Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 25.pdf/120

 The Volume XXV

Green March, 1913

Charles Carroll TNSoule, OFFERING who died its on the tribute 7th to of Jan Mr. uary, theGreenBag can hardly find words to express what it owes to him as its founder, and publisher during the greater portion of its existence, or how much legal journalism owes to Mr. Soule, for he was if we are correctly informed the founder of both the American Law Review and the Central Law Journal. The truth is that legal periodical lit erature, quite as much as legal literature in general, profited by the influence of Mr. Soule's unusual personality. What he could not find time to do himself he inspired others to do in a spirit akin to his own. That he would have made an ideal editor if he could have escaped from the meshes of a business which he cul tivated with an ardor akin to that of the bibliophile is not to be questioned, for his wit was ever ready, his pen facile, and his mind alertly receptive. The files of Legal Bibliography, no ordinary publisher's circular, afford evidences of this ripe faculty, and contain occasional examples of finished paragraphing show ing the earmarks of his personality. Dean Wigmore, in his appreciative notice in the current number of the Illinois Law Review,1 describes Mr. Soule as "emphatically an idealist in business." That is to be interpreted as meaning that Mr. Soule, though by no means a poor business man, was considerably more than a man of busi>7 Ill. L. Rev 438 (Feb.).

Bag Number 3

Soule

ness. Idealism, or whatever you choose to call it, does not take kindly to harness, and Mr. Soule was not content to devote his whole energies, like most men, to one special pursuit, whether of book selling, publishing, bibliography, editor ship, or library management. His large and many-sided interest in books sought and found a vent in all these several channels. Specialization in any one of them would have brought sufficient distinction. Instead, Mr. Soule sought to unite these several interests in his business, and succeeded in building up an establishment which reflected and expressed his own temperament. Hardly any interest can be said to have domi nated the others, and we therefore refrain from the attempt to characterize Mr. Soule as distinctly and primarily a law bookseller or a legal bibliographer for fear of giving a false impression. The ideal to which he devoted himself was not only larger than that of any business, it was also larger than that of any profession. The motive force of his idealism was to be found mainly in his delight in books in generous re sponse to their many-sided appeal alike to the scholar, to the collector, to the cataloguer, and to the antiquarian. What originally drew this man of books to the books of the law and led him to make them his life-work we do not know. It can hardly have been mere circumstance, for among them he was clearly in his native element. Probably no one in this country had