sophy in Great Britain,’ London, 1815, 4to. 5. ‘A Demonstration of Necessary Connection,’ London, 1815, 4to. 6. ‘A Letter to Professor Stewart on the Objects of General Terms, and on the Axiomatical Laws of Vision,’ London, 1817, 4to. 7. ‘First Lines of the Human Mind,’ London, 1820, 8vo. 8. ‘Anti-Tooke; or an Analysis of the Principles and Structure of Language exemplified in the English Tongue,’ London, 1824, 8vo. 9. ‘A Manual of the Physiology of Mind, comprehending the First Principles of Physical Theology, with which are laid out the crucial objections to the Reideian Theory. To which is suffixed a paper on the Logic of Relation considered as a machine for Ratiocinative Science,’ London, 1829, 8vo. 10. ‘A Rationale of the Laws of Cerebral Vision, comprising the Laws of Single and of Erect Vision, deduced upon the Principles of Dioptrics,’ London, 1830, 8vo. 11. ‘The Human Sensorium investigated as to figure,’ London, 1832, 8vo. 12. ‘An Appeal to Philosophers by name on the Demonstration of Vision on the Brain, and against the attack of Sir David Brewster on the Rationale of Cerebral Vision,’ London, 1837, 8vo.
[Gent. Mag., 1838, pt. i. p. 216; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
FEARNE, CHARLES (1742–1794), legal writer, born in London in 1742, was the eldest son of Charles Fearne, deputy secretary of the admiralty and judge advocate, who presided at the trial of Admiral Byng. He was educated at Westminster School, on leaving which he entered the Inner Temple, though evidently without any fixed resolution as to his future career. In 1768 his father died (Gent. Mag. xxxviii. 142), leaving a small fortune to be divided equally among him, his younger brother, and his sister. It is related of Fearne that he refused to take his share, on the ground that he had already received some hundred pounds to start him in his profession, and had had an education superior to that of his younger brother. He seems to have had a very remarkable inventive faculty, which for some time prevented him from settling down seriously to the practice of the law. In order to carry out one of his ideas, having discovered a new process of dyeing morocco leather, he sold his books, and along with a partner hired vats and tan-pits near Fulham; but he became alarmed at the expense, and abandoned the project after losing about half his little fortune. During the rest of his life he spent much of his leisure in such pursuits. His editor, Butler, relates that a friend of his having communicated to an eminent gunsmith a project of a musket of greater power and much less size than that in ordinary use, the gunsmith pointed out to him its defects, and observed that ‘a Mr. Fearne, an obscure law-man, in Breame's Buildings, Chancery Lane, had invented a musket which, although defective, was much nearer to the attainment of the object’ (Reminiscences, i. 118). Butler moreover speaks of Fearne as a man of great classical and mathematical attainments, and mentions a treatise on the Greek accent, and another on the ‘Retreat of the Ten Thousand,’ neither of which appears to have been published. These were what Fearne himself called his dissipations. Comparatively soon after devoting himself in earnest to the law he acquired a considerable chamber practice. The publication in 1772, when the great controversy over the rule in Shelley's case was at its height, of his ‘Essay on the Learning of Contingent Remainders and Executory Devises’ placed him in the first rank of real property lawyers. This work, which was greatly enlarged in subsequent editions, has remained to this day the classical work on its subject, and is included in the short list of quasi-authoritative books of the law. It has been said that ‘no work perhaps on any branch of science affords a more beautiful instance of analysis’ (Butler, pref. to seventh ed.); and Lord Campbell goes so far as to assert that Fearne was ‘a man of as acute understanding as Pascal or Sir Isaac Newton’ (Chief Justices, ii. 434). If this be somewhat exaggerated, at any rate the essay is distinguished among legal treatises for its close and sustained reasoning. Fearne was not content with such a mechanical piecing together of cases and dicta of varying authority as was imperfectly done for real property a few years later by Cruise; he thoroughly assimilated the crabbed learning of his subject, used his independent judgment, and gave to his work a logical completeness and consistency rare in legal literature. Of its educational value one may say that the student may more safely omit the reading of Coke upon Littleton than of Fearne on ‘Contingent Remainders.’ It should be said, however, that in the opinion of some lawyers the merits of the essay have been greatly overrated (see the criticisms in Law Mag. xxxi. 356.)
Having risen so high in his profession that he is said to have been ‘more consulted than any man of his time’ (see 1 Cl. and Fin. 399), Fearne's energy gradually relaxed. Other interests and a love of ease distracted him; he remained out of town for longer and longer periods, leaving directions with his clerk ‘not to know where he was, how he was, or when he would be in town,’ till one by one his clients dropped away. He had been making a large
