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354 354 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. purity, ease, and accuracy of their style. Along with the legal acquirements which he shared with many of his contemporaries, he had what is rare in such minds, a sense of literary form, — '' an instinctive preference for the right way of saying a thing, and the literary conscientiousness which impelled him to seek for the best expression of his thoughts." One of his colleagues in the Court of Appeal said of him in this connection : — ■ " I doubt whether those who listened to or read his brilliant judgments would have the least notion how much thought and persistent effort he had given to them ; and the extreme rapidity of his intellectual opera- tions made this all the more remarkable to those who by daily intercourse saw the very pulse of the machine." In distinction of style his only equal among contemporary writers on legal subjects was Sir Henry Sumner Maine. He had no rival on the bench. The best single illustration of his style in its perfection is his opinion in the " convent case " of AUcard v. Skinner,^ where the question involved was, to use his own language, *' What is the principle, and what is the limitation of the principle, as to voluntary gifts where there is no fraud on the part of the defend- ant, but where there is an all-powerful religious influence, which disturbs the independent judgment of one of the parties, and subordinates for all worldly purposes the will of that person to the will of the other ? " Characteristic specimens of his colloquial style may be found in Borthwick v. Evening Post,^ Magnus v. Queensland National Bank,3 and Hutton v. West Cork Ry. Co.* Turning to the more formal characteristics of his method, we find the same perfection of execution and fine sense of proportion. One may find in his works many aphorisms and lucid definitions which go directly to the heart of an issue and crystallize a principle in a single phrase. Such, for instance, is his remark in a case of deceit that " the state of a man's mind is as much a fact as the state of his digestion," ^ or his statement that the knowledge of danger on the part of a person is the "vanishing point" of the liability of the occupier of premises.^ But the power of expressing the most subtle shades of thought and language which made Lord 1 36 Ch. D. 189. 4 23 Ch. D. 654. 2 36 Ch, D. 463. 5 PMgington v. Fitzmaurice, 29 Ch. D. 459. 8 37 Ch. D. 479. 6 Thomas v. Quartermaine, 18 O. B. D. 694.