The Green Bag allowed to do and what they were allowed to say, because he edited the Law Reports, and if he chose to "bas ket" the whole lot of them their judgemade law would never reach the county court in which he (the speaker) sat, and he should not be at all sorry. If he liked, Sir Frederick could return the Lord Chief's Justice judgment "with the edi tor's compliments" — (laughter) — and not only were he (the speaker) and his colleagues satisfied with Sir Frederick, but he believed that even the judges whom he edited were equally satis fied. He believed the Law Reports made money. He did not say they deserved it — (laughter) — but he be lieved they did, and he thought that why they were recognized throughout the English-speaking world as being a great, a true, and a good record of the sayings of English judges and the judgemade law of his country was because they were splendidly staffed and magni ficently edited. As author and as editor they in that club were proud to welcome their guest. (Cheers.) Sir Frederick Pollock in reply, de clared that the chairman's remarks had been made with the intention of draw ing him out about the Law Reports. It was true he had a blue pencil, but what he did with his blue pencil in the way of correcting the grammar of my lords the King's justices, not to mention that of the Lords of Appeal, which he might say, in confidence, was much worse, was a matter between his blue pencil and himself. (Laughter.) The chairman forgot that he (Sir Frederick) was only the servant of the Council of Law Re porting, and if he suppressed whole judgments the council would have some thing to say. Still, they did get the judgments edited, and he hoped that on the whole they were grammatical. But his was not such a monstrous claim
as that any editor of them could turn them, taken with the lump, into litera ture. He was, however, asked to talk about law and literature. The obvious way of treatment would be to speak of the contributions made by judges and eminent lawyers of unprofessional litera ture. But this would be too extensive and miscellaneous, though it would be tempting to compare the performances of the different learned Faculties in this respect. Ome might set off Sir John Davies on the Immortality of the Soul against Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, but later, if the Rev. Laurence Sterne might be taken seriously as a divine, both law and medicine would have to give place to the author of Tris tram Shandy. Besides, there is a grave initial difficulty. What about Bacon? He meant to prove some day that, so far from Bacon having written Shakspere, it was Shakspere who wrote Bacon's literary works. Bacon, being the wisest and also the meanest of mankind, paid Shakspere to write those works. It was of a piece with his meanness to make Shakspere take legal tips for the plays in part pay ment. Still, Bacon incurred heavy debts to Shakspere, and thus was driven to take bribes. The detailed proof not being yet fit for the public eye, they must avoid the whole topic. Moreover, he should be trespassing on a field in which their chairman, Judge Parry, was far more competent than himself. (Cheers.) Therefore, let them approach the relations of law and literature on a less familiar side, and see how much literature lay hid in law books whose very existence was hardly known to the general public. In the legal works written in England in the Middle Ages (though not in the English language) there was much mate rial for the social historian and the
