6. M AIT LAND: THE RENAISSANCE 201 of living law. Even for the purposes of purely scientific observation the live dog may be better than the dead lion. When the middle of the century is past the signs that English law has a new lease of life become many. The medieval books poured from the press, new books were written, the decisions of the courts were more diligently reported, the lawyers were boasting of the independence and extreme antiquity of their system.®^ We were having a little Renais- sance of our own : or a gothic revival if you please. The alis, gravis nonnunquam et copiosa, saepe urbana et faceta, non de- stituta similitudinum et exemplorum copia, lenis et aequabilis, et pleno velut alveo fluens, nusquam impedita. Quae res tantam mihi eorum homlnuin admirationem concitavit, ut aliquandiu vehementer optarim, secessionem aliqiiam ab ista academia facere et Londinum concedere, ut eos in suis ipsis scholis ac circulis disputantes audirem, quod an sim facturus aliquando, cum feriae longae, et quasi solenne iusticium, nostris praelectionibus indicatur, baud equidem pro certo affirmaverim." " Soule, Year Book Bibliography, in Harvard Law Review, vol. xiv., p. 564: "In 1553 the field of Year-Book publication was entered by Richard Tottell, who for thirty-eight years occupied it so fully as to admit no rival. There are about 225 known editions of separate Years or groups of Years which bear his imprint or can be surely attributed to his press. . . . He is pre-eminently the publisher of Year Books, and he so completely put them " in print " and so cheapened their price that he evidently made them a popular and profitable literature." In 1550 an English lawyer's library of printed books might appar- ently have comprised (besides some Statutes and Year Books) Little- ton's Tenures, The Old Tenures, Statham's Abridgement, Fitzherbert's Abridgement, Liber Intrationum, The Old Natura Brevium, perhaps a Registrum Brevium (if that book, printed in 1531, was published be- fore 1553), Institutions or principal grounds, etc. [1544], Carta feodi simplicis, [Phaer's] New book of presidentes, Diversite de courts. Novae Narrationes, Articuli ad novas narrationes. Modus tenendi curiam baronis. Modus tenendi unum hundredum, Fitzherbert's Justice of the Peace, Perkins's Profitable Book, Britton, Doctor and Student. A great part of what was put into print was of medieval origin and had been current in manuscript. In 1600 the following might have been added: Glanvill, Bracton, Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, Broke's Abridgement, Broke's New Cases, Rastell's Entries, Staundford's Prerogative and Pleas of the Crown, Crompton's Justice of the Peace, Crompton's Au- thority of Courts, West's Symbolasography, Theloall's Digest, Smith's Commonwealth, Lambard's Archaionomia and Eirenarcha, Fulbecke's Direction or Preparative to the Study of the Law [1600], Plowden's Commentaries, Dyer's Reports and the first volume of Coke's Reports [1600]. This represents a great advance. Already Fulbecke in his curious book (which was reprinted as still useful in 1829) attempts a review of English legal literature: a critical estimate of Dyer, Plowden, Staundford, Perkins and other writers. Lambard's revelation of the Anglo-Saxon laws was not unimportant, for a basis was thus laid for national boasts; and, but for the publication of Glanvill, Bracton and Britton, the work that was done by Coke would have been impossible. Were any books about Roman law printed in England before 1600, except a few of Gentili's?
