Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/832

 818 V. BENCH AND BAR raries, he had what is rare in such minds, a keen sense of literary form — " an instinctive preference for the right way of saying a thing, and the hterary conscientiousness which impelled him to seek for the best expression of his thoughts.'* 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. One may find in his work aphor- isms and lucid definitions which crystallize a principle in a 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 ; " and his statement that a person's knowl- edge of danger is the " vanishing point " of the liability of the occupier of premises. But the power of expressing the most subtle shades of thought which made Westbury, for instance, such a source of legal maxims, manifested itself in Bowen's work rather in the production of a total effect or artistic whole. He had great skill in graphic illustration. Witness his forcible illustration in the Mogul Steamship case of the expedient by merchants of sowing one year a crop of unfruitful prices in order, by drawing away competition, to reap a fuller harvest of profits in the future ; and his query in the same case whether it would be an indictable conspiracy to drink all the water from a common spring in time of drought. Among other instances are his illustration in Hut- ton V. Railway Company ^ of sending all the porters at a railway station to have tea in the country at the company's expense; his success in laying bare the issue in Thomas v. Quartermaine ^ by reference to a builder employed to make repairs ; his query in the Carbolic Smoke Ball case ^ whether everybody who sought to find a dog for a reward must sit down and write a note to the owner accepting the proposal; his illustration in the Queensland Bank case ^ of being waylaid in Pall Mall ; and his reference in Saunders v. Weil " to the Apostles' spoons. The law, to Lord Bowen, was not a mere collection of rules. " There is no magic at all in formalities," he said. He recognized, to use his own language, the duty of endeavoring »23 Ch. D. 654. MS Q. B. D. 694. • (1893) 1 Q. B. 265.
 * 37 Ch. D. 479. • (1893) 1 Q. B. 474.