e had already begun the work of versification. Not
seeing the nature of the reply, Sir Lyttleton Powys treated the droll
fancy as a serious project, and insisted that the author should give a
specimen of the style of his contemplated work. Whereupon the young
barrister--not pausing to remind a company of lawyers of the words of
the original. "Tenant in fee simple is he which hath lands or tenements
to hold to him and his heirs for ever"--recited the lines--

"He that holdeth his lands in fee
Need neither to quake nor quiver,
_I humbly conceive: for look, do you see_
They are his and his heirs' forever."

The mimicry of voice being not less perfect than the verbal imitation,
Yorke's hearers were convulsed with laughter, but so unconscious was Sir
Lyttleton of the ridicule which he had incurred, that on subsequently
encountering Yorke in London, he asked how "that translation of Coke
upon Littleton was getting on." Sir Lyttleton died in 1732, and exactly
ten years afterwards appeared the first edition of 'The Reports of Sir
Edward Coke, Knt., in Verse'--a work which its author may have been
inspired to undertake by Philip Yorke's proposal to versify 'Coke on
Littleton.'

Had Yorke's project been carried out, lawyers would have a large supply
of that comic but sound literature of which Sir James Burrow's Reports
contain a specimen in the following poetical version of Chief Justice
Pratt's memorable decision with regard to a woman of English birth, who
was the widow of a foreigner:

"A woman having settlement
Married a man with none,
The question was, he being dead,
If what she had was gone.

"Quoth Sir John Pratt, 'The settlement
Suspended did remain,
Living the husband; but him dead
It doth revive again.'

(_Chorus of Puisne Judges._)

"Living the husband; but him dead
It doth revive again."

Chief Justice Pratt's decision on this point having been reversed by his
successor, Chief Justice Ryder's judgment was thus reported:

"A woman having a settlement,
Married a man with none,
He flies and leaves her destitute;
What then is to be done?

"Quoth Ryder, the Chief Justice,
'In spite of Sir John Pratt,
You'll send her to the parish
In which she was a brat.

"'_Suspension of a settlement_
Is not to be maintained;
That which she had by birth subsists
Until another's gained.'

(_Chorus of Puisne