e regular method will be necessary; and,
till a better is proposed, I shall take the liberty to follow the
same that I have already submitted to the public[q]. To fill up and
finish that outline with propriety and correctness, and to render the
whole intelligible to the uninformed minds of beginners, (whom we are
too apt to suppose acquainted with terms and ideas, which they never
had opportunity to learn) this must be my ardent endeavour, though by
no means my promise to accomplish. You will permit me however very
briefly to describe, rather what I conceive an academical expounder of
the laws should do, than what I have ever known to be done.

[Footnote p: See Lowth's _Oratio Crewiana_, p. 365.]

[Footnote q: The Analysis of the laws of England, first published,
_A.D._ 1756, and exhibiting the order and principal divisions of the
ensuing COMMENTARIES; which were originally submitted to the
university in a private course of lectures, _A.D._ 1753.]

HE should consider his course as a general map of the law, marking out
the shape of the country, it's connexions and boundaries, it's greater
divisions and principal cities: it is not his business to describe
minutely the subordinate limits, or to fix the longitude and latitude
of every inconsiderable hamlet. His attention should be engaged, like
that of the readers in Fortescue's inns of chancery, "in tracing out
the originals and as it were the elements of the law." For if, as
Justinian[r] has observed, the tender understanding of the student be
loaded at the first with a multitude and variety of matter, it will
either occasion him to desert his studies, or will carry him heavily
through them, with much labour, delay, and despondence. These
originals should be traced to their fountains, as well as our distance
will permit; to the customs of the Britons and Germans, as recorded by
Caesar and Tacitus; to the codes of the northern nations on the
continent, and more especially to those of our own Saxon princes; to
the rules of the Roman law, either left here in the days of Papinian,
or imported by Vacarius and his followers; but, above all, to that
inexhaustible reservoir of legal antiquities and learning, the feodal
law, or, as Spelman[s] has entitled it, the law of nations in our
western orb. These primary rules and fundamental principles should be
weighed and compared with the precepts of the law of nature, and the
practice of other countries; should be explained by reason