es us with an
example of this. He writes (p. 164): "On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare
... obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the payment of
No. 6, and No. 1, 5s. 0d. costs." Now a lawyer would never have spoken
of obtaining "judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury
not to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to
find a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a venial one, but it
is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know
if the writer is a layman or "one of the craft."

But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he
is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. "Let a
non-professional man, however acute," writes Lord Campbell again,
"presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in
discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable
absurdity."

And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He had "a
deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy familiarity with "some
of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence." And again:
"Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law."
Of "Henry IV.," Part 2, he says: "If Lord Eldon could be supposed to
have written the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable with
having forgotten any of his law while writing it." Charles and Mary
Cowden Clarke speak of "the marvelous intimacy which he displays with
legal terms, his frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his
curiously technical knowledge of their form and force." Malone, himself
a lawyer, wrote: "His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such
as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his
all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical skill."
Another lawyer and well-known Shakespearean, Richard Grant White, says:
"No dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, who was the younger son of
a judge of the Common Pleas, and who after studying in the Inns of
Court abandoned law for the drama, used legal phrases with Shakespeare's
readiness and exactness. And the significance of this fact is heightened
by another, that is only to the language of the law that he exhibits
this inclination. The phrases peculiar to other occupations serve him
on rare occasions by way of description, comparison, or illustration,
generally when something in the scene suggests them, but legal phrases
flow from hi