The Barrister; Or, Strictures on the Education Proper for the Bar. Or, Strictures on the Education Proper for the Bar (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1818. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... 36th year of Edward the Third, when an Act passed to enforce the practice of pleading in English, and in recording those pleas in Latin. The knowledge of French therefore should not be superficial, but critical; not only as it is necessary to the profession, but to every Gentleman also; it being in a manner, the only current language of Europe. Lord Chesterfield's maxim aprofondissez, may therefore be applied with great propriety to the knowledge of this fashionable language, as it may also to every point of the Barrister's education; and probably no better opportunity will offer to attack it grammatically, than at the University. Future habits of conversation with the natives, will give that fluency of pronunciation and accuracy of idiom, so essentially requisite to the education of a Gentleman; in the mean time, the strong traits of good sense expressed in polished phrases with which their Philosophers and Historians abound; the urbanity, the sprightliness, the jeu d'esprit of their comic drama; the warm imagination, the fine turned periods of their Poets, are the flowers, and the fruit, which may be gathered in his progress; and will cause the attainment of this fashionable language to be equally a pleasurable, as a profitable acquisition. The other modern languages are not so necessary a part of our education; but the Italian and Spanish will amply repay in the pleasure of the pursuit, the trouble of the chace; to these may be added, without any great share of attention, the Portuguese; it being somewhat of a dialect of the Spanish; and asCAMOENS has, by his Lusiad, rendered that language immortal, it is more than the price of his labour, who is at home with the Spaniards, to be also domesticated with the Portuguese. The knowledge of these, or of the remaini...