ding to law and
custom, he was removable, and he no doubt expected to be removed, from
his office." Lord Campbell has yet to rival the fifth wife of the
missionary who wrote the lives of "her predecessors"; but surely _he_
should have known that the expectations which he attributes to Sir
William Gascoigne were not disappointed, and that (although the contrary
is generally believed) the object of Falstaff's menace was superseded
(by Sir William Hankford) March 29th, 1413, just eight days after the
prince whom he committed to prison came to the throne,--a removal the
promptness of which would satisfy the strictest disciplinarian in the
Democratic party. The Records show this; but his Lordship need not have
gone to them; he would have found it mentioned, and the authority cited,
by Tyler in his "Memoirs of Henry the Fifth."
And while we are considering the disparity between his Lordship's
performances and his pretensions, we may as well examine his fitness to
bring about a "fusion of Law and Literature," which he says, with some
reason, have, like Law and Equity, been too long kept apart in England.
We fear, that, whatever may be the excellence of his Lordship's
intentions, he must set himself seriously to the task of acquiring more
skill in the use of the English tongue, and a nicer discrimination
between processes of thought, before his writings will prove to be the
flux that promotes that fusion.
For, in the third paragraph of his letter, he says to Mr. Collier, "I
cannot refuse to communicate to you my _sentiments_ upon the subject,"
and in the following sentence adds, that this communication of his
"_sentiments_" will drive from his mind "the _recollection_ of the
wranglings of Westminster Hall." His Lordship probably meant to refer to
the communication of his _opinions_, for which word "sentiments" is
not usually substituted, except by gentlemen who remark with emphasis,
"Them's my sentiments"; and he also probably intended to allude to
the _memory_ of the wranglings of which he is professionally a
witness,--having forgotten, for a moment, that recollection is a purely
voluntary act, and not either a condition or a faculty of the mind.
Again, when his Lordship says, (p. 18,) "That during this interval (A.D.
1579 to 1586) he [Shakespeare] was merely an operative, earning his
bread by manual labor, in stitching gloves, sorting wool, or killing
calves, no sensible man can possibly _imagine_" we applaud the decisio
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