equity, and nice adaptation to the necessities of mankind. . . Let those who now doubt the importance of the study of the civil law by common lawyers read diligently the opinions of Mr. Chancellor Kent, and they will find all the objections raised by indolence and ignorance and prejudice practically refuted, and the civil law triumphantly sustained. They will perceive the vivid lights which it casts on the paths of juridical science; and they will be instructed and cheered in the pursuit, though they may not hope to move in the brilliant career of such a judge with equal footsteps. . . . As to the chancery decisions of Mr. Chancellor Kent, they are as full of learning, and pains-taking research, and vivid discrimination, as those of any man that ever sat on the English woolsack.-STORY, JOSEPH, 1820, Chancery Jurisdiction, North American Review, vol. 11, pp. 141, 142, 165. His researches on every point were so full as to leave little or nothing to be supplied by those who might afterwards wish to have his decisions re-examined or to test the correctness of his conclusions. His judicial opinions are, therefore, uncommonly interesting and instructive to all, but especially to those who have commenced the study of the law, and aspire to eminence in that profession. JOHNSON, WILLIAM, 1835, Life of Chancellor Kent, National Portrait-Gallery of Distinguished Americans, vol. II. His decisions must forever remain a monument of judicial wisdom, learning, and eloquence, without superior in those of any country or any age.-HOFFMAN, DAVID, 1836, A Course of Legal Study, 2nd ed. I do not scruple to affirm that they (Decisions), form a series of unequalled excellence, and to the Equity lawyer of inestimable value: they are the most precious treasure his library contains. None who reflect on the nature and amount of instruction that these volumes supply, and on the method and style in which that instruction is conveyed, if able to make the comparison, will refuse to admit that there is no series of Reports in England, or in the United States, that, in these distinctive proofs of a superior and permanent value, resembles or approaches them.-DUER, JOHN, 1848, A Discourse on the Life, Character and Public Services of James Kent. COMMENTARIES UPON AMERICAN LAW 1826-32 They ["Commentaries"] may be recommended to the English law-student of the present day as a substitute for Blackstone. They contain not only a clear statement of the English law, with all the alterations that have taken place since the time of Blackstone, but a full account of the main principles of Equity (a topic on which the English commentator is confessedly deficient); also a review of the modifications engrafted on the English law by the different States of the Union, and on all important questions, an instructive parallel between the English, American, Modern Continental, and Civil Laws.-JOHNES, ARTHUR JAMES, 1834, Reform of the Court of Chancery. They ["Commentaries"] are fine examples of lucid and manly reasoning, and the style in which they are written is perspicuous and forcible. From the nature of the work, Chancellor Kent was only able to devote a small portion of his treatise to the Law of Nations; but their brevity is the only thing that is objectionable in these lectures, for all that the author does give us is valuable.-MANNING, WILLIAM OKE, 1839, Commentaries on the Laws of Nations, p. 44. It is the character of the "Commentaries" as a national work, and their masterly execution as such, that have stamped upon them a peculiar value. It is to these causes that the extent of the influence which they rapidly acquire and now exert on the jurisprudence, not of a single State, but of all, must be ascribed. It is now in the hands of every student and of every practitioner of the law, and it ought to be in the hands of every legislator and statesman, and indeed of every man of cultivated mind and liberal studies.-DUER, JOHN, 1848, A Discourse on the Life, Character and Public Services of James Kent, pp. 76, 79. In 1826 he published the first volume of his Commentaries, at the earnest solicitation of his friends, he himself having little expectation of a favourable reception by the public. He originally contemplated but two volumes, but these expanded as he proceeded, into four, the last of which appeared in 1830. They at once took the high place they have since held in legal literature, and as the universally received text-books of the science throughout the country, as by the plan of stating first the common law on each topic, and afterwards the changes introduced by decisions or statute in each state, it is adapted to the use of every portion of the Union.DUYCKINCK, EVERT A. AND GEORGE L., 1855-65-75, Cyclopædia of American Literature, ed. Simons, vol. 1, p. 527. Chancellor Kent is the most eminent personage in the annals of American jurisprudence, not excepting such men even as Marshall and Story. No one had so large a share as had Chancellor Kent in creating the American system of Equity. ... Chancellor Kent has been called, in allusion to his Commentaries, the "American Blackstone." The comparison does the Englishman the greater honor, for Kent surpassed his predecessor in almost every feature that goes to constitute a jurist. Chancellor Kent was profoundly versed in Roman law, and from that knowledge derived his wonderful symmetry and breadth of culture, whereas not one in ten of the allusions to the Roman Law in Blackstone's Commentaries is respectably accurate. The style of the English jurist is inflated and conceited, that of Kent is easy, natural, and vigorous.