verty. A rude representation of this seal may be seen in the Historia Minor of Matthew Paris. This emblem was corrupted by the lawyers, the successors to the Knights Templars, into a Pegasus, and to this day remains their Crest. The Society of the Middle Temple adopted the emblem of a lamb bearing a banner, or in heraldic language, a device of a field argent charged with a eross gules, and upon the nombrel thereof a holy lamb with its nimbus and banner. These two devices, which are scattered very liberally over all the gateways in the Temple, gave rise to the following

Epigram.

As by the Templars' holds you go,
The horse and lamb, display'd

In emblematic figures, shew

The merits of their trade.

That clients may infer from thence
How just is their profession,
The lamb sets forth their innocence,
The horse their expedition.

O happy Britons! happy isle!
Let foreign nations say,

Where you get justice without guile,
And law without delay.

Answer.

Deluded men, these holds forego,
Nor trust such cunning elves;
Those artful emblems tend to show
Their clients, not themselves.

"Tis all a trick, these are all shams
By which they mean to cheat you;
But have a care!-for you're the lambs;
And they the wolves that eat you.

Nor let the thought of no delay,

To these their courts misguide you, 'Tis you're the showy horse, and they The jockeys that will ride you!

POETICAL REPORTS.

Cowper, (neither the Lord Chancellor nor the Reporter, but the Poet,) in one of those beautiful and playful letters which he used to write,

"While his cold heart to ruin ran darkly the while," has made the following humorous proposal for the publication of poetical law-reports:

"Poetical reports of Law-cases are not very common; yet it appears to me desirable that they should be so ;-many advantages would accrue from such a measure. They would in the

first place be more commodiously deposited in the memory, just as linen, grocery, and other articles, when neatly packed, are known to occupy less room, and to lie more conveniently in any trunk, chest, or box, to which they may be committed. In the next place, being divested of that infinite circumlocution, and the endless embarrassment in which they are involved by it, they would become surprisingly intelligible in comparison with their present obscurity. And lastly, they would by that means be rendered susceptible of musical embellishment; and instead of being quoted in the country with that dull monotony, which is so wearisome to by-standers, and frequently lulls even the judges themselves to sleep, might be rehearsed in recitative, which would have an admirable effect in keeping the attention fixed and lively, and would not fail to disperse that heavy atmosphere of sadness and gravity which hangs over the jurisprudence of our country. I remember many years ago being informed by a relation of mine, who in his youth had applied himself to the study of the law, that one of his fellow students, a gentleman of sprightly parts, and very respectable talents, of the poetical kind, did actually engage in the prosecution of such a design, for reasons I suppose somewhat similar to, if not the same with, those I have now suggested. He began with Coke's Institutes, a book so rugged in its style that an

attempt to polish it seemed an Herculean labour, and not less arduous and difficult than it would be to give the smoothness of a rabbit's fur to the prickly back of a hedgehog. But he succeeded to admiration, as you will perceive by the following specimen, which is all that my said relation could recollect of the performance.

Tenant in fee

Simple is he,

And need neither quake nor quiver,
Who hath his lands

Free from demands

To him and his heirs for ever."

The hint which he thus threw out, Cowper has himself acted upon, and has given in the following lines a report of the case of

Nose v. Eyes.

Between Nose and Eyes a sad contest arose,
The Spectacles set them unhappily wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.

So Tongue was the Lawyer and argued the cause With a great deal of skill and a wig full of

learning,

While Chief Baron Ear sat to balance the laws,

So famed for his talent of nicely discerning.

"In behalf of the Nose it will quickly appear, And your Lordship," he said "will undoubtedly

find,

That the nose has had spectacles always to wear, Which amounts to possession time out of mind.” Then holding the spectacles up to the Court, "Your Lordship observes they are made with a straddle

As wide as the ridge of the nose is, in short

Designed to sit close to it just like a saddle.

Again, would your Lordship a moment suppose

(Tis a case that has happen'd, and may be again) That the visage or countenance had not a nose, Pray who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?

On the whole, it appears, and my argument shews,
With a reasoning the Court will never condemn,
That the spectacles plainly are made for the nose
And the nose was as plainly intended for them."

Then shifting his side as a lawyer knows how,
He pleaded again in behalf of the eyes,
But what were his arguments few people know,

For the Court did not think they were equally wise.
So his Lordship decreed with a grave solemn tone,
Decisive and clear without one if or but,
That whenever the nose put his spectacles on,
By day-light or candle-light, eyes should be shut.
(Life of Hayley, vol. i. p. 298.)