d that this title was his
own invention, since he was no more than of the King's Bench. His
disgrace was a thunderbolt, which overthrew the haughty lawyer to the
roots. When the _supersedeas_ was carried to him by Sir George Coppin,
that gentleman was surprised, on presenting it, to see that lofty
"spirit shrunk into a very narrow room, for Coke received it with
dejection and tears." The writer from whose letter I have copied these
words adds, _O tremor et suspiria non cadunt in fortem et constantem._
The same writer incloses a punning distich: the name of our lord
chief-justice was in his day very provocative of the pun, both in Latin
and English; Cicero, indeed, had pre-occupied the miserable trifle.

_Jus condire Cocus potuit; sed condere jura
Non potuit; potuit condere jura Cocus._

Six years afterwards, Coke was sent to the Tower, and then they punned
against him in English. An unpublished letter of the day has this
curious anecdote:--The room in which he was lodged in the Tower had
formerly been a kitchen; on his entrance, the lord chief-justice read
upon the door, "This room wants a Cook!" They twitched the lion in the
toils which held him. Shenstone had some reason in thanking Heaven that
his name was not susceptible of a pun. This time, however, Coke was "on
his wings;" for when Lord Arundel was sent by the king to the prisoner,
to inform him that he would be allowed "Eight of the best learned in the
law to advise him for his cause," our great lawyer thanked the king,
"but he knew himself to be accounted to have as much skill in the law as
any man in England, and therefore needed no such help, nor feared to be
judged by the law."

SECRET HISTORY OF AUTHORS WHO HAVE RUINED THEIR BOOKSELLERS.

Aulus Gellius desired to live no longer than he was able to exercise the
faculty of writing; he might have decently added--and of finding
readers! This would be a fatal wish for that writer who should spread
the infection of weariness, without himself partaking of the epidemia.
The mere act and habit of writing, without probably even a remote view
of publication, has produced an agreeable delirium; and perhaps some
have escaped from a gentle confinement by having cautiously concealed
those voluminous reveries which remained to startle their heirs; while
others again have left a whole library of manuscripts, out of the mere
ardour of transcription, collecting and copying with peculiar rapture. I
discovere