VOL. XVI. No. 1.

JANUARY, 1904.

T is difficult to write acceptably or adequately of a living man. Sir Frederick Pollock, however, deserves of American lawyers more than a passing newspaper notice. He was the first English legal publicist to recognize the worth of the system of legal teaching evolved by Professor Langdell of Harvard, and of the consequent advantages enjoyed by the profession in the United States. His varied activities cover a wide range of thought. Alone they would challenge consideration. His support of the cause of legal reform has been constant. Consequently his career is of especial interest to those who, like his friend, Mr. Justice Holmes, believe in sweeping away the old landmarks of the law. Indeed, it is of importance to all men. Sir Frederick, however, has not gone as far in this direction as have many of his friends and disciples. His energies have been bent to the softening of the rigors of the common law, rather than to superseding it.

It seems unnecessary more than to touch upon the changes in the judicial system of England during the last sixty years. The coordination and amalgamation of the different courts, have been carried on through these years, until they have become complete. It is difficult for one who is not an English lawyer, to judge what, if any, influence or change upon the law as a science has been effected by this amalgamation. But it undoubtedly has been one of the mani

festations of the times, one of the many evidences of change, or, if you will, of evolution, the undercurrent of which is still strong, carrying the science of jurisprudence to an unknown sea, there to sail in calm waters, or be wrecked upon a barren shore. Sir Frederick Pollock has felt this influence, has been swayed by it. In fact, it has been congenial to his temper, and he has brought his philosophical studies to aid the movement. If he has not ridden the whirlwind and controlled the storm, at least he has not opposed his strength vainly to it. He has not led a forlorn hope, a lost cause. He has taken the inexorable conditions as he found them, and, in sympathy with them, he has preached the gospel of broad views, of wide culture. He has maintained that no man could be a great lawyer, unless he was conversant with learned subjects other than law. Sir Henry Maine was his master and his friend. As his disciple he has carried on Sir Henry's work and thought. With all his activities, with his high place as Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford, with all his published works, with his distinguished family, and his own modest and pleasing personality, it is more than strange that his influence and reputation should be greater in the United States than in England. It may be another instance of the old adage about a prophet not being without honor save in his own country.

December 10th, 1845. His grandfather was the famous Chief Baron Pollock, and his uncle was the "Last of the Barons." He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge; became a fellow of Trinity in 1868; read for the Bar at Lincoln's Inn, and received his call in 1871. In 1873, he married at Calcutta, Miss Georgina Deffell, and succeeded to the baronetcy, which was created in 1866, as third baronet, upon the death of his father in 1888. He was professor of Jurisprudence at University College, London, in 1882 and 1883; professor of Common Law in the Inns of Court from 1884 to 1890; Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford from 1883 to 1903; member of the Royal Labor Commission from 1891 to 1894; corresponding secretary of the Institute of France from 1894, and for some time was honorary librarian of the Alpine Club. He is a member of the Juridical Society of Berlin, and has received doctors' degrees from Harvard, Oxford, Edinburgh and Dublin. In 1876 he published his first book: -the Principles of Contract, which was followed in 1877 by his Digest of the Law of Partnership and his Leading Cases done into English verse; in 1880, by his Life and Philosophy of Spinoza; in 1882, by his Land Laws; in 1887, by his Law of Torts; in 1888, by his Possession in the Common Law, in collaboration with Mr. Justice Wright; in 1890, by his Introduction to the History of the Science of Politics; in 1892, by his chapter in Badminton, on The Early History of Mountaineering; in 1894, by his Law of Fraud in British India; in 1895, by his History of English Law, in collaboration with Professor F. W. Maitland; in 1896, by his First Book of Jurisprudence; in 1899, by The Etchingham Letters, in collaboration with Mr. E. Fuller Maitland; and he has been editor of the Law Reports since 1895. In addition to all this work, he has delivered lectures in India and more than once in the United States. For many years he has

been a member of the Rabelais Club,-that congregation of actors, artists and literary men,—and a frequent contributor to its Proceedings. With all this, he has ever kept an active interest in sports and has been an enthusiastic climber of mountains. He is still one of the best amateur swordsmen in England, and an authority upon the forms and history of the sword.