-HART, JOHN S., 1872, A Manual of American Literature, p. 126. Even when one reads such law-books as Chancellor Kent's standard" Commentaries on American Law," he finds matter for literary praise in the author's solid English. -RICHARDSON, CHARLES F., 1885, American Literature, 1607–1885, vol. 1, p. 514. But it is to his Commentaries that Kent owes his wide-spread and enduring fame. The first book placed in the hands of the American law student; the source to which the experienced practitioner, after wearying himself among the crudities of other elementary writers and irreconcilable disagreements of judicial decisions, still resorts with confidence; an authority of the supremest influence in our courts; these Commentaries have thus far been without a rival, and probably can never be displaced so long as our present system of jurisprudence prevails.-BROWNE, IRVING, 1894, Short Studies of Great Lawyers, p. 224. Richard Henry Wilde Richard Henry Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, September 24, 1789. His father, a merchant, emigrated to Baltimore, Md., in 1797, and died bankrupt in 1802. widow removed to Augusta, Ga., where she kept a small shop and educated her family. Richard was admitted to the bar in 1809, became Attorney-General of Georgia, and in 1815 was elected to Congress. He was in Congress again from 1828 to 1835, and then went to Europe, and passed nearly five years in Italy. In Florence he found documents which threw new light upon the life of Dante, and discovered Giotto's portrait of him on the wall of the Chapel of the Bargello. On his return home, Mr. Wilde published, in 1842,"Conjectures and Researches concerning the Love, Madness, and Imprisonment of Torquato Tasso," with translations of several of Tasso's poems. He also wrote the first volume of a projected life of Dante. In 1844 he removed to New Orleans, where he practised his profession, and occupied the chair of Common Law in the University of Louisiana till his death, which took place, September 10, 1847.-JOHNSON, ROSSITER, 1875, Little Classics, Authors, p. 245. GENERAL Has acquired much reputation as a poet, and especially as the author of a little piece entitled "My Life is Like the Summer Rose," whose claim to originality has been made the subject of repeated and reiterated attack and defence. Upon the whole it is hardly worth quarrelling about. Far better verses are to be found in every second newspaper we take up.POE, EDGAR ALLAN, 1841, A Chapter on Autography, Works, eds. Stedman and Woodberry, vol. IX, p. 230. The romantic love, the madness, and imprisonment of Tasso had become a subject of curious controversy, and he entered into the investigation "with the enthusiasm of a poet, and the patience and accuracy of a case-hunter," and produced a work, published since his return to the United States, in which the questions concerning Tasso are most ably discussed, and lights are thrown upon them by his letters, and by some of his sonnets, which last are rendered into English with rare felicity.GRISWOLD, RUFUS W., 1842, The Poets and Poetry of America, p. 76. Besides his investigation in the literature of Dante he made a special study of the vexed question connected with the life of Tasso. The result of this he gave to the public on his return to America in his "Conjectures and Researches concerning the Love, Madness, and Imprisonment of Torquato Tasso," a work of diligent scholarship, in which the elaborate argument is enlivened by the elegance of the frequent original translations of the sonnets. In this he maintains the sanity of Tasso, and traces the progress of the intrigue with the Princess Lenora D'Este as the key of the poet's difficulties.-DUYCKINCK, EVERT A. AND GEORGE L., 185565-75, Cyclopædia of American Literature, ed. Simons, vol. 1, p. 806. I know, however, in the whole range of imitative verse, no line superior, perhaps I should say none equal, to that in Wilde's celebrated nameless poem. Yet as if grieving to efface All vestige of the human race, On that lone shore loud moans the sea. Here the employment of monosyllables, of long vowels and of liquids, without harsh consonantal sounds, together with the significance of the words themselves, gives to the verse a force of expression seldom if ever surpassed.