CHAPTER XL.

A

LIKE commendable for its subtlety and inoffensive humor was the pleasantry with which young Philip Yorke (afterwards Lord Hardwicke), answered Sir Lyttleton Powys's banter on the Western Circuit. An amiable and upright, but far from brilliant judge, Sir Lyttleton had a few pet phrases-amongst them, "I humbly conceive," and "Look, do you see"-which he sprinkled over his judgments and colloquial talk with ridiculous profuseness. Surprised at Yorke's sudden rise. into lucrative practice, this most gentlemanlike worthy was pleased to account for the unusual success by maintaining that young Mr. Yorke must have written a lawbook, which had brought him early into favor with the inferior branch of the profession. "Mr. Yorke," said the venerable justice, whilst the barristers were sitting over their wine at a 'judges' dinner," "I cannot well account for your having so much business, considering how short a time you have been at the bar: I humbly conceive you must have published something; for look you, do you see, there is scarcely a cause in court but you are employed in it on one side or the other. I should therefore be glad to know, Mr. Yorke, do you see, whether this be the case." Playfully denying that he possessed any celebrity as a writer on legal matters, Yorke, with an assumption of candor, admitted that he had some thoughts of lightening the labors of lawstudents by turning Coke upon Littleton into verse. Indeed, he confessed that he had already begun the work of versification. Not seeing the nature of the reply, Sir Lyttleton Powys treated the droll fancy as a

serious project, and insisted that the author should give a specimen of the style of his contemplated work. Whereupon the young barrister--not pausing to remind a company of lawyers of the words of the original: “Tenant in fee simple is he which hath lands or tenements to hold to him and his heirs for ever"-recited the lines

"He that holdeth his lands in fee

Need neither to quake nor quiver,
Ihumbly conceive: for look, do you see

They are his and his heirs' forever."

The mimicry of voice being not less perfect than the verbal imitation, Yorke's hearers were convulsed with laughter, but so unconscious was Sir Lyttleton of the ridicule which he had incurred, that on subsequently encountering Yorke in London, he asked how "that translation of Coke upon Littleton was getting on." Sir Lyttleton died in 1732, and exactly ten years afterwards appeared the first edition of 'The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, Knt., in Verse'-a work which its author may have been inspired to undertake by Philip Yorke's proposal to versify 'Coke on Littleton.'

Had Yorke's project been carried out, lawyers would have a large supply of that comic but sound literature of which Sir James Burrow's Reports contain a specimen in the following poetical version of Chief Justice Pratt's memorable decision with regard to a woman of English birth, who was the widow of a foreigner:

(Chorus of Puisne Judges.)

"Living the husband; but him dead
It doth revive again."

Chief Justice Pratt's decision on this point having been reversed by his successor, Chief Justice Ryder's judgment was thus reported:

(Chorus of Puisne Judges.)

"That which she had by birth subsists
Until another's gained."

In the early months of his married life, whilst playing the part of an Oxford don, Lord Eldon was required to decide in an important action brought by two undergraduates against the cook of University College. The plaintiffs declared that the cook had "sent to their rooms an apple-pie that could not be eaten." The defendant pleaded that he had a remarkably fine fillet of veal in the kitchen. Having set aside this plea on grounds obvious to the legal mind, and not otherwise then manifest to unlearned laymen, Mr. John Scott ordered the apple-pie to be brought in court; but the messenger, dispatched to do the judge's bidding, returned with the astounding intelligence that during the

progress of the litigation a party of under-graduates had actually devoured the pie-fruit and crust. Nothing but the pan was left. Judgment: "The charge here is, that the cook has sent up an apple-pie that cannot be eaten. Now that cannot be said to have been uneatable which has been eaten; and as this apple-pie has been eaten, it was eatable. Let the cook be absolved."

But of all the judicial decisions on record, none was delivered with more comical effect than Lord Loughborough's decision not to hear a cause brought on a wager about a point in the game of 'Hazard.' A constant frequenter of Brookes's and White's, Lord Loughborough was well known by men of fashion to be fairly versed in the mysteries of gambling, though no evidence has ever been found in support of the charge that he was an habitual dicer. That he ever lost much by play is improbable; but the scandal-mongers of Westminster had some plausible reasons for laughing at the virtuous indignation of the spotless Alexander Wedderburn, who, whilst sitting at Nisi Prius, exclaimed, "Do not swear the jury in this case, but let it be struck out of the paper. I will not try it. The administration of justice is insulted by the proposal that I should try it. To my astonishment I find that the action is brought on a wager as to the mode of playing an illegal, disreputable, and mischievous game called 'Hazard;' whether, allowing seven to be the main, and eleven to be a nick to seven, there are more ways than six of nicking seven on the dice? Courts of justice are constituted to try rights and redress injuries, not to solve the problems of the gamesters. The gentlemen of the jury and I may have heard of Hazard' as a mode of dicing by which sharpers live, and young men of family and fortune are ruined; but what do any of us know of 'seven being the main,' or

'eleven being the nick to seven?' Do we come here to be instructed in this lore, and are the unusual crowds (drawn hither, I suppose, by the novelty of the expected entertainment) to take a lesson with us in these unholy mysteries, which they are to practice in the evening in the low gaming-houses in St. James Street, pithily called by a name which should inspire a salutary terror of entering them? Again, I say, let the cause be struck out of the paper. Move the court, if you please, that it may be restored, and if my brethren think that I do wrong in the course that I now take, I hope that one of them will officiate for me here, and save me from the degradation of trying whether there be more than six ways of nicking seven on the dice, allowing seven to be the main and eleven to be a nick to seven'-a question, after all, admitting of no doubt, and capable of mathematical demonstration."

With equal fervor Lord Kenyon inveighed against the pernicious usage of gambling, urging that the hells of St. James's should be indicted as common nuisances. The 'legal monk,' as Lord Carlisle stigmatized him for his violent denunciations of an amusement countenanced by women of the highest fashion, even went so far as to exclaim" If any such prosecutions are fairly brought before me, and the guilty parties are convicted, whatever may be their rank or station in the country, though they may be the first ladies in the land, they shall certainly exhibit themselves in the pillory."

The same considerations, which decided Lord Loughborough not to try an action brought by a wager concerning chicken-hazard, made Lord Ellenborough decline to hear a cause where the plaintiff sought to recover money wagered on a cock-fight. "There is likewise,' said Lord Ellenborough, "another principle on which I think an action on such wagers cannot be maintained.