SOME OLD LAW BOOKS. LAW books are certainly among the completed the work while he was confined in things that have kept pace with the the Fleet Prison, a fact which explains its population. It is especially true of legal trea curious title. tises that of the making of them there is no Littleton, who bears among Cook's fifteen end; and there is scarcely a lawyer who would authors the most familiar name, was a judge not add that much study of them is a weari of common pleas in the time of Edward IV. ness of the flesh. Although law books were His celebrated work, the first edition of which amongst the earliest works that issued from was printed in 1841, is devoted to an expla the printing press in England — the statutes nation of the law as to the tenure of land. Its of Henry VII were printed by Caxton him- | fame has, of course, been largely preserved self — yet Coke, writing some two hundred ' by the remarkable commentary of Coke, and fifty years ago, could not count more than which, according to the enthusiastic and elo fifteen treatises on the law. Now the libra quent Fuller, will be admired " by judicious ries in the Inns are scarcely less spacious posterity, while Fame has a trumpet left her than the dining halls, and the text-books, to and any breath to blow therein." say nothing of the reports and statutes, are A modern legal writer, who arranged his to be numbered by their thousands. Copies work in the form of a dialogue, would be re of all the ancient works mentioned by Sir garded as frivolous. Yet this was the form Edward Coke may be found in the libraries in which two of the old jurists cast their of the Inns and, though most formidable in works. Fortescue, who wrote his treatise in appearance, some of them possess an interest the reign of Henry VI, while in exile in for the general reader as well as the legal France with the Prince of Wales and other student. To Ranulph de Glanville, who members of the Lancastrian party, repre was chief justice in the reign of Henry II, sented himself as conversing with the young belongs the distinction of writing the first Prince on the laws of England, and proving treatise on the law. He combined with the their superiority to those of other lands. learning of the lawyer the valor of the sol " Doctor and Student," which was written dier, and he is known to fame not only as the early in the sixteenth century by Christopher father of legal literature in England, but also Saint Germain, of the Inner Temple, is a as the captor of the king of Scots at the series of dialogues between " A Doctor of battle of Alnwick. Among the most precious Divinity and a Student in the Laws of Eng volumes in Lincoln's Inn Library is an MS. land, concerning the Grounds of those Laws." copy of his treatise more than five hundred Perhaps the most interesting fact about this years old. A peculiarity of Britton's work, quaint production is that it was cited as an which is believed to have been written under authority by the judges at the trial of Hampthe direction of Edward I, is that the words den. On a fly leaf of the Lincoln's Inn copy are put into the mouth of the King. This of Fitzherbert's "Grand Abridgment of .the treatise was written in French, in which lan Law" is the following curious inscription: guage law books continued to be written for " Of your charity, pray for the soul of Robert nearly four centuries. During the same Crawlcy, sometimes donor of this book, which reign the commentary on English law called is now worm's meat, as another day shall you "Fleta " was written. Nothing is known of be that now art full lustye, that remember, the author except that he commenced and good Christian. Farewell in the Lord. 1534."
