Lord Campbell says that Lord Eldon [supposed to have been the most
learned of judges] need not have been ashamed of the law of Shakespeare.
And as an instance of the way in which the members of the legal
profession look up to the mighty author I may mention that some years
ago, at a banquet of a Shakespeare Society at which Mr. Sidney Lee and
the writer were present, the late Mr. Crump, Q.C., editor of the _Law
Times_, who probably possessed as much knowledge of law as any man in
this country, declared that to tell him that the plays were not written
by the greatest lawyer the world has ever seen, or ever would see, was
to tell him what he had sufficient knowledge of law to know to be
nonsense. He said also that he was not ashamed to confess that he
himself, though he had some reputation for knowledge of law, did not
possess sufficient legal knowledge to realise one quarter of the law
that was contained in the Shakespeare plays.
It requires a philologist to fully appreciate what the enormous
vocabulary employed in the plays implies.
Max Muller in his "Science of Language," Vol. I, 1899, p. 379, says
"A well-educated person in England, who has been at a public school and
at the University .
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