acting as Chief Justice Abbott's deputy on the Oxford circuit, was reminded that he was "merely a temporary" by the prisoner in the dock. Being asked in the usual way if he had aught to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, the prisoner answered " Yes; I have been tried before a journeyman judge.”

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LIKE commendable for its subtlety and inoffensive humour 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 phrasesamongst 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 law-book which had brought him early into favour 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 candour, admitted that he had some thoughts of lightening the labours of law-students 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 to quiver,
I humbly conceive: for look, do you see
They are his and his heirs' for ever."

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," of which the following may be taken as a sample:

Bittridge.-Words adjective will action bear,

If slander in the subsequent appear.

20. Barham.-Where words will yield a milder sense
An innuendo shall not make th' offence."

It is likely enough that Philip Yorke's droll proposal to versify "Coke on Littleton," and the laughter occasioned by his four impromptu lines, set the versifier to work upon the reports.

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:

"A woman having settlement

Married a man with none,

The question was, he being dead,
If what she had was gone.

"Quoth Sir John Pratt, 'The settlement
Suspended did remain,

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

(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:

Had these judgments been delivered as comically as they were reported, the hearers in Westminster Hall would have evinced their satisfaction in applause not less cordial than that which Lord Eldon in his later days used to draw from admiring listeners by recounting the particulars of the great "apple-pie case," in which he first displayed his judicial

faculties. In the early months of his married life, whilst playing the part of an Oxford don, he was required to decide in an important action brought by two under-graduates 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 than manifest to unlearned laymen, Mr. John Scott ordered the apple-pie to be brought in court; but the messenger despatched 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 cause, 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 to redress injuries, not to solve the problems of the gamesters. The