Yet why any part of a book, which can be consulted at pleasure, should be copied, I was never able to discover. The hand has no closer correspondence with memory than the eye. The act of writing itself distracts the thoughts; and what is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed *."

"Common-placing," says the illustrious Gibbon, "is a practice which I do not strenuously recommend. The action of the pen will, doubtless, imprint an idea on the mind, as well as on the paper; but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious method are adequate to the waste of them; and I must agree with Dr. Johnson, that what is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed +.'" The author knows four instances of gentlemen now eminent at the bar, who never kept a common-place book, or made more than a few occasional memoranda of striking passages, in their lives; and who attribute the present tenacity of their memory, in a great measure, to their avoidance of common-placing. It is by no means the author's wish, however, to express an unqualified disapprobation of this system; it is against the abuse of it that he would guard his younger readers; against the fatal facility with which they may fall into habits destructive, not to the memory only, but all the other powers

* Idler, No. 74.

+ Gibb. Misc. Works, 97. [Ed. 1814.]

of the mind. If a common-place book is to be kept, let it be kept judiciously, and be appropriated only to the reception of passages met with in the course of reading, which are either rare, or very striking in point of argument or expression. Does the student happen to stumble upon a few sentences which in an instant clear up difficulties that have haunted him for months-it may be years?—They are worthy of an entry in his common-place book-or at least of a reference; and, if they be altogether passed by, he may not be able to meet with them again, however great may be his emergency. How many choice passages in the judgments of a Hardwicke, a Mansfield, a Kenyon, an Ellenborough, an Eldon, or Tenterden, and other distinguished judges, have charmed him for a moment, and then been lost, for want of being entered or referred to in his common-place book!

The principal use of a common-place book is, to minute down the result of any investigation of more than ordinary difficulty or importance-in which authorities will be brought together which are nowhere else collected, and which will save the labour of research on some future occasion. In it should also be deposited select passages-even mere sentences-containing felicitous illustrations of important points, striking distinctions, &c. &c., to be found either in the arguments of counsel, the decisions and dicta of the judges, or observations of legal writers. A common-place book, in short, should be kept upon

the principle of inserting in it nothing but what is important, and cannot be easily, if at all, found elsewhere when wanted. The moment this principle is lost sight of, a common-place book becomes not only a delusive and pernicious substitute for the exercise of memory, but an unwieldy and embarrassing encumbrance.

SECTION XII.

COPYING PRECEDENTS.

By "copying precedents" is meant, transcribing various forms of pleadings from the collections of a tutor and others,—adding to them, from time to time, the most important of those which occur in actual business, in order that they may thus not only afford assistance in future emergencies, but, in the effort of transcription, familiarise the student with the technicalities of drafting. This, also, is a system which has at once very zealous friends and opponents. Hear the opinion of a practical man :

6

"The legal student has at present," says Mr. Lee, the author of the Dictionary of Practice,' "so much to learn, that it may seem a waste of the period allotted to him for the purpose of necessary practical acquirement to employ that period in copying matter into a precedent-book, which publications of the highest authority present already much more

perfectly to his hand. Sir Edward Coke, even in his time, does not seem to have thought it essential to a student's advancement in the knowledge of the law that he should copy precedents. The precept of that great lawyer, which is to be found towards the conclusion of the immense body of entries collected and published by him, is EVOLVE ista exemplaria.' It will be observed that the expression is not 'exscribe,' or any other synonyme of that signification My own conviction is, that every hour employed in copying precedents elsewhere existing in print, is an hour lost-but which might be usefully spent in acquiring the principles on which those precedents were originally framed; but, to copy, is the course in a pleader's office-and hence, as I conceive, a radical defect in the system of that part of legal education; a gross and mechanical system, strangely grown out of imputed interest on the one hand, and a total want of any more rational acknowledged system, to which the observation of the student may be directed, on the other *."

These censures are levelled, it will be observed, at the practice of transcribing precedents "already existing in print "-one, however, which the author cannot believe to be prevalent at the present day. They are, at the same time, equally applicable to the custom which does prevail of copying, by wholesale,

* Precedents in Assumpsit. See also Ritso's Introd.,

pp. 27, 29.

manuscript precedents—a shocking waste of time and industry. Some students sit down to this task with all the energy of infatuation: every thing else must give way to it: nothing seems to them so desirable, so advantageous, so creditable, as to be able to exhibit, at the end of their pupilage, four or five closelycopied quarto volumes of these " Precedents"—precedents which are copied out mechanically, and the structure and properties of which are, therefore, nearly altogether overlooked! Nothing can be more desirable than for the student to copy out good precedents, judiciously selected-with due reflection upon what he is doing, and constant reference to the rules and principles on which they are framed *. Three or four precedents a week, thus copied, will be of great service to the student; not only as tending to fix in his mind the rules of law, but to assist him in the construction of pleadings in the course of business. He cannot go to a greater extent in copying precedents than this, without uselessly encroaching on his valuable time, and degrading himself into a kind of copying clerk. But he "wants these precedents for future practice." Then let him hire a boy to copy them for him-asking his tutor to point out those which are peculiarly worthy of transcription. He must, also, bear in mind that the recent extensive alterations which have been effected in the system of

* See Mr. Preston's remarks in the preface to his Conveyancing.