Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/320

292 292 HAR YARD LA W RE VIE W. It IS not true, however, that the whole book is false. The greater part of it probably is sound, and some important statements of law for which there is no other direct authority are no doubt true. But it would require more labor to separate true from false than the result would be worth. With most of the old rolls and the Year Books for the whole reign of Richard II. yet to be published, students of legal history can devote thv-'ir time to more profitable studies than that of the Mirror. Professor Maitland gives much space to a consideration of the author- ship of the treatise, and is inclined on the whole to acquit Andrew Horn, though not without grave doubr. His conjecture is that some young man, at a time when a great judicial scandal had just come to light, wrote this as a serio-comic attack on judges in general, and laughed in his sleeve at the result. " We guess thithe wanted his readers to be- lieve some things that he said. We can hardly suppose him hoping that they would believe all. We feel sure that in Paradise, or wherever else he may be, he was pleasantly surprised when Coke repeated his fictions as gospel truth, and erudite men spoke of him in the same breath with Glanvill and Bracton. That is just what he wished. " One more guess will do no harm ; and though not so diverting as this, and more commonpbce, it is at least possible. The great unevenness of the book is apparent; part is true, part is grossly false. Professor Mait- land points out also the contradiction between differcHt passages. Now the author writes as a cleric, now as a layman ; now as a supporter of the King, now of the nobles ; now as a Londoner, now as one opposed to the franchises of the city. May it not be that some young man of more zeal than knowledge got together from all possible sources such scraps of law as he could, and pieced them together ? We may assume that such a youth had two or three notions, held with all the tenacity of ignorance, which appear as the two or three "leading motives" of the book. At this time, during the prosecution of the judges, all sorts of stories were of course flying about, such as nowadays would get into the newspapers ; and the singular notions of law now often found among intelligent laymen must have been more common and mo"e singular. These stories and notions would be grist for our young man's mill. Vhether we insist on our own guess or not, we must all agree that Professor Maidand's Introduction is a gem, — as perfect in its way as his Introduction to Bracton's Note Book, and its way is most ditrting. One reader, at least, thinks the want of value in the Mirror itself much more than compensated by the clever comments to which it has given rise. We could better spare a much better book than the Mirror with this bright appurtenance. J. h. b. The Constitution of the United States at the End of the First Century. By George S. Bout well. Boston, U. S. A. : D. C. Heath & Co. 1895. pp. xviii, 412. Small 8vo. cloth, ^3.50. "An examination of the authorities, " says Governor iioutwell, "justi- fies and renders unavoidable the conclusion that the Constitution cf the United States in its principles and in its main features is no longer the subject of controversy, of debate, or of doubt." "This is the only book," say h's pubHshers in their accompanying circular, "in ^^ hich the line between S'ate sovereignty and the national supremacy of the govcin- ment is marked distinctly. " These two quotations show better the tone