We have given this note entire, in the author's words, that our readers may see with what attention and acumen Mr. W. reads the classics, and comments on them.

We shall now select a few of his most remarkable readings from the other six books, without any remark or reflection.

Æn. VII.

V. 808. He reads infracta for intacte, and calls it a most certain emendation.

En. VIII.

V. 206. He restores the common reading intentatum for intractatum. V. 211. For raptos he reads raptor, and calls the present reading a poor tautology. The next verse he thinks spurious. V. 461. For ab alto he reads ab arto; which he had conjectured without knowing that Markland had gone before him. V.474. For circumsonat he reads circumtonat, from conjecture; which is supported by a second-hand reading of the Medicean MS. V. 542. He thinks it a crime not to admit into the text the conjectural emendation of Heyne, Herceis for Herculeis. V. 653. He inserts his own conjecture tegebat for tenebat, and thinks that the whole learned corps will applaud him for it: 'tantum non inclamante Virgilio.'

En. IX.

V. 168. He reads from conjecture ut armis for et armis. V. 563. He reads with the MS. of Jesus Coll. candentem for candenti. V. 579. He reads ut lavo for et lavo, and thinks that this slight change of a single letter restores the text to sense and regular construction. V. 671. For coelo he reads telo, which he afterward found to be the reading of 1 MS.-V. 786. He inserts with approbation the reading of the MS. of Jesus Coll, parentum for Deorum.

En. X.

V. 9. He adopts Schrader's conjecture deus for metus. V. 188. For Crimen he reads Carmen. V. 462. He reads with MS. Jesus Coll. Cernant for Cernat. V. 620. For oneravit he reads ornavit.

En. XI.

V. 56. He thinks the true reading to be, Vulneribus fusum : yet he retains pulsum. V. 218. For armis he reads animis; which was Bryant's conjecture. V. 569. He reads at solis for et solis. V. 721. He inserts aut before sacer ales. Sacer ales, says he, haud dubiè est aquila, Jovi sacer minister fulminis; Θειος ορνις Pindari. V. 854. He embraces, with both arms, the reading of the Medicean MS. lætantem animis for fulgentem armis: but he thinks that Virgil may have written exsultantem.

Æn. XII.

V. 206. For gerebat, he reads with one MS. regebat. V. 273For alvo, he reads, with the Medicean MS. duro. V. 366. He reads, from conjecture, intonat for insonat.

Innumerable are the places in which Mr. W. has changed the common punctuation; and nearly always for the better. One defect is observable in these elegant volumes: the number of verses is only marked at the top of each page; which causes inconvenience in collating them with other editions.

ART. VIII. The Posthumous Works of Charles Fearne, Esq. Barrister at Law. Constising of a Reading on the Statute of Inrollments, Arguments in the Singular Case of General Stanwix, and a Collection of Cases and Opinions, selected from the Author's MSS. By Thomas Mitchell Shadwell, of Gray's Inn, Esq. 8vo. PP. 500. 12s. Boards. Butterworth. 1797.

As

s every thing which proceeds from the pen of so eminent a character as Mr. Fearne must be interesting to the profession to which he belonged, and of which he was so distinguished an ornament, we shall lay before our readers a somewhat detailed account of the contents of the present publication.

The first tract in the volume before us is a Reading on the Statute of Inrollments, 27 Hen. 8. c. 16. which enacts

"That no manors, lands, tenements, or other hereditaments, shall pass, alter, or change from one to another, whereby any estate of freehold or inheritance shall be made or take effect in any person or persons, or any uses thereof to be made by reason only of any bargain and sale thereof, except the said bargain and sale be made by writing indented, sealed, and inrolled in one of the King's Courts of Record at Westminster, &c.; and the same inrollment to be had and made within six months next after the date of the said writings indented," &c.

As this statute makes certain ceremonies requisite to the operation of a bargain and sale of manors, lands, tenements, or other hereditaments, our author considers what is meant by a bargain and sale, and what are the particular cases in which any sort of hereditaments can be said to pass by bargain and sale alone; which latter point, Mr. F. observes, leads to another inquiry, whether this predicament be applicable indiscriminately to all sorts of hereditaments; and if not, to what sorts its application is properly confined.-In order to trace the distinctions which Mr. Fearne proposes to offer on the subject of inrollment from their very first principles, he thinks it necessary to consider the definition and divisions of hereditaments;

this

this part of the essay we had proposed to have extracted, bug its length prevents us; we however recommend it to the attention of our professional readers, as containing nice and wellfounded distinctions.

Having discussed the nature of bargains and sales before the Statute of Inrollments, the doctrine of uses, and the statute of uses, which made a very material alteration in the ef fect as well of bargains and sales as of all other contracts and conveyances, the operation of which depended on the doctrine of uses, the author proceeds to shew that the Statute of Inrollments was passed to remedy the many and great inconveniencies introduced by the preceding statute of uses.-The inferences drawn from his reasonings on this part of the subject

are,

'That any conveyances for money by deed only, of any estate of freehold or inheritance, in any corporeal hereditaments, or in any of those incorporeal hereditaments which fall under the first branch of my division of them, are clearly within the Statute of Inrollments, and therefore require to be made in the manner, and to be perfected by the ceremonies instituted by that Statute *.

But, on the contrary, that grants by deed, whatever be the consideration of them, of any of the incorporeal hereditaments comprised in the latter branch of my division of them, are not within the said Statute, but will take effect by the execution of the deed itself, in the same manner as before that Statute.

