estate in him. Again, one cannot be seised of a bare right, and therefore these are excluded: ex. gra., if a disseisee bargained and sold the land to a stranger while out of possession, the legal right of entry would not pass from him to the stranger. So far all is clear and consistent. But if a third inference was to be drawn at all sounding like what we have here, it appears to me that it should have been that one cannot hold a contingency to an use, just as he has already laid down that an abeyance cannot be to an use: ex. gra., as he tells us in his Division, that on a feoffment to A. for life with remainder to the right heirs of B., to the use of C. (which is an abeyance), C. will only presently take an estate for the life of A., so would he lay down the same law if the feoffment had been to A. for life with remainder to B. if he shall return from Rome (which would be a contingency). And this might be a fair inference from the fact that B. would not be "seised" in dominico or ut de feodo, and so fulfil the words of the statute, until he returned. But I cannot understand the argument that because of this word "seised" a contingent use cannot be executed out of a seisin in fee-simple.

The reason which follows, why "the statute meant not to execute contingent uses" is one which he also alleges in the Argument. Before Popham and others had given their judgment, one can conceive that Bacon was unaware or had forgotten that such a contingent use as the one in that case-a contingent remainder to an unborn child-might have been limited at common law by the feoffee; but the repetition of the opinion here after that judgment, of which Bacon certainly had a full report before him, is puzzling. The only attempt at explanation I can make (and that not satisfactory to my own mind) is that the contingent use seemed to Bacon essentially distinct from the contingent remainder, inasmuch as the former allowed the subsequent estates to vest and acted as a shifting use to devest them afterwards when the contingency arose, whereas the latter made all subsequent estates, like itself, to be in abeyance: the feoffee, therefore, before the statute could not create legal estates with incidents similar to those of the contingent uses until the contingency arose. See in the Division, p. 438.

NOTE E. (Page 428.)

HERE again I think there is a confusion between the estate of the feoffee and the right to the use. If any inference at all is to be drawn from the occurrence of the words "title" and "right" here, it would seem to be that (contrary to Bacon's former position) a right as well as an actual possession may be held to an use.

USE OF THE LAW.

PREFACE.

I HAVE already expressed my belief that this treatise is not Bacon's.

In point of external evidence the case stands thus:

1. The only two MSS. I am aware of, Harl. MS. 1201. and Sloane MS. 4263., have no name of the author. They are different texts, though more resembling each other than either does the first printed one.

2. The imprimatur for the first edition-at least it bears date the year of the first edition,-is given by Archbishop Sancroft, cited in Blackburn's edition of Bacon, as follows::

"June 3rd, 1629. Sam. Maunsell, utter barrister of the Middle Temple, having perused this book, attested it to be very useful to all young students of the law and worthy to be imprinted:" and then, "Lambethæ Junii 4° 1629, ut in alienâ arte alieno nixus judicio, libelli hujus imprimendi potestatem facio.

"Johannes Jefferay."

This does not seem to me to be the way in which a work known or supposed to come from such an author would be spoken of or licensed; and, accordingly,

3. The first shape in which it appeared in that same year was anonymous, and (as appears by the preface) without any suspicion of the authorship, by way of companion to a fragment of Sir John Doderidge's English Lawyer. This latter is there entitled "The Lawyers' Light: or a due direction for the study of the law, &c., by the reverend and learned professor thereof, J. D. ;" and the Use of the Law is "annexed for affinity of the subject." The Preface is also anonymous, and

begins thus: "I present unto you two children, the one whereof hath an author unknown, the other a father deceased." Now Doderidge was already dead, and must have been easily recognisable as "J. D." He would seem therefore to be the author referred to in the second branch of the sentence; and hence I conclude again that the author of the other Tract was unknown.

4. Both these treatises were next published by other parties, the "Assignees of John Moore, Esqre.," separately, and in consecutive years; Doderidge's treatise,-now complete and with its new title,-in 1631, with a preface stating it "was heretofore obscurely printed by an imperfect copy from a then unknown author," and was now printed "in fair light by the author's own copy written (for the most part) with his own hand:"—all of which I extract to show that these publishers knew the value of an authentic pedigree when they could furnish it.

The other treatise, The Use of the Law, they published in 1630, annexed to the Maxims, then first published, but with no preface at all. There is a general title-page and also a particular one to each treatise; and that to The Use of the Law has "by the Lord Verulam, Viscount of St. Albans." Now this cannot have been the title actually on a MS. coming, or textually copied, from Bacon's own Collections, unless we suppose it to have been written within the last few years of Bacon's life.' I do not think any one will believe, on the internal evidence, that it can be the product of his maturer years; and I therefore conclude that it was not from any MS. evidence, but on some other now unknown ground, that the Assignees of John Moore gave the authorship to Bacon.

5. It must however be said that the authorship so asserted seems to have been accepted without hesitation from that time forward, unless Archbishop Sancroft's note may be taken to imply a doubt. It is in Rawley's list at the end of the Resuscitatio, and the printed book was, with other of Bacon's then published works, given to (and now remains in) Gray's Inn Library, by Bacon's relations Nathaniel and Francis,

in 1635.

Generally, I think, late copies of Bacon's authentic works continue the "Mr. F. Bacon," or "Sir F. Bacon," of the originals they are taken from.