I have purposely made the above catalogue of Sir Frederick's achievements and activities unadorned with any comment and unalleviated by any extraneous matter, in order that their extent may be brought home to the reader. Like Homer's list of the Hellenic host before Troy, it is dry, bald and appalling. It presents a really remarkable record, a marvellous amount of work. When you consider it, it seems impossible of achievement by any one man. Of course, not even a genius could combine talents of the first flight in law, philosophy and literature. But that one man should have been able to make so many and such acceptable contributions to the two former subjects is surely sufficient achievement, and is an admirable life's work. It may be thought by some unfortunate that Sir Frederick has not confined himself to his specialty. If he had, who can say that he would not have ranked in the same class with Sir Henry Maine? But, if he had, the world would have been without some entertaining books. The Etchingham Letters is, I venture to think, one of the bits of fiction of the last decade worthy of perusal.

I shall not undertake here to review his publications upon Jurisprudence. Most lawyers, who care for the science of their profession, have read them. But in regard to them I wish to point out that the man who wrote them had made a study not only of the Roman and the Civil law, not only of the English philosophers, like Hobbes, but was conversant with the continental schools of philosophic thought. And that brings me

to the consideration of how far the science of jurisprudence can be furthered or embellished by purely speculative cogitation. It is a large subject, and I shall attempt here to deal with it only in the briefest and most casual way. Philosophy is a system of thought, or, if you please, a search after the ultimate truth. The science of jurispru cence is the application of certain rules of human conduct to the facts of life, to the intercourse between man and man. That every branch of knowledge helps the realization of every other branch, that every study trains the mind to more adequately grasp another subject, no one, I fancy, will deny. But that does not seem to be the point. The question is whether abstract thinking does not more or less handicap and incapacitate a man for concrete thinking. Judged by results the evidence seems to favor an affirmative view. Bacon, perhaps, was an exception, and yet in its last analysis his philosophy is so materialistic that it can hardly be called abstract. Excepting him, I venture to believe that no really great lawyer, or statesman, for that matter, has ever been interested in abstract and abstruse philosophy. Indeed, there are today, two men who illustrate in a peculiarly distinguished manner what I mean. They have both reached the highest places in their vocations. The one is a lawmaker, the other a lawgiver. They both are philosophers first, and, on the one hand a judge, on the other hand a statesman, afterwards. Today no one who has watched their careers and is conversant with their achievements will care to deny that they have failed to acquit themselves as their talents and upbringing gave promise. This failure, I believe, is due primarily to their interest in philosophy. It unfits them for the practical affairs with which they must deal. Their equivocal good fortune in reaching the positions to which they have attained is due to the accidents of birth and to their ad

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mittedly great intellectual powers, rather than to any tangible success in their chosen vocations. No man can read much philosophy unless he is enamored of it. Philosophy, like the law, is a jealous mistress. No man can serve both satisfactorily. And so, if Sir Frederick Pollock's legal work has not been of the highest order, the blame must be put down more to his philosophical studies than to anything else. For, undoubtedly, philosophy has a great attraction for him. His admirable Life and Philosophy of Spinoza is proof of that, if any proof outside of his legal writings themselves were needed. And, of course, to those who are interested in philosophy, it is a valuable contribution.

Few men ever have had so rounded a life as Sir Frederick, a life touching and absorbing so many points of contact with his fellow men in thought and deed. He is an ardent Hellenist, admiring the sublime literature of the Greeks. Today he is studying Persian in his leisure moments. Where he gets those moments it is difficult for an ordinary man to surmise. Surely it is no wonder that he has resigned his Oxford professorship. The reason that he gave therefor is characteristic of him. He believed that twenty years was long enough for any one to dominate a course of study. But all these matters have not entirely consumed his time and his energy. For, in addition, he has taken an active interest in politics, and is the president of one of the London Liberal Unionist Committees, being driven from the Liberal party by Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule policy. Naturally the man, who has written on the science of politics and has given a course of Lowell Institute lectures upon the English publicists Hobbes and Hume, is a keen student of politics and of the philosophy thereof. Indeed, he seems to be a living refutation of his own dictum, that "it may be said, and truly, that the range of any one man's work. even the best, is limited."