Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX. Coke's works--His reports--Notice of the early reporters-- Their dryness--Poetical reports--Coke's literary contemporaries--Shakspeare--Camden--Beaumont and Fletcher-- Ben Jonson--Harvey--Notice of Harvey and his grave-- Coke's first Institutes--The Parliament restore his papers-- Notice of Strafford--Coke's second, third, and fourth Institutes--His minor works--Manuscripts of Sir Edward Coke--Portraits of Sir Edward Coke--Engraved heads of Coke. It is by his published works that Coke has been best known to posterity. He was too decided in his politics; exposed himself in the reigns of James and Charles, by far too much to the hatred of the court, to escape the praises and animadversions of politicians; one party degrading him as the mere tool of a profligate faction; the other praising him as the patriot legislator, devoid of factious motives, and presenting the rare example of a lawyer, yet a legal reformer, a counsellor pleading only for truth. It is hard to determine by which party Coke's reputation wasmost injured, but the general result was certainly unfavourable. The character of any one is rarely elevated in the eyes of posterity, whose public conduct and private affairs are continually scrutinized and examined by half his countrymen, with the sole view of exposing their errors. As a lawyer, however, Coke had a happier fate. Men of all parties have bere united in bearing testimony to the correctness of his reasonings, the immensity of his readings, and the faithfulness of his reports. His works, notwithstanding the progress of legal alterations, and the rapid abandonment of nearly the last relics of feudal law, are still the books over which the law student employs his midnight hours. The first he searches for his...