Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/492

 The Green Bag

456

cipal corporations as it exists at this

other ambitions I have given fifty-nine years—the whole of my active life. The work falls far below my ideal and

time and in this country. The author of a comprehensive treatise on the law

far short of what I could perhaps have

ought to be a person who has the ex

made it

perience and training which are possible only to the practising lawyer and the judge. And these qualiﬁcations on the bench and in daily practice I have had in full measure, and I feel that to this environment the work is indebted for

had

I

not been engrossed

during all this time with the exacting duties of a lawyer, teacher and judge.

Yet these obstacles have their compen sations, for no doctrinaire, no mere closet student of the law can be thor oughly prepared to write a practical and technical treatise on the law of muni

a large share of whatever practical value and usefulness it may possess."

The Law and Lawyers of Balzac VERY readable paper on "The Law and Lawyers of Honoré de Balzac" was read before the Pennsyl vania Bar Association last June by Hon.

John Marshall Gest of Philadelphia, judge of the Orphans’ Court. Interest ing not only as an entertaining legal essay, but as a piece of discerning liter ary criticism, this paper will give pleas ure to all admirers of one of the greatest ﬁgures in the literature of France.

Judge Gest’s command of literature and of literary expression have won considerably more than local recogni tion, and even his technical treatise on “Drawing Wills and Settlement of Es tates in Pennsylvania" is enlivened, as our reviewer pointed out,l with inter

Of Balzac he says: — “He must be read and judged in the mass. No single book can be selected which would give the reader a fair idea of his genius. He must study and com pare very many or all of Balzac’s works, and thus derive a composite impression.

As Champﬂeury said: ‘There are two ways to criticize Balzac. First, read and sit down and write an article. Second,

shut yourself up for six months and study every detail.’ Balzac may be justly compared with Dickens for humor, but Dickens was broader in caricature; with Thackeray for satire, but Thack eray was keener; with Meredith for analysis, but Meredith was more subtle;

with Poe for imagination, but Poe was mittent ﬂashes of brilliant wit and radi more fantastic; with Swift for cynicism,

ant humor. Among the best of the papers which he has read before the

but Swift was more caustic; with DeFoe for realistic narrative, but DeFoe sur

Pennsylvania Bar Association have been

“The

Law and

Lawyers

of

Dick

ens," "The Law and Lawyers of Scott," and “The Law and Lawyers

of Pickwick." '22 Green Bag 357.

passed him in verisimilitude; with Scott for vivid description of nature and of men, but Scott was his master as well as his model. Yet Balzac combined in a manner altogether wonderful all these varied powers, in such a way that his