"IT

PREFACE.

T is asserted," said Baron Martin, "that law is dry and uninteresting! I deny it. Of the four volumes of Blackstone, three are, to my mind, most entertaining reading. Shakespeare is a vastly overrated writer. 'Measure for Measure' and The Merchant of Venice' contain some atrociously bad law.”

The error attacked by the learned Baron in the first branch of the above statement arises largely from the want of logic natural to the human mind. Doubtless, to know and understand all the law of England would involve a stupendous, if not a hopeless effort, and the research into matters wholly alien to the interests of the greater part of mankind. But to draw from this the inference that a knowledge of the broad principles of law is difficult or uninteresting, is as though it were asserted that no one can be aware that the sun rises in the east, or enjoy a moonlit evening unless he be an eminent astronomer.

No doubt there is another reason, which is that propositions of law are usually expressed in technical language. "It is wonderful," said Sir James Stephen, "how any nonsense may be made to look respectable by putting it into Latin." Similarly the simplest ideas may be made to repel enquiry by couching them in unfamiliar terms.

With regard to the second of the Baron's statements, it need only be said that his criticism was delivered entirely from his own view point. But those who smile at his missing the fact that men read "The Merchant of Venice" for the knowledge of human nature displayed by the author, not for his knowledge of law, fall into as deep an error in supposing the law reports to be devoid of the keenest human interest. And yet but little reflection is