NEW LAW BOOKS.
It is the intention of The Green Bag to have its book reviews written by competent reviewers. The usual custom of magazines is to confine book notices to books sent in for review. At the request of subscribers, however, The Green Bag will be glad to review or notice any recently published law book, whether re ceivedfor review or not.
LEGAL MASTEKPIECES: Specimens of Argumen tation and Exposition, by Eminent Law yers. Edited by Van Fechten Feeder. 2 Vols. St. Paul: Keefe-Davidson Com pany. 1903. (pp. xxiv+6i 8+706.) Law reports, text books and digests are not considered, even by the profession, as light reading. The profane, indeed, look upon them askance, as technical, dry and -.vearisome in the extreme. Their frame of mind and probable end are admirably sketched in a masterly way by Macaulay: "Compared with the labor of reading through these volumes [Law Reports, Text-books, Digests] all other labor, the labor of tfiieves on the treadmill, of children in the factories, of negroes in the sugar plantations, is an agreeable recreation. There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the gal leys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind and went to the oar." Hence it is that the clients leave the law books to the lawyers who are, or ought to be, paid liberal fees for undergoing, as it were, vicarious punishment. But there is a limit even to the lawyer; for the man of the Green Bag when the day is done, leaves his books and papers under lock and key; be takes himself of an evening to the comforts of home, or plunges into pleasing dissipation of literature, the play, the opera, or in rare and not well authenticated instances he gives himself over to dissipation of an ignobler na ture. The novel, it would seem, has fascination for the legal mind, and not a few members of the bench and bar have added to the store of forgotten literature. But they may well be pardoned in any case; for the stren
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uous and exacting labors of the day require a change of a quieting and restful nature. If the mind will not let up, an avocation is well nigh a necessity, and indeed a well known person in "Who's I] 'ho," states under the heading of recreations, change of -employ ment. Admitting the need, it might be suggested that a lawyer might well find his avocation in legal history and biography, things pleas ant, refining and broadening in themselves, and of no little aid in professional life. Mr. Van Vechten Veeder would seem to have had this end in view when the happy thought occurred to him of preparing his singularly charming and delightful collection of legal masterpieces. At any rate, it serves this purpose, and to the anxious-minded it may well serve as the basis of instruction in the art of argumentation and exposition. That law is a science, we may safely admit; that it is not necessarily divorced from liter ature many a well prepared argument and opinion show; but the daily experience of the practitioner shows that law and literature do not trip hand in hand through court-room, and the little world in which he "lives, moves and has his being." The verdict is the desid eratum, and yet literary style and feeling may 'lead towards it. Erskine, for example, did not find a fine literary feeling a drawback, and Webster and Choate did not scorn a classical allusion and a well-turned phrase as an unclean thing. At any rate, the absence of literary style has made many a worthy practitioner nothing more than a name, a mere tradition at best Bad English in a judge is admittedly no good ground for re versing the judgment. Bad opinions, how ever, do not read well, and if they do not read well and easily, nobody will consent to read, them unless driven to it by sheer necessity. Mr. Baron Parke lorded it in Westminster HaK. and his judgments are carefully studied by the profession: but the layman would rather be buried alive in his Parke or go to the oar, than con the cases in Meeson & Welsby. But to return to Mr. Veeder. His Legal