-MARSH, GEORGE P., 1860, Lectures on the English Language, Lecture xxv. Mr Wilde was [one day] surprised to find in a Georgia newspaper a Greek Ode, purporting to have been written by Alcæus, an early Eolian poet of somewhat obscure fame, and it was claimed that Mr. Wilde's verses were simply a translation of this Ode, the ideas in both being almost identi cal. As Mr. Wilde had never heard of Alcæus, he was much puzzled to account for this resemblance of the two poems. At the suggestion of a friend, the Greek Ode was sent to Mr. Binney for examination and criticism. He at once, much to the relief of Mr. Wilde, pronounced it a forgery, pointing out wherein its style differed from that of the classical Greek. It turned out afterwards that the Ode in question had been written by an Oxford scholar on a wager that no one in that University was sufficiently familiar with the style of the early Greek poets to detect the counterfeit. To carry out this scheme, he had translated Mr. Wilde's verses into Greek. STILLÉ, CHARLES J., 1870, Memoir of Horace Binney, Jr. The stanzas beginning "My life is like the summer rose" have a curious history. Mr. Wilde had a brother James, an officer in the United States army, who, on his return from the Seminole war, told numerous entertaining stories of his adventures in Florida. This suggested to Richard the idea of a song supposed to be sung by a European held captive among the savages of the Florida coast; and these stanzas, which were intended as the beginning of a longer poem, were the result. Mr. Anthony Barclay, of Savannah, translated the poem into Greek, and afterward somebody started the story that Wilde had stolen it from the Greek of Alcæus. Georgia Historical Society has published a little volume to set the matter right.JOHNSON, ROSSITER, 1875, Little Classics, Authors, p. 246. The These "Stanzas" were not the work of a "single-poem-writer," for the author wrote other finished and beautiful short poems that have been undeservedly forgotten.-ONDERDONK, JAMES L., 190001, History of American Verse (16101897), p. 164. Grace Aguilar 1816-1847 Grace Aguilar (born 1816, died 1847), authoress of moral tales and religious tracts, was a Jewess of Spanish extraction. For the shortness of her life, her works are very numerous. They may be divided as follows: Two historic novels, "The Vale of Cedars," a story of the Jews in Spain during the fifteenth century, and "The Days of Bruce," which remains the most popular of her works; they are written in the heroic style fit for the mouths of the knights of bygone days or the heroes of modern melodrama, and, but for the entire absence of humor, would recall "Ivanhoe" and the "Talisman;' three domestic stories, "Home Influence," "The Mother's Recompense, and "Woman's Friendship;" and a collection of short stories, "Home Scenes and Heart Studies," the general character of which is like Miss Edgeworth's tales, though again the style is for the most part heroic, and humour absent; "The Women of Israel,' a series of short sketches of some of the notable women in ancient Jewish history; and a few religious treatises, the most important being "The Spirit of Judaism," in which she defends the purity of her religon against the perversions and persecutions of Christianity. She died at Frankfort.-SANDERS, LLOYD C., ed., 1887, Celebrities of the Century, p. 23. PERSONAL Grace Aguilar was extremely fond of. music; she had been taught the piano from infancy; and, in 1831, commenced the harp. She sang pleasingly, preferred English songs, invariably selecting them for the beauty or sentiment of the words. She was also passionately fond of dancing; and her cheerful, lively manners, in the society of her young friends, would scarcely have led any to imagine how deeply she felt and pondered the serious and solemn subjects which afterwards formed the labour of her life. She enjoyed all that was innocent; but the sacred feeling of duty always regulated her conduct.-HALE,SARAH JOSEPHA, 1852, Woman's Record, p. 162. She was a "woman of Israel," truthful, We upright, charitable, just and true. echo the sentiment we read many years ago on her monument: "Let her own works praise her in the gates."-HALL, SAMUEL CARTER, 1883, Retrospect of a Long Life, p. 414. In person she was not at all the typical Jewess. She had soft but expressive grey eyes, and that brown hair which only wants a touch of gold to make it almost auburn. Above the middle height, she was slender to a degree, imparting an air of fragility -with regular features, and an oval face that easily lighted up. Her voice was clear-toned, though gentle, and her manners were essentially what is understood by ladylike. She was devoted to her parents, and proud of having been entirely educated by them, save for an interval in early childhood, too brief to be worth recording. She was proud, too, of being descended from philosophers, physicians, and statesmen of Spain, although they existed under conditions, difficult to realize or wholly to excuse. . Indeed, in remembering Grace Aguilar, I always think more of her moral elevation than of her genius; so tender was her conscience, so charitable were her judgments, and so generous her sympathies.