my early stock, the plain truth is that while not illiterate, I am destitute of real learning, lay or legal. My highest aspiration, so far as this life is concerned, is to do good judi cial work. Service is better than salary, duty more inspiring than reward. My devotion to law is the spiritual consecration of a loving disciple, a devout minister. L. E. Blecklev.
THE LITERATURE OF LAW. By Ernest W. Huffcut. THE divorce of law and literature seems in these latter.days to be wellnigh com plete, and one never hears that a professor of literature in our schools of polite learning refers his students to legal literature for ex amples of elegance or eloquence; yet histori cally it is probably true that no two branches are more closely united and interwoven. In deed, it may not be too much to say that the earliest and most characteristic and original literature in all languages is the literature of law. It is, moreover, not only literature but the highest form of literature, — poetry. Ref erence has already been made once or twice in the pages of the " Green Bag" to this early connection between law and poetry; but no one, I think, has pointed out the reason for it. There is, however, an excel lent reason why all early literature is in verse, and why much of it is concerned with law. Of all the knowledge of mankind which it is most essential for a people to preserve, the knowledge of their laws is of the first importance. In an age when there is no written composition, this' knowledge must pass from generation to generation by verbal transmission. But the enormous burden to the memory of a great and grow ing body of law, and the danger of trans
mitting verbal errors which would work great mischief in the application of legal rules, suggest the reason why a rhyth mic verse should be adopted as the vehi cle for such transmission. Such a form aids the memory, and at the same time guards against a corrupt rendering of the laws. It is therefore naturally adopted by primitive peoples, and where written com position succeeds to oral tradition the forms of the latter are preserved and perpetuated. These considerations explain much that is curious and grotesque in both law and liter ature. They aid us to understand why the versified literature of ancient India contains in the same measured rhythm its religion, its ethics, and its laws; why many of the laws of Solon were preserved in his Ele giacs; why the ancient Irish code, the Senchus Mor, is partly in verse; why among Germanic peoples " all solemn legal proceed ings were accompanied by poetry; " and why in every system of law many traces of these early poetic forms are yet to be found. Ac cording to Strabo, the Turdiians, the most cultivated tribe of the Ibernians, possessed monuments inscribed with laws in verse reputed to be six thousand years old. In the primitive Roman law the carmina are
