es of a valid marriage, in the
presumption of legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative,
in the inalienable character of the Crown, this mastership appears with
surprising authority."

To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have not cited)
may now be added that of a great lawyer of our own times, VIZ.: Sir
James Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. 1855, created a Baron of the Exchequer in
1860, promoted to the post of Judge-Ordinary and Judge of the Courts
of Probate and Divorce in 1863, and better known to the world as Lord
Penzance, to which dignity he was raised in 1869. Lord Penzance, as all
lawyers know, and as the late Mr. Inderwick, K.C., has testified,
was one of the first legal authorities of his day, famous for his
"remarkable grasp of legal principles," and "endowed by nature with a
remarkable facility for marshaling facts, and for a clear expression of
his views."

Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare's "perfect familiarity with not only
the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the technicalities of English
law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never incorrect
and never at fault.... The mode in which this knowledge was pressed
into service on all occasions to express his meaning and illustrate his
thoughts was quite unexampled. He seems to have had a special pleasure
in his complete and ready mastership of it in all its branches. As
manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and learning had therefore
a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from
the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after
page of the plays. At every turn and point at which the author required
a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the
law. He seems almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases, the commonest
of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or
illustration. That he should have descanted in lawyer language when
he had a forensic subject in hand, such as Shylock's bond, was to be
expected, but the knowledge of law in 'Shakespeare' was exhibited in a
far different manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate
or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely
divergent from forensic subjects." Again: "To acquire a perfect
familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the
technical terms and phrases not only of the conveyancer's office, but of
the pleader's