Of this collection, which has been almost for a century before the public, it seems scarcely necessary, at the present time, to express any opinion. It consists of a series of tracts, or dissertations upon various topics of the law, generally illustrated by adjudications, and though incomplete, exhibiting a rare union of sagacity and industry. As a text book for students, it has long maintained an unrivalled reputation; and as the expositions of a very able and learned judge upon a large survey of the law, dealing with its history and its reasons, it must forever hold a high rank among the treasures of the profession. Mr Gwillim's edition is far the best, which has appeared in England, and is entitled to much praise for the manner in which the duties of the editor have been performed. This edition has been republished in America, under the superintendance of Bird Wilson, Esquire, who has enriched it with many valuable additions. Still it must be admitted, that there is great awkwardness and inconvenience in ingrafting such an abundance of marginal notes upon the original text, threatening, in every new edition, to overlay, if they do not bury it beneath their weight. Mr Viner's Abridgment was published between the years 1741 and 1751, and extending as it does over the space of twentyfour folio volumes, may be thought by some not to have a very apt title. The learned author passed a whole life in compiling the work, and superintending the printing of it, which, by the consent of the Law patentees, was done at his own house, in Aldershot in Hampshire. The basis of the work is Rolle's Abridgment, with the addition of all the materials, which had accumulated in the intermediate period. In the preface, (which appears in the thirteenth volume,* occasioned by the author's having begun with the title 'Factor,' where D'Anvers ended his Abridgment,) he states, that he commenced the undertaking with the eighteenth century, and it was, of course, for nearly fifty years under his revising hand. Mr Hargrave (Co. Litt. 9. a. note 3.) calls it an immense body of law and equity, which, notwithstanding all its defects and inaccuracies, must be allowed to be a necessary part of every lawyer's library. He adds, that it is a most useful compilation, and would have been infinitely more so, if the author had been less singular and more nice in his arrangement and method, and more studious in avoiding repetitions. This praise, qualified as it is, seems to us rather to go beyond, than to fall short of the real merits of the work. It is a cumbrous compilation, by no means accurate or complete in its citations, and difficult to use, from the irregularity with which the matter is distributed, and from the inadequacy, and sometimes the inaptness of the subdivisions. Indeed everything appears to have been thrown into it, without any successful attempt at method or exactness. * There is a second preface in the eighteenth volume. Almost everything valuable in the older Abridgments is indeed to be found in it; but sometimes so ill arranged, that the search is almost as troublesome, as it would be to run over the whole title in Fitzherbert or Brooke. The author has observed, in the preface to his thirteenth volume, that 'the study of the law is a very long journey, and the roads not the plainest; in which they [Abridgments] may serve as posts and Mercuries to direct the students in their way, but ought not by any means to be considered as their journey's end, or place of their last resort and residence.' What a pity, that the author had not more diligently followed the directions, which he seems to approve by the above allusion. He has, by no means, made the roads very plain or smooth; and the sign posts, which he has put up, do not always indicate either the truest way or the shortest distance to the striking point of the traveller's journey. Nor has he the satisfactory apology, dum brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio; for his work is both long and confused. It may, and indeed ought, to constitute a part of every law library, which aims to be tolerably complete; for it embraces the body of the law, antecedent to the reign of George the Third. Its principal merit is its extent; and though in some parts it is redundant, in others defective, and in all irregular, it is a vast Index of the law, which time and patience can master; and it often rewards the labor, when all other resources have failed the diligent searcher for authorities. It is impossible, however, not to feel, that we owe to this work a deep debt of gratitude, which should disarm criticism, and almost extinguish every recollection of its infirmities. To the establishment of the Vinerian Professorship, at Oxford University, we are indebted for one of the most elegant and classical works in our language, 'The Commentaries on the Law of England,' by Sir William Blackstone. From a zeal for the study of the law, for the benefit of posterity, and the perpetual service of his country,' Mr Viner devoted his property, and the proceeds of the sale of his great Abridgment to the noble purVOL. XXIII.-ΝΟ. 52 2 pose of founding a Professorship of the Common Law; and we are informed, that the fund proved sufficiently productive to enable the University, also, to establish some fellowships and scholarships for the study of the law there.* A work of a very different character, and almost perfect in its kind, is the Digest of Lord Chief Baron Comyns. Though a posthumous publication, it has been justly observed, that unlike most publications of that nature, it was left by its learned author, in a state very fit to meet the eye of the public. Lord Chief Baron Comyns died sometime between the years 1740 and 1743; the exact period Mr Rose, his late editor, does not seem to have been able to ascertain. It is a melancholy fact, that very few particulars of the lives even of the most eminent lawyers reach posterity. Great as their fame may be, and extensive as may be their professional labors while living, they rarely leave a permanent impression upon the public mind; and after the lapse of a few years, the most diligent search enables us to collect little more than the facts of their birth, death, and parentage. This distinguished judge is a very striking illustration of the remark. It was said by the late Lord Kenyon, that 'Comyns's opinion alone is of great authority, since he was considered by his contemporaries as the most able lawyer in Westminster Hall.' (3 T. R. 64.) There is no reason to doubt the truth of this assertion; and yet of such a man nothing more can now be gathered, than a few short dates of his appointment to public stations. Mr Rose says, it was the editor's wish, for the purpose of gratifying a laudable curiosity in respect to so eminent a man, to have stated some particulars of the life of Sir John Comyns; but after several inquiries, the following dates are all he has been able to collect.' He then introduces the dates of his appointment as a Baron of the Exchequer, and a Judge of the Common Pleas. 