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Mr. Serjeant Pulling ("Order of the Coif," p. 2) says: "The Brothers of the Coif (serjeants) devoted to the profession of the law, bound by a solemn oath to give counsel and legal aid to the king's people, were for ages to be found at their ancient rendezvous in St. Paul's Cathedral, the Parvis, or their allotted pillar there, wearing their distinctive costume, the robe and the coif, ever ready to receive those who sought their assistance, to give counsel pur son donant to the rich, and gratis to the poor suitor, and to aid when called on in the judicial business of the king's courts." And again (p. 160), "the Round of the Temple Church like the Parvis of St. Paul's was for ages professionally resorted to and used both by students and practitioners of the law." These legal meetings are referred to by Ben Jonson in the "Alchemist," and by Samuel Butler in “Hudibras," part 3, c. 3. Other instances could doubtless be found with a little research.

And such is the law at the present day. Barristers, i.e., apprentices of the law, have succeeded to the privileges of the serjeants, but the powers of the Bar have not been restrained by any statute. They are the same now as they ever were. And although it may be urged that it is convenient for the rich suitor to have the use of the intermediary, to act as his agent, and for counsel in large practice to have the intermediary to perform the less dignified work for them, so as to render their own work shorter with regard to each case, and thereby to enable them to accept a larger number of cases and a proportionately larger number of fees, yet it should not be forgotten that many suitors are very poor, and that it is a matter of no little moment to them to be able to carry on a lawsuit, a prosecution, or a defence, without the expense of an intermediary. This the law allows them to do; this the law permits barristers to undertake. Without disparaging the utility of attorneys, or solicitors, and their bills of costs, it

nevertheless is desirable that the superstition of the necessity of employing an intermediary should be removed, and that the Bar-especially the junior Bar-should be fully cognizant of their rights. The fusion of the duties of barrister, attorney, solicitor, and notary public in one person, in many of our colonies and in the United States, testifies largely to the opinion of those of our own kith and kin as to the undesirability of the employment of intermediaries. What would be said if a medical man could alone be approached by his patient through a chemist and druggist? or a clergyman through the parish clerk?

JUNIUS.

THIS

III. DANTE AS A JURIST.

HIS title is of course not meant to imply that Dante was actually a lawyer by training or profession, like Ariosto or Tasso, but that like some other great poets he did not disdain the aid of law as an adjunct to poetry.* There is a side of Dante's character specially interesting to lawyers. He was a master of all the learning of his timeone of the semipoeta, to use Filippo Villani's phrase—and law had not escaped him. None of his biographers specially name law among the subjects of his study, but Boccaccio tells us that he became wonderfully skilled in the liberal arts, and in Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there is not much doubt that law

* A conspicuous instance of this is Lucretius' magnificent line:

Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu.

Many other instances will readily suggest themselves to the student of poetry. As the Portuguese poet says,

Não fazem damno ás Musas os doutores,

Antes ajuda a suas letras dão.

would be included under liberal arts. This, however, is not important, as it is by his works that he is to be judged. His opportunities for the study were undoubted. His father and his master Brunetto Latini were notaries. He spent, as will appear later, some time at Bologna, the alma studiorum mater, the home of legal learning, and was an intimate friend of Cino da Pistoia, one of the leading jurists of the period.

His knowledge of law shews itself in two main directionsin phraseology and in argument. But he was at the same time something more than a poet with a legal training. Like all noble natures he was as strong a lover of justice as von Ihering himself, and would probably have agreed with the latter that der Kampf um's Recht ist die Poesie des Charakters.* The sense of justice is one of the most conspicuous things in his writings,† and one can in this place only name a small number of passages in illustration of what will be obvious to all students of Dante.‡

The subject of Dante as a jurist seems not to have been touched in any English book known to the writer, though Italian and German assiduity has done to a limited extent (as will appear later) what has been done more fully in the case of Shakespeare in England, Germany, and

* "Der Kampf um's Recht," p. 41.

† It is especially insisted on by Dr. Moore: "Dante and His Early Biographers," p. 256.