'I shall refer, for the doctrine offered in the first of the above inferences, to the case of Lade v. Baker, reported 2 Ventris 145. 266., where a grant and assignment of a subsisting rentcharge by deed from the grantor to his son as well for a pecuniary consideration, as that of natural love and affection; the Court found themselves under a neces sity of giving it effect by way of covenant to stand seized to uses, on account of its being pleaded without attornment or inrollment.

And in support of the latter inference, I shall refer to the case of a bargain and sale of a manor, to which an advowson was appendant, by indenture not inrolled. It was held the advowson did not

* The Author, in his practice, adhered to the principle here laid down. The following observations were subjoined by him, at a very late period, to a draft of a deed of grant for conveying a reversion

in fee.

"I have perused the above draft, to which I have added a reference to a lease for a year, as that will be requisite if this be not inrolled. A reversion or remainder in fee is an hereditament within the Statute 27th Henry VIII. c. 16. of Inrollments. A grant of money is in effect a bargain and sale, and therefore will not operate without inrollment (at least without attornment, and that would be precarious since the Statute of Ann); therefore conveyances of any freehold estate in remainder or reversion require the same forms of inrolling, or of lease and release, as those of estates in possession."

pass, because not intended to pass as severed, but appendant; and as appendant it could not pass, because the manor did not, for want of Inrollment; Jenkins 265. pl. 68. Now, the appendancy of the advowson, in this case, being the only objection to its passing, it follows, that Inrollment was not necessary to pass it, had it been in gross.'

This ingenious and satisfactory essay, on a difficult and abstruse point of legal learning, is concluded with an examination of the statute 4 Anne, c. 16. s. 9. which dispenses with the attornment of tenants, and which at the first view appears to clash with the Statute of Inrollments, but which our author declares does not affect it.-These observations were delivered by the author in a Reading at Lyon's Inn in the year 1778, and are probably, as Mr. Shadwell observes in his preface, as complete as the author could make them. That he saw no sufficient reason to alter his opinion of the principles there laid down, appears in some very late instances, wherein his attention was called to the subject of that Reading in the course of professional practice.'

We are next presented with arguments in the case of the Representatives of General Stanwix and his Daughter; which were never delivered in Court, but were written for the mere purpose of shewing what could be suggested in so extraordinary a case.-General Stanwix and his daughter set sail in the same ship from Ireland for England; the veffel was cast away in its passage; and not a single person on board was saved. Now it happened that the representative of the father to his personal estate was not the same person who would have been entitled to it as representative to the daughter, in case she had survived her father.-In favour of the daughter's survivorship, Mr. Fearne contends that the rule of the Roman law, which says, "Where no evidence is to the contrary, a child shall be presumed to have outlived its parent," should be adopted under the singular circumstances of the present case, as well as in all ordinary instances.-In favour of the representative of the father, he contends that it is certain that he died possessed of the property in dispute, and that there is only a presumption in favour of the daughter's having done so; and that therefore the certainty should be preferred to the presumption.-These remarks are rather ingenious than satisfactory, and are written with a degree of quickness which almost amounts to petulance.

The remainder of the volume is occupied with cases and opinions, from which we shall transcribe one of the shortest, that our readers may be enabled to form for themselves some opinion of this work; which has been published for the benefit of the author's widow.-The opinion which we shall extract

goes

de

goes to shew that a devise may take effect, notwithstanding a partial error in the description of the devisees, if they be otherwise ascertainable; and it agrees with a late decision in the Court of King's Bench, reported in vol. vi. of Term Reports, p. 671. Though there were no persons to answer the whole of the description in the executory devise to A. B. and C. N., because those persons were not grandaughters of the testator, yet, I think, no one can doubt that they were the persons meant by the testator. They are properly described by their respective names; and the testator could not mean grand-daughters, when he had none, but must have meant those nieces whom he mentions by their names. If the description, upon the whole, leaves no doubt as to the persons intended by the testator, it seems sufficient to entitle them; for, nihil facit error nominis, cum corpore constat. It seems, by the Civil Law, a devise by a wrong description, if the mistake appears so that the testator's intention can be known, will be good; and so a description of a devise, erroneous in part, does not avoid the disposition, if such devisce is otherwise ascertainable. A devise by a grandfather to his daughter's son, by the name of his son, was held good, per Newdig. 7. 2 Sid. 149. And so was a devise to William, eldest son of Charles, though such eldest son's name was not William, but Andrew. Vide Finch Rep. 403. And a devise to the mayor, chamberlain, and governors of the hospital of Saint Bartholomew, was good, though that was not their name of incorporation. All these cases, (and some others that might be cited,) seem to depend on the person's being ascertained by other circumstances, or parts of the description, when that part of the description which does not apply was clearly a mistake, and not intended to denote or annex to the person of the devisee any quality, circumstance, or restriction, as an intended requisite to his taking the estate; and then, as it can only be considered as an intended further description of the person ascertainable without it, we may fairly deem it surplusage. It would be strange to construe it as subverting or vitiating the very description it was meant to aid, and render more explicit. Now, in the present case, as the word grand-daughters cannot be considered as intended to describe persons so related to the testator, or as an intended quality, circumstance or restriction of description requisite to entitle the devisees, when the testator had no grand-daughter at all; and, as the rest of the description, abstracted from that, applies to and ascertains by name, persons who were the testator's nieces; I conceive, that the description of grand-daughters is clearly a mistake for nieces; and the persons intended are ascertained, independent of it, by his naming the persons who were his nieces. I, therefore, apprehend, that the devise was good to his nieces named therein, with the mistaken addition of grand-daughters instead of nieces, as it would have been if the word grand-daughters had been omitted. It is clear the testator could not mean grand-daughters, when he had none; it seems equally clear, that he intended the two persons he has described by their names.'

We hope that the charitable intent of this publication will be accomplished.

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