ssion." Alas! both Mr. Justice Story and Mr. Smith, each a great
ornament to his country, died within a few months of each other. When I
congratulated my friend on this encomium, from so competent and eminent
a judge, he replied modestly--"_Laudari a laudato viro_ is certainly
pleasing."

So great was the demand for this work, that Mr. Smith's publisher urged
him to proceed as quickly as possible with the second volume, which he
had, in his preface to the former one, announced his intention of doing,
in the event of the first portion of his labours meeting with the
approbation of the profession. He accordingly at once set to work upon
the second volume; and although he was beginning to have serious calls
upon his time, owing principally to his having accepted the appointment,
in November 1837, of Common Law Lecturer to the Law Institution, such
were his energy and industry, that by the 12th of May, 1838, he had
succeeded in bringing out the first part of the second volume, which was
fully equal in execution to the first. While, however, he was receiving
with his usual modesty the congratulations of his friends on this solid
addition to his reputation, he received a sort of _checkmate_, which
embarrassed and utterly confounded him; occasioning him infinitely
greater annoyance and mortification than he ever experienced in his
life. A highly respectable firm of law booksellers, the publishers of
his "Compendium of Mercantile Law," and to whom he had also offered the
publication of his "Leading Cases," which they had declined, without the
slightest intimation of any objection to the principle of selecting the
"Cases," which he had explained fully to them, suddenly took it into
their heads, that in thus selecting some few cases from "Reports"
published by them, as mere texts for his masterly legal discussions, he
had been guilty of PIRACY! and actually filed a bill in Equity against
him and his publisher, to restrain them "from printing, selling, or
publishing any copies of the first part of the second volume." I never
saw Mr. Smith exhibit such intense vexation as that occasioned him by
this proceeding: he felt at once his own honour impugned, and that he
might have seriously compromised the character and interests of his
publisher. Such, however, was the confidence in the justice of his case
felt by the latter, that he resolved to resist this attack upon his own
rights and those of Mr. Smith to the very last; and he did so,