Perrow—The Last Will and Testament in Literature. 683 
or a consideration of some of the more serious aspects of hu¬ 
man life. But to its richness of content, more, perhaps, than 
to any other single feature, the Last Will and Testament owes 
the fact that it has become the parent of a considerable body of 
literature. 1 In this particular hardly another formal doom 
ment can be thought of as a rival. Whenever we examine any 
considerable body of wills belonging to centuries earlier than 
our own, we come upon scraps of autobiography, confessions of 
deeds and of faith, adieus to friends, advice to relatives and 
successors, directions for burial, and dispositions of property. 
Wot all are found in one will, nor is any one found in all wills. 
These several elements play in and out of the will and the Lit¬ 
erary Testament in a very arbitrary manner. Any one of 
these may monopolize the entire will, and each seems to have 
given rise to a particular type of Literary Testament. 2 
1 For convenience the term Last Will and Testament, or simply the 
term Will, will be used in this study to refer to the legal instrument, 
while the term Literary Testament, or simply Testament, will he used 
to apply to the document the motive of which is the literary impulse. 
The word “page” or “pages” as used in the notes will refer to pages of 
this study. 
2 It is the purpose of this paper, in studying the Last Will and 
Testament as a basis of a literary form, to separate the Testament into 
several well-defined types, and to trace briefly, as far as it may be clear, 
the history of each type. This I shall be able to do only imperfectly 
with regard to the larger number of the types. A thorough investiga¬ 
tion of the history of each type would lead too far a-field for the limits 
of this paper. The only part of the subject in which anything like a 
thorough treatment, has been attempted is that devoted to the flourish¬ 
ing period of the Testament (PART II.), and even that is far from 
being exhaustive. That division is written with especial reference to 
the development of the form in France and England, but even here 
nothing like a careful search has ben made for material. Much of the 
material actually known to exist has been inaccessible to me. Even 
of the material at hand much has been left untreated, since if was 
thought best to discuss only that part of the material which seemed 
useful for tracing the history of the form. 
