By Irving Browne.
CURRENT TOPICS. The Revised Reports The most readable part of Sir Frederick Pollock's "Revised Reports" is the prefaces, in which one always finds something striking, frequently brilliant. In remarking on Lord Byron v. Johnston, vol. 16, p. 135, he says: "Lord Eldon has often been called hard names (unduly, as most lawyers think) for depriving Shelley of the cus tody of his truly begotten children; I am not aware that the world of letters has ever given him due credit for helping Byron to repudiate the spurious offspring which some private bookseller sought to father on him." Of Douglas v. Scougall, vol. 16, p. 72, he says: " That was a merry and provident master of the good ship 'North Star' of Leith, who used up a great part of his log-book for making cartridges." Again : • ' The long war-time is over, but we still hear echoes of it in the courts." From Taylor v. Curtis, p. 686, we learn how the British vessel "Hibernia" repulsed, with only twenty-two men and six guns, our American privateer, carrying twenty-two guns and a hundred and twenty-five men,— more than five to one in men and a gun for every man of the " Hibernia's" crew. " This must have been a brilliant affair. Our people did not commonly find the Americans too easy to deal with, even on equal terms. We have now taken the better way of feasting instead of fighting together, and this year the visit of the ' Chicago ' to our waters has enabled us to recognize Captain Mahan's position as an authority on naval strategy by the eminently British methods of giving him and his fellow officers a solemn dinner, and sending him home a Doctor of Civil Law, though certainly not a sea lawyer." This is what one always gets for patting John Bull on the back. So Mr. Bayard's declaration that this country is the best customer of Birmingham was received with cheers that almost rent the little island. We guess that the privateer must have been carrying those twenty guns as ballast or freight. In the preface to vol. 23, the learned editor points out that Lord Eldon's judgment in the famous case of Shelley v. Westbrook, which deprived the infidel poet of the custody of his infant children, proceeded more upon the poet's practical than upon his theo retical infidelity, as he had deserted his wife, was co
habiting with another woman, and wished to gain his offspring in order to educate them in his own unbe lief. Of this the light horseman of the " London Law Journal " says : — "How many persons of that strange drama live again! Old Westbrook, the Mount Street eating-house keeper, the pretty Harriet, the clever Mary Godwin, and last, not least, the extraordinary being, ' Bysshe.' ' Beautiful, ineffectual angel ' Matthew Arnold calls him. To Lord Eldon the poet appeared in much darker colours. Lord Eldon had some old-fashioned prejudices, but he was far from intoler ant. He could allow that an Unitarian did not necessarily make a bad citizen, and, if Shelley would have kept the sentiments ofQueen Mab locked in his own breast, perhaps he might have let him have his children; but Shelley was one who would spread his light — lurid light too often — in season and out of season with a passionate insistence, and acted out his principles with an amazing amount of con sistency and inconsistency. The climax was reached when he invited Harriet — the derelict— to join him and Mary on a tour in Switzerland. All Professor Dowden, who knows most about it, can find to say for this saviour of society is that he was always in morals a child. It is quite certain that there was never any one worse fitted for paren tal responsibilities than this intellectual but 'ineffectual angel.'" In the same preface Sir Frederick refers to " Lau rence v. Smith, p. 123, in which Eldon laid it down "that the immortality of the soul is one of the doc trines of the Scriptures" — which Sir Frederick says "seems, in that unqualified and universal force, a disputable piece of theology;" and "that the law does not give protection to those who contradict the Scriptures," and refused to restrain the pirating of a book alleged to be unorthodox, until that question had been settled at law. " This case never has been disapproved," says the editor in a note to it, "but the doubt whether there can be copyright in a book impugning scriptural doctrines in decent and modest language would now hardly be felt by any court of justice in any English-speaking country." In another note he points out that Eldon refused to restrain the pirating of Byron's " Cain " on the same ground. In this volume is the case of The King v. Davison, holding that a judge at nisi prius may fine a defendant for contempt in his address to the jury. The judge in question was Best, and the defendant 345