- CROSLAND, MRS. NEWTON (CAMILLA TOULMIN), 1893, Landmarks of a Literary Life, pp. 171, 175. GENERAL All of these works are highly creditable to the literary taste and talents of the writer; and they have a value beyond stamp of truth, piety, and love, and an what the highest genius could give-the earnest desire to do good to her fellowbeings. HALE, SARAH JOSEPHA, 1852, Woman's Record, p. 162. All her novels are of a highly sentimental character, and mainly deal with the ordinary incidents of domestic life. Like the rest of her writings, they evince an intensely religious temperament, but one free from sectarian prejudice. - LEE, SIDNEY, 1885, Dictionary of Natural Biography, vol. I, p. 180. Her "Days of Bruce" is a wonderful production for a girl of little more than twenty; and her romance, "The Martyr," shows how well she was versed in Spanish history. CROSLAND, MRS. NEWTON (CAMILLA TOULMIN), 1893, Landmarks of a Literary Life, p. 173. In her religious writings Miss Aguilar's attitude was defensive. Despite her almost exclusive intercourse with Christians and her utter lack of prejudice, her purpose, apparently, was to equip English Jewesses with arguments against conversionists. She inveighed against formalism, and laid stress upon knowledge of Jewish history and the Hebrew language. In view of the neglect of the latter by women (to whom she modestly confined her expostulations), she constantly pleaded for the reading of the Scriptures in the English version. Her interest in the reform movement was deep; yet, despite her attitude toward tradition, she observed ritual ordinances punctiliously. Her last work was a sketch of the "History of the Jews in England, written for "Chambers's Miscellany." In point of style it is the most finished of her productions, free from the exuberances and redundancies that disfigure the tales-published, for the most part, posthumously by her mother. The defects of her style are mainly chargeable to youth. SZOLD, HENRIETTA, 1901, The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 1, p. 275. Thomas Frognall Dibdin 1776-1847 Bibliographer, a nephew of Charles Dibdin, was born at Calcutta in 1776. Having lost both parents when hardly four years of age, he was brought up by a maternal uncle, studied at St. John's College, Oxford, tried law, but took orders in 1804. Librarian to Lord Spencer, he proceeded D. D. in 1825; held the vicarage of Exning near Newmarket and the rectory of St. Mary's, Bryanston Square, London; and died 18th November 1847. Among his works were "Bibliomania" (1809); "The Bibliographical Decameron" (1817); "Bibliotheca Spenceriana" (1814-15); "Bibliographical Tour in France and Germany" (1821); "Reminiscences of a Literary Life" (1836); and "Bibliographical tour in the Northern Counties of England and Scotland" (1838). -PATRICK AND GROOME, eds., 1897, Chambers's Biographical Dictionary, p. 297. PERSONAL I knew him in his later years, and found him full of literary information, and as eager to communicate as I was to receive it. He was small in stature, with a countenance expressive of much firmness, and a profusion of gray hair.-MACKENZIE, R. SHELTON, 1854, ed. Noctes Ambrosiana, vol. I, p. 214, note. At the Roxburghe sale the edition of Boccaccio printed by Valdarfer sold for the enormous sum of 2,260l., and to commemorate this Dibdin proposed that several of the leading bibliophiles should dine together on the day. Eighteen met at the St. Alban's Tavern, in St. Alban's Street (now Waterloo Place), on 17 June 1812, with Lord Spencer as president, and Dibdin as vice-president. This was the beginning of the existence of the Roxburghe Club. The number of members was ultimately increased to thirty-one, and each member was expected to produce a reprint of some rare volume of English literature. In spite of the worthless character of some of the early publications (of which it was said that when they were unique there was already one copy too many in existence), and of the ridicule thrown on the club by the publication of Haslewood's "Roxburghe Revels," this was the parent of the publishing societies established in this country, which have done so much for English history and antiquities, to say nothing of other branches of literature; and Dibdin must be credited with being the originator of the proposal.-LUARD, REV. H. R., 1888, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XV, p. 7. GENERAL Mr. Dibdin has now been for many years employed in composing and compiling some of the most expensive, thickest, largest and heaviest octavos which have ever issued from the press. The volume which is now before us, not the last we presume, is certainly not the least of the Dibdin family. The "Bibliotheca Spenceriana" beats in breadth-the "Bibliographical Decameron" and "Bibliographical Tour" in height, or, as he would say, in tallness, but, for thickness and specific gravity, the intellectual, as well as material, pound weight, we will back "The Library Companion" against any of them. In all his long, many and weighty labours, Mr. Dibdin seems to have had but one object in view, and that neither a very good-natured nor in him a very gracious one: his ambition has been to raise a laugh at the expense of a very innocent, but not very wise, body of men,-the collectors of scarce and black-letter books. Under the masque of more than common zeal in their pursuit, and of affectionate regard for their persons, he has bestowed much complimentary sarcasm upon the one, and placed the other with great gravity in exceedingly ludicrous situations.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1825, Quarterly Review, vol. 32, 152. p. |