Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/377

351 LORD BOWEN'S JUDICIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 35 1 THE JUDICIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LATE LORD BOWEN. "Ill 7 HEN Lord Bowen died, in 1894, at the comparatively early ^ ^ age of fifty-nine, he had just attained one of the highest official honors of his profession. At the higher and more discrim- inating bar of professional opinion he had, however, for more than a decade enjoyed an assured pre-eminence. The tribute of Lord Esher, the Master of the Rolls, gives some idea of Lord Bowen's professional standing: — " I cannot have any doubt that Lord Bowen was one of the most dis- tinguished judges who have sat in the courts of England in my time. His knowledge of the whole law of England was so perfect and so accu- rate, and the whole law was so much at his command, that I have no doubt that he had studied every head and particular of English law not merely when a particular case involving the proposition came before him, . . . but he had studied the law minutely and earnestly before ever he was called upon to pronounce an opinion upon it. His knowledge of the law was vast; his power of expressing what the law was you have all experienced often. . . . His mind was so beautifully fine and subtle that he delivered perfectly expressed essays upon the law which will be handed down for use by future generations of lawyers." This high contemporary reputation was attained, too, in the face of some marked limitations. At the common law bar his style and manner were too academic to bring great success as an advocate; and during his brief experience as a nisi priiis ]w^g<t he soared too habitually above the heads of the jury to attain the best results from that often obtuse instrument of justice. It was in the Court of Appeal that he found at last his true sphere. Al- though he came to this tribunal a sufferer from an internal disease which caused him to be frequently absent, during his eleven years' service as Lord Justice of Appeal he delivered a series of judg- ments which for legal learning and literary grace are unsurpassed in the reports of English law. His subtle intellect, his cultured taste, his unique knowledge of legal history and mastery of the historical method as applied to the evolution of law, and his singu- lar felicity in expounding legal principles, were the rare qualities