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observed him often say that, after his day's reading (as in London if he had the opportunity) at his night's congress with his friends, either at commons or over a chop, whatever the subject was, he made it the subject of his discourse in the company; "for," said he, "I read many things which I am sensible I forgot, but I found withal that, if I had once talked over what I had read, I never forgot that." This agrees with a direction to a student, said to have come from the Earl of Nottingham, "that he should study all the morning, and talk all the afternoon;" because a ready speech (if it be not nature's gift) is acquirable only by practice, and is very necessary for a bar practiser. I remember that, after the fire of the Temple,* it was considered whether the old cloister walks

*The brick buildings in the Temple are said to have put a stop to the fire of London in that quarter, though many of them were consumed, and the conflagration reached the church. "When the fire came where the lawyers had houses, as they had in many places, especially in Serjeant's Inn, in Fleet Street, with that part of the Inner Temple that was next it and White Friars, there was scarce a man to whom those lodgings appertained who was in town, so that whatsoever was there, their money, books, and papers, besides the evidences of many men's estates deposited in their hands, were all burned or lost, to a very great value."—“ Some gentlemen of the Inner Temple would not endeavour to preserve the goods that were in the lodgings of absent persons, because, they said, it was against the law to break up any man's chamber."-(Clarendon's Life, p. 347.)

should be rebuilt, or rather improved into chambers; which latter had been for the benefit of the Middle Temple. But in regard it could not be done without the consent of the Inner house, the masters of the Middle house waited upon the then Mr. Attorney Finch, to desire the concurrence of his society, upon a proposition of some benefit to be thrown in on that side. But Mr. Attorney would by no means give way to it, and reproved the Middle Templars very wittily and eloquently upon the subject of students walking in evenings there, and putting cases," which," he said, "was done in his time, as mean and low as the buildings were then, however it comes," said he, "that such a benefit to students is now made so little account of." And thereupon the cloisters, by the order and disposition of Sir Christopher Wren, were built as they now stand. And, agreeable to this, Serjeant Maynard, the best old book-lawyer of his time, used to say that the law was "ars bablativa," which humoursomely enough declares the advantage that discoursing brings to the students of the law. And certainly, above all things, the art of prompt speaking is to be cultivated, as far as may be, according to the aptest rules of oratory, because it wonderfully sets off a bar-practiser. And many by that very talent uncultivated, and owing to pure nature, have succeeded beyond others much more learned. He had such a relish of the

Use of the year-books.

old year-books, that he carried one in his coach to divert his time in travel, and said he chose it before any comedy. A true notion of the use of any thing, however out of the road of common approbation, will administer such a superlative

taste.

I do not know that his lordship had read over, in course, all the year-books; but I verily believe he had dispatched the greatest part, and that he began with the book termed Hen. VII. which hath some years in the antecedent reigns. That book he used to say was the most useful, or rather necessary for a student to take early into his hand, and go through with, because he had observed much of the common law, which had fluctuated before, received a settlement in that time, and from thence, as from a copious fountain, it hath been derived, through other authors, to us, and now is in the state of common erudition, or maxims of the law. He thought a lawyer could not be well grounded without a knowledge of these ancient reports for they were compiled by men solemnly authorised, and not as now, when every ordinary practiser (to say nothing of the late judges; and even their reports have been most taken when they were practisers) publisheth his reports as he pleaseth; and the bookseller procuring an imprimatur, there is no more to be said. And thus the shelves are loaded with reports;

all which to read, much more to commonplace, is not only labour, but hardly possible to be done. And how erroneous and contradictory, not only to other books, and even in the same cases, but also to themselves, in many instances, are most of them! And what student or lawyer ever pretended (ingenuously) to know what was in them all? Or what question can happen that may not be very plausibly argued pro and con out of them? Or what arguers, on either side, can now want a case in point (as they value themselves) to conclude with?

Thus it is become almost necessary to make a pan- Ancient

dect of law, by establishing the authority of single points that are clear, suppressing all the rest; and thereby purge out all inconsistencies, contradictions, and dubitations; which being once done, the law learning may have more credit, and not be called soft wax. But, to return to the year-books, it is obvious what deference ought to be had to them, more than to the modern reports; for, passing by the very short and material rendering the sense of the pleaders and of the court, it must be observed that the whole cause, as well the special pleadings as the debates of the law thereupon, was transacted orally at the bar, and the prothonotaries, ev officio, afterwards made up the records in Latin. And the Court often condescended to discourse with the Serjeants about the discretion of their

method of

pleading.

pleas, and the consequences, with respect to their clients. And the Court did all they could to prevent errors and oversights. And reason good; for else their records must go up to the King's Bench to be canvassed for error, which they did not desire should be. And these transactions, faithfully reported, was anciently a code of the common law, which the courts deferred very much to, and the practisers had by heart. But, now, the pleadings are all delated in paper, and so pass the offices, and the Court knows nothing of much the greater part of the business that passeth through it: and when causes, which they call real, come on, and require counting, and pleading at the bar, it is done for form, and unintelligibly; and, whatever the Serjeant mumbles, it is the paper book that is the text: and the Court as little meddles with, as minds, what is done of that sort at the bar; but the questions that arise are considered upon the paper book. All the rest of the business of the court is wrangling about process and amendments, whereof the latter had been mostly prevented, if the Court (as formerly) had considered the first acts of the cause at the bar, when offered by the Serjeants. And this way also the skill of pleading lies not in a student's notice, for him to gather up together with the law part of the case; but he must read over records and entries, a discipline that would split a

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