2 Of the plan of his incomparable Digest, it is difficult to speak in terms, which will do it justice, without seeming to be extravagant. Mr Hargrave (Co. Litt. 17. note 96.) says, 'the whole of Lord Chief Baron Comyns's work is equally remarkable for its great variety of matter, its compendious and accurate expression, and the excellence of its methodical distribution.' Our own opinion is, that for the purpose it proposes to accomplish, no plan could be more judicious, and no execution more singularly successful. It does not, like Bacon's Abridgment, affect to enter into disquisitions upon the various doctrines of the law, or to explain the reasons on which it is built. But, as the preface to the first edition states, 'the general plan of this Digest is, that the author lays down principles or positions of law, and illustrates them by instances, which he supports by authorities; and these are trenched out and divided into consequential positions or points of doctrine, illustrated and supported in the same manner. By this means, each head or title exhibits a progressive argument upon the subject, and one paragraph &c. follows another in a natural and successful order, till the subject is exhausted.' It is a curious fact, that the original text was composed in Law French, which, it is conjectured, the author chose on account of its apt expression and singular brevity. * 1 Bl. Comm. 28. The editors of the first edition translated the whole work into English, which was, of itself, a prodigious undertaking, and they declare, that 'the translation of the book has been carefully compared with, and corrected by the original, and, with very great labor, has also been compared with and corrected by the several books cited.' Who the gentlemen were, to whose patient industry and accuracy we are indebted for the publication of so choice a work, we have never been able to ascertain. They have modestly withdrawn their names from the titlepage and preface, leaving the latter to speak the extent and credit of their labors. We regret this concealment, for never did a posthumous work fall into more able hands, and never was the duty of an editor more faithfully discharged. It is this consideration, which gives to the original edition so very distinguished a value, even in our days. It was published between the years 1762 and 1767, in five folio volumes, on excellent paper, with a large type, and it stands unrivalled for the accuracy and beauty with which it came from the press. In 1776, a supplemental folio volume was added, containing a digest of the recent cases, upon the same plan as the original work. Of the later editions, in octavo, we can say little by way of commendation. They have the gross fault of a total departure from the style, brevity, accuracy, and simplicity of Comyns, a departure, which is utterly without apology, as it exhibits, on the part of the editor, either an incapacity for the task, or an indifference to the manner of executing it. If, indeed, other authors have suffered from the posthumous publication of their unfinished works, it has been the hard fate of Comyns to have the symmetry and excellence of his work essentially impaired by the unmerciful interpolations of his later editors. Without any regard to the dependencies of the original text, or the sequence of principles and illustrations, they have thrust in between the different paragraphs, their new matter in a crude state, and often so little sifted, that it is a mere copy of the marginal abstracts of the later Reports. The consequence is, that passages, which are connected in sense in the original text, are often separated by these misshapen adjunets; and, sometimes, a half page is to be run over by the reader, before he can gather up the disjecta membra, the scattered fragments, of the author. In the art of bookmaking, there is scarcely anything more reprehensible, than this practice, by which an author, singularly clear, exact, and methodical, is presented in the habiliments of a slovenly commonplace man. The only rational course to be pursued, in any new edition of Comyns, would be to leave the text untouched, with all the authority belonging to it from the author's venerable character, and by supplementary volumes, drawn up in the same method, to add the new matter, which has accumulated from the litigation of later times. The good example of the editors of the Supplement, in 1776, seems, however, to have suited ill with the notions of our age; and from the rage for innovation, or from the pitiful prevalence of a bookselling interest, every successive edition, instead of being of a higher value, has constantly diminished the real utility of the work. Mr Kyd's edition has the negative merit of having done but little injury; Mr Rose's, in 1800, has interwoven a miserable patchwork; and Mr Hammond's, in 1824, has even less merit, containing the substance of his indexes to the Common Law and Chancery Reports, thrown together with a strange neglect of the symmetry of the original work. Indeed, this last edition deserves the severe rebuke of the profession, as its main object seems to be to swell the work to ten ponderous volumes. If the new matter had been properly abridged, and reduced to simple principles and brief illustrations, in the manner of Comyns, it might easily have been compressed into two supplementary volumes. But the last supplement equals the original in size, and wants every excellence that characterizes it. We hope to live long enough to see Comyns rescued from the hands of such editors, and restored to his just value, by an edition worthy of his labors. We are confident, that the task of collecting and digesting the modern matter, however operose it |