‡ He says himself (Epist. x., 8), that the relation of man to justice is the allegorical subject of the "Divina Commedia." The last book of the Convito (never written) was to have had justice for its theme. Noticeable passages in the 66 Divina Commedia " are that the Creator of the gates of hell was moved by justice, Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore (Inf. iii., 4); it inspired Justinian, la viva giustizia che mi spira (Par. vi., 88); and in the planet Jupiter the spirits of the blest arrange themselves so as to form the verse Diligite justitiam qui judicatis terram (Par. xviii., 78). The lofty position of justice is explained by its being the servant of God;

la ministra

Dell' altro Sire, infallibil giustizia. (Inf. xxix., 55.)

Italy. If the writer have been forestalled in England or America, he can only plead in Dante's own words, questo intendo, non come buono fabbricatore, ma come seguitatore di quello, fare in questa parte. It is noticeable that some of the editors and translators of Dante have been lawyers, e.g., Dr. F. Scolari in Italy, Sir W. F. Pollock and Mr. Warburton Pike in England.

It will be convenient to divide the subject into five heads, dealing at first chiefly with the "Divina Commedia," and leaving the other works for subsequent consideration. It might prima facie be expected that one of the heads would be similes, but it is remarkable that not one simile is taken from the practice of the Courts, and there are only five which in the most remote way connect themselves with the present subject.‡

(1.) Bologna.—In the days of Dante Bologna was the centre of the legal learning of the western world. The stream of the juristic productions of the great glossators,§ post-glossators, and scribentes had not yet ceased to flow. Among the jurists of the time who wrote or taught in the Archiginnasio of Bologna or in neighbouring cities were Accursius (died 1294), Guittoncino Sinibuldi (better known as Cino da Pistoia), who died in 1336, and Baldus, who

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* Rushton, "Shakespeare as a Lawyer " (1858); Lord Campbell, "Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements" (1859); Forlani, “La Lotta per il Diritto ; Variazioni filosofico-giuridiche sopra il mercatante di Venezia e altri drammi (Turin, 1874): Kohler, Shakespeare vor der Forum der Jurisprudenz' (Würzburg, 1883).

+ Convito, iv., 30.

66

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These are Inf. xix., 60 (those who stand at a loss for a reply); Par. xvii., 103 (one who asks counsel); xxiv., 45 (the bachelor who is ready but does not speak until the master proposes the question). The first and last of these may be reminiscences of Bologna disputations. In addition there is the simile of Themis, Purg. xxxiii., 47, and of the friar shriving for murder, Inf. xix., 49. § The words chiosa and chiosar are familiar to Dante (Inf xv., 89; Purg. xi., 141; xx., 99; Par. xvii., 94).

taught at Pisa and Perugia, and died in 1357. Less known, but eminent in their way, were Dinus (died 1303), Jacobus de Belvisio (died 1335), Johannes Andreæ, the eminent canonist, who drafted the statutes of the University of Bologna in 1317 (died 1348),* and Francesco da Barberino, the first person to receive the degree of Doctor of Laws at Florence. Of these names, by far the most interesting is Cino or Cinus, whose Lectura super Codicem and Commentary on the Statutes of Pistoia won a place for him among jurists no lower than did his sonnet praise of Selvaggia among poets. He is not named in the "Divina Commedia," but his name occurs frequently in the "De Vulgari Eloquio," and there was a correspondence in sonnets between him and Dante, not in any way touching the subject of the law. In his sonnets not addressed to Dante he, however, often combines very happily his poetical and legal powers. Take, for instance, two sonnets, one on the Court of Reason and one on Rome. (The translations are my own.)

THE COURT OF REASON.

A thousand doubts and pleadings in a day

Are filed in Empress Reason's court supreme
By angry Love-his eyes with anger gleam.
"Which of us twain hath been more faithful, say.
'Tis all through me that Cino can display

The sail of fame on life's unhappy stream."
"Thee," quoth I, "root of all my woe I deem,

I found what gall beneath thy sweetness lay.”
Then he "Ah, traitorous and truant slave!
Are these the thanks thou renderest, ingrate,
For giving thee a maid without a peer?”

* He is cited as an authority by our English Lyndewood.

+ In France the poet-lawyer Beaumanoir was a contemporary. He died in 1300.

Petrarch in his sonnet on Cino's death does not refer to him as a jurist. Nor does he in the sonnet in which he names Dante and Cino together (In Morte de M. Laura, xix.).

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