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in society and in nature, should refer in a general manner to tho 
legal profession, and to lawyers, as a peculiar and marked class of 
civil life, could have caused no surprise. It would have been quite 
natural. But when he uses such technical language as can be fami- 
liar to professional men only, when his illustrations imply an accu- 
rate knowledge of legal principles not generally known, we feel 
assured that there must be some special cause for materials of such 
a character being introduced into his writings so frequently and so 
minutely. It was natural enough, for example, that Shakspeare 
should say of skilful lawyers, “ good counsellors lack no clients,” or 
of lawyers, who are idle in vacation time, that they “ sleep between 
term and term,” or that he should call time “ the common arbitrator.” 
That Gratiano would propose for Shylock, besides his two godfathers, 
when he became a Christian, ten more , meaning that he would have- 
him before a jury to be tried for an attempt to murder Bassanio ; or 
that the fool in Lear should say that the maxims which the old king 
declared were “ nothing,” were like “ the breath of an unfeed lawyer, 
given to the king for nothing,” and many other examples. But it 
is very different when he uses terms and makes representations, 
which imply a knowledge of nice points of law, and points not gene- 
rally known, except by professional men. As, for instance, in the 
“ Merry Wives of Windsor,” Ford says, that “ his love was like a fair 
house, built upon another man’s ground, so that he had lost his edi- 
fice by mistaking the place where he erected it,” showing that Shak- 
speare had a knowledge of real property not generally possessed, — 
viz., the knowledge of that maxim of lawyers applicable to land: 
“ cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum,” under which any house 
erected on a freehold becomes the absolute property of the soil, — so 
that the luckless builder cannot remove any of the most costly ad- 
juncts of his building, such as the finely-carved chimney-pieces, or 
expensive marble pillars, with which he may have adorned the edifice. 
A passage in the “ Comedy of Errors 17 draws out a most circumstantial 
and graphic account of what is called in English law i( Arrest on 
Mesne Process in an action on the case.” No one could have adopted 
the phraseology in the conversation between Adriano and Dromio, 
who had not a technical acquaintance with the point of law so named. 
It is very curious also, that Shakspeare, in the grave-diggers’ scene, 
where he speaks in a ludicrous tone of “ Crowner’s Quest Law,” — 
i.e.f the law as laid down by a coroner when he holds an inquest on 
