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 Rditorial Department.

99

LITERARY NOTES.

NEW LAW BOOKS.

A NEW biography of Longfellow1 may have seemed unnecessary. The life published six teen years ago by 'his brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow.— himself a poet and a man of It tiers,—left little to be desired. At the hands of Col. Higginson, however, the life and work of the great American writer as sume new interest. Biographers are like teachers, being born not made, and Col. Higginson was equipped in every way for the task he undertook. The only difficulty seems to have been his evident assumption that people in general know as much about Longfellow as the residents of Cambridge know. There is too much of Cambridge in the picture, possibly, and too much is made 01 the Harvard professorship, and of Longfel low's connection with the college. On the other hand, there is too little of the poet's actual life. The death of his second wife, for example, is barely touched upon : it being assumed that every one knows the tragedy of her death by tire, which many do not. One whole chapter,—that on Westminster Abbey,—is curiously misplaced. It is intro duced with a somewhat over-full account of the unveiling of the bust in the Poet's Cor ner, before a hint is given that Longfellow's life is even drawing to a close. Had it come after, and not before, the chapter entitled "Longfellow as a Man," there would have been an easier and more natural sequence in the narrative. The life as a whole, however, is eminently satisfactory. It is well to have the fact of Longfellow's wonderful popularity brought out as clearly as it is. He is known and read in Kngland and on the continent of Europe as no other American author is or ever has been. Col. Higginson sums the whole mat ter up most admirably and justly when he says: "He will never be read for the profoundest stirring, or for the unlocking of the deepest mysteries; he will always be read for invigoration, for comfort, for content."

// is the intention of The Green Bag to have its book reviews written by competent reviewers. The usual custom of magazines is to confine book notices to books sent in for review. At the request of contributors, however, 7%e Green Bag will be g/ail to review or notice any recently published law book, whether re ceivedfor review or not.

1 HENRY WADSWORTH IXJNUFELLOW. By Thomas WT(nt-.<'(irth Ifigginson. With portrait. Boston: Houghton, Miftiin and Co. 1902. $1.10 net. (vi + 336 pp.)

THE NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENTS LAW, V ith Annotations. By John J. Crawford. Sec ond Edition. New York: Baker, Voorhis and Company. 1902. (xxxiv+173 pp.) The appearance of this new edition of the now familiar work, annotating the recent codification of the law as to commercial pa per, directs the profession's attention to the cordial rapidity with which the codification has been accepted and also to the history of the codification of this part of the law. As the law of commercial paper is of Con tinental origin and has much the same doc trines throughout the world, it is necessary to notice the steps taken in the Civil Law countries. The French law as to this subject was codified in 1673,: and this codification was. adopted in a revised form by the Code de Commerce of 1818. Spain followed in 1830, Portugal in 1833, Germany in 1849, and Italy in 1865. The earliest legislative codification of An glo-American substantive law appears, to be the Georgia Code, which was adopted Dec. 19, 1860, to take effect Jan. i, 1862; but this codification gave to negotiable instruments little more than a page. The Civil Code drafted by David Dudley Field and his asso ciates, and reported in 1862, assigned twentysix pages to this subject; and this Civil Code, with some amendments, was adopted by Dakota in 1866, and by California in 1872. The recent codification of the law of nego tiable instruments, however, is to be traced not to these early Continental and American enterprises, but to the codification of the English law for India. With the Indian codifications, though not with the codification of this subject, is associated as early as 1834 the name of Macaulay. In 1867 a draft codification of the law of commercial pa