36 LIFE OF 



natural, and explicit. His style without being dry, 

 and possessing upon proper occasions such embellish- 

 ments even, as a severe and critical taste would per- 

 mit, is made up, in general, of terms and phrases so 

 entirely ascertained in their meaning, as to defy the 

 extraction of a double sense, an excellence of the very 

 first order in judicial compositions. This precision, 

 was the result of an accurate adjustment of the argu- 

 ment before he committed it to paper. His opinions, 

 such as they appear in the earliest reports of them, 

 and 1 presume the same of the whole, were published 

 from the first draught, in which it was rare to find 

 either erasure or interlineation ; and it is confidently 

 stated by one of the eldest members of the bar, that 

 there was no instance in which he was asked by 

 counsel, or induced by his own review, to give an ex- 

 planation of them. This was, indeed, a natural con- 

 sequence of that singleness, to which 1 have alluded 

 as a striking feature of his judgments. He paid little 

 respect to what are called dicta^ opinions collateral to 

 the matter in judgment, from whatever quarter they 

 might come. He pronounced none himself. His 

 concern was with the point in issue, and nothing 

 else ; and he kept his eye on that, as a mariner does 

 upon the Pole-star. 



All his opinions arc, moreover, remarkable for their 

 admirable common sense, and their adaptation to the 

 common understanding. There is no reaching after 

 what is recondite, or abstruse, — no afi'ectation of sci- 

 ence. The language of the law, as he uses it, is ver- 



