Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/484

 From Law to Literature. James Rice, the well-known literary part ner of Walter Besant, was a lawyer, and so was R. D. Blackmore. F. Anstey and W. E. Norris are two others on the list. St. George Mivart, the English naturalist and philoso pher, was of the profession, and so was John Morley. Among the dramatists and comedy writers, we have W. S. Gilbert. This well-known author intended to enter the army, but the Crimean war coming to an end, he took up law. He began contributing to the comic periodicals, and was invited by one editor to continue with a column of matter " for the term of his natural life." He thereupon shook off the law, for which he had neither taste nor aptitude. Pinero was educated for the legal profession. Subsequently he be came an actor, then an author. Sydney Grundy is another playwright who was once a lawyer. He practiced for six years. F. C. Burnand is still another. And going back a little, we have Tom Taylor, Thomas Mor ton, and John Ford. Samuel Foote began studying Coke, but was a truant in a irice. YycherIy began and ended in the same fashion. Both the George Colmans were educated for the legal profession, and looking abroad we gather in LaMotte, Corneille, and Scribe.

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To throw in a few Continental authors for good measure, we may name Jonas Lie, of Norway, who has been classed only a little lower than the great Ibsen, Maarten Maartens, the Dutch novelist, and Maurice Maeter linck. The latter did not progress very far in his law studies, although his parents had marked out the career for him. He once said, referring to the matter : " I could not be troubled about my own affairs; was it likely that I should care to manage other people's?" A few cases have been known where the wanderer from the Temple of Themis re turned, or to carry out Mr. Post's happy metaphor, where the stately dame received again her errant wooer. So was it with Hoffman, the Poe of Germany. He had studied law and practiced it for a time, but dropped it to take up music. Ten years later he was again attached to the law, and he remained so until his death. ' Valdes, the Spanish poet, furnishes another case of the kind, but a more striking example than cither is found in Canning, the elder. He wrote : Then welcome Law! Poor Poesy, farewell! Though in thy cave the loves and graces dwell, One Chancery cause in solid worth outweighs Dryden's strong sense, and Pope's harmonious lays.