Page:The Common Law by Oliver Wendell Holmes.djvu/3



book is written in pursuance of a plan which I have long had in mind. I had taken a first step in publishing a number of articles in the American Law Review, but I should hardly have attempted. the task of writing a connected treatise at the present time, had it not been for the invitation to deliver a course of Lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston. That invitation encouraged me to do what was in my power to accomplish my wish. The necessity of preparing for the Lectures made it easier to go farther, and to prepare for printing, and accordingly I did so. I have made such use as I thought fit of my articles in the Law Review, but much of what has been taken from that source has been rearranged, rewritten, and enlarged, and the greater part of the work is new. The lectures are actually delivered were a good deal simplified, and were twelve in number. The twelfth, however, was a summary of the foregoing eleven, and has