But, whether the same identical person successively occupied these various situations, and, at different periods of his life, filled the rather opposite and inconsistent characters of an able General and a profound Lawyer—a skilful Courtier and an enlightened Legislator, is a doubt which has been entertained by some very respectable Writers. Nor has it passed without a question, whether the present Treatise was really composed by the person whose name it bears. Lord Littleton, indeed, is inclined to infer, that it was not written by Glanville, but by some Clergyman under his direction.[17] These doubts may serve to evince the ingenuity of those who have suggested them, but they prove nothing. When the various situations Glanville is stated to have filled are represented as incompatible, and we start at beholding the grave Lawyer divest himself of his robes to girt on the armour of the soldier, we forget the manners of the age when Glanville florished. When we suppose, that because the work is composed in Latin, it was not written by a Layman, we beg the question: and, having assumed, that no Layman, whatever his parts, whatever his application, could have been sufficiently skilled to write such Latin as our Author has employed, we pay but a sorry compliment to the age, and rather too hastily conclude that we have proved, what, indeed, we have merely taken for granted. When, in fine, we infer, that the knowledge of Law displayed in the Work, and the labor consumed in composing it, are no less inconsistent with the high and elevated station of Glanville, than incompatible with his employments, we forget, that his rise was progressive, and that, as there are but few things to which a truly great mind is inadequate, the production of a small volume upon that Law which it was daily in the habit of dispensing, ought not, whatever the merit of the work may be, to be ranked amongst the number. It must not, however, be concealed, that Mr. Selden mentions a circumstance which, at the first glance, appears to go a great way in determining the question. “I know the authority of that Treatise,” says he, in speaking of the present work, “is suspected, and some of the best and ancientest copies having the name of _E. de N._ which I have heard from diligent searchers in this kind of Learning affirmed to have been sometimes _E. de Narbrough_, and not _R. de Glanvilla_, it hath been thought to be another’s work, and of later time. But as, on the other side, I dare not be confident that it is Glanville’s, so I make little question, that it is as ancient as his time, if not his work. The _teste_ of the precedents of writs under his name, the language, especially the name of _Justitia_ always for that which we now from ancient time called _Justiciarius_, (and _Justitia_ was so used in writers under Henry the Second) and the Law delivered in it tasteth not of any later age.”[18] Though the latter part of this Extract may be reasonably thought to