ature. First come Aristotle and Plato, with the other great
classical ancients; next the primitive fathers; then Abailard, Erigena,
Peter Lombard, Ramus, Major, and the like. If the matter be
jurisprudence, we shall have Marcianus, Papinianus, Ulpianus,
Hermogenianus, and Tryphonius to begin with; and shall then pass through
the straits of Bartolus and Baldus, on to Zuichemus, Sanchez,
Brissonius, Ritterhusius, and Gothofridus. If all these say the same
thing, each of the others copying it from the first who uttered it, so
much the more valuable to the literary world is deemed the idea that has
been so amply backed--it is like a vote by a great majority, or a
strongly-signed petition. There is only one quarter in which this
practice appears to be followed at the present day--the composition, or
the compilation, as it may better be termed, of English law-books.
Having selected a department to be expounded, the first point is to set
down all that Coke said about it two centuries and a half ago, and all
that Blackstone said about it a century ago, with passages in due
subordination from inferior authorities. To these are added the rubrics
of some later cases, and a title-page and index, and so a new
"authority" is added to the array on the shelves of the practitioner.

Whoever is well up to such repetitions has many short cuts through
literature to enable him to find the scattered originalities of which he
may be in search. Whether he be the enthusiastic investigator resolved
on exhausting any great question, or be a mere wayward potterer, picking
up curiosities by the way for his own private intellectual museum, the
larger the collection at his disposal the better--it cannot be too
great.[38] No one, therefore, can be an ardent follower of such a
pursuit without having his own library. And yet it is probably among
those whose stock is the largest that we shall find the most frequent
visitors to the British Museum and the State Paper Office; perhaps, for
what cannot be found even there, to the Imperial Library at Paris, or
the collections of some of the German universities.

[Footnote 38: I am quite aware that the authorities to the contrary are
so high as to make these sentiments partake of heresy, if not a sort of
classical profanity.

"Studiorum quoque, quae liberalissima impensa est, tamdiu rationem habet,
quamdiu modum. Quo innumerabiles libros et bibliothecas, quarum dominus
vix tota vita indices perlegit? Onerat d