REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1938.tb00411.x |
| Date | 01 December 1938 |
| Published date | 01 December 1938 |
REVIEWS
245
REVIEWS
A
HISTORY
OF
ENQLISH
LAW.
By
SIR
WILLIAM HOLDSWORTH,
K.C.,
D.C.L.,
LL.D.
Volume XII. London: Methuen
&Co.
Ltd.,
1938.
Pp. xxxviii
+
784.
In this and the two preceding volumes of his great work
Sir
William
Holdsworth presents us with the “first complete legal history of the
eighteenth century that has ever been written.” The tenth and eleventh
volumes deal with the century in relation to public law and enacted law
respectively. In the twelfth and latest, but, as the author gives us good
reason to hope, not the last, instalment of
his
history he deals with what he
describes as the professional development of law in the eighteenth century.
Under this description he includes not merely the development of the pro-
fession
of
the law but also the development of the law by the legal profession,
judges, writers, teachers and practitioners.
The task of reviewing such a vast compendium of varied information
as
this volume contains might well daunt the most hardened critic; to
perform it adequately would require on his part knowledge
as
extensive
as
that of the author and there is no one who possesses this qualification. But
if one is incompetent to criticise, one may at least describe and appraise
the author’s achievement. Works of learning are commonly judged by
their matter, their method and their style. Of the matter of
this
volume
it
may be said at once that nowhere else is there to be found such a mine of
knowledge; of its method, that
it
is well arranged and analytically ex-
haustive
;
and
of
its style-well,
as
Viscount Stair said
:
“A
quaint and
gliding style, much less the flourishes of eloquence, the ordinary condiment
and varnish which qualify the pains of reading, could not justly
be
expected
in a treatise of law which of all subjects doth require the most plain and
accurate expressions “-and Professor Holdsworth’s manner of Writing has
all the merits of clearness and precision appropriate to
his
subject. He has
provided the material of which others less industrious than himself will
doubtless avail themselves hereafter to generalise more brilliantly and less
accurately.
The hundred pages devoted to the history of the various branches of the
legal profession throughout the century afford an admirable summary of
an interesting period in which many archaic features were discarded and
the profession as we now know
it
began to emerge. Much that is picturesque
was in process of disappearing, but the ceremonial of calling to the bar at
Lincoln’s Inn in the eighteenth century still required a gentleman on his
admission to provide each Master of the Bench with
‘I
a
service of sweet-
meats value
5s.
and a bottle of wine.” The evolution of the modem Law
Society from the friendly and convivial meetings of the members of the
delightfully named
“
Society of Gentlemen Practisers in the Courts of Law
and Equity” is typically English.
The blot on the century’s legal history
is
undoubtedly the lamentable
decadence of legal education which it exhibited. The standard of teaching
at Oxford University was
‘I
at
a
low ebb”
;
in the Inns of Court teaching
had “wholly disappeared.” But happily the eighteenth century was also
the century of Mansfield and Blackstone and thanks to them the darkest
hour became the precursor of a new dawn, though even yet we have not
reached full daylight.
The account of the technical apparatus of the law in reports, abridg-
ments, etc., and of the literature of the law
is
encyclopaedic and perhaps
8%.
6d.
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