Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/492

 APICES JURIS load of monkeys with their tails burnt off" on the memorable excursion of the Pick wick 'Club to Dingley Dell. But had he heeded the dissuasive counsels of his native prudence he would never have suffered him self and his faithful friends to be led into a situation of extreme absurdity, and withal of bodily hazard. The poise and moderation of the Greek character was proverbial; and Plato's axiom Never too much affords a ready proof of the justice of the following observation by Lessing in the preface to his Laokoon, an observation which we must accept as solely referable to the Hellenic race notwithstand ing the generality of its terms: "It is the privilege of the ancients never to do too much or too little." Certes there were other peoples of old who had not that abid ing charm of temperateness which char acterized the Greeks. The very first article of the oldest collection of law in the world — the Code of Hammurabi, discovered at Susa in 1902 — points the moral that the Baby lonian jurists were not careful to avoid ex tremes in punishing wrong-doers. "If a man bring an accusation against a man, and charge him with a [capital] crime, but can not prove it, he, the accuser shall be put to death." This must have made the business of the slanderer in the dominions of Hammu rabi, "who brought about plenty and abun dance, who made everything for Nippur and Durilu complete," an exceedingly temera rious one. And yet so dour a penalty would not seem to transcend the demands of " poetic justice." Plautus says: ' ' Homines qui gestant, quique auscultant crimina. Si meo arbitrate liceat, omnes pendeant. Gestores linguis, auditores auribus." Whereof the following is ventured as a free translation: Two would I hang : The man whose slander foul

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Smirches a brother's fame, and wounds his soul; Then him who joyfully the falsehood hears— One by his tongue, the other by his ears. Some of the English poets, too, look upon slander as a capital offense.1 Ben Jonson and Sir Walter Scott denounce in almost the same words (oddly enough!) the defamer as "Cutting honest throats by whispers." Shakespeare and George Eliot concur in treating the slanderer as a thief and robber, which, it is to be admitted, is not tantamount to charging him with capital felony as the law stands to-day, although it would have been in those bygone days when " pleasant Willy " was writing himself into immortal fame. What extremists upon occasion, too, are those who sit in the judgment-seat of the High Court of Letters. How sore a plague of decay would settle upon our libraries, "parliamentary," "ambulatory," "Carnegie" and what not, if we were to accept blindly the dictum of Pope's noble friend, the Duke of Buckingham, as authoritative — "Read Homer once, and you can read no more; For all books else appear so mean and poor, Verse will seem prose. But still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need." Such an intemperate estimate of even so great a content of literature as is found in Homer is indeed a swift and heady flight into the teeth of the old saw Cave hominem 1 It is interesting to note in this connection that Bracton declares that murder may be com mitted lingua vel facto. But this is an instance of the ecclesiastic getting the better of the lawyer in the mind of this ancient commentator — sin being confounded with crime. See Lord Cole ridge's comment on the passage in Reg. v. Dudley, 14 Q. B. D. at p. 282.