When Malone, in 1790, broached his theory, that Shakespeare had been an attorney's clerk, he cited in support of it twenty-four passages. Mr. Rushton's pamphlet brings forward ninety-five, more or less; Lord Campbell's book, one hundred and sixty. But, from what he has seen of it, the reader will not be surprised at learning that a large number of the passages cited by his Lordship must be thrown aside, as having no bearing whatever on the question of Shakespeare's legal acquirements. They evince no more legal knowledge, no greater familiarity with legal phraseology, than is apparent in the ordinary conversation of intelligent people generally, even at this day. Mr. Rushton, more systematic than his Lordship, has been also more careful; and from the pages of both we suppose that there might be selected a round hundred of phrases which could be fairly considered as having been used by Shakespeare with a consciousness of their original technicality and of their legal purport. This is not quite in the proportion of three to each of his thirty-seven plays; and if we reckon his sonnets and poems according to their lines, (and both Mr. Rushton and Lord Campbell cite from them,) the proportion falls to considerably less than three. But Malone's twenty-four instances are of nearly as much value in the consideration of the question as Lord Campbell's and Mr. Rushton's hundred; for the latter gentlemen have added little to the strength, though considerably to the number, of the array on the affirmative side of the point in dispute; and we have seen, that, of the law-phrases cited by them from Shakespeare's pages, the most recondite, as well as the most common and simple, are to be found in the works of the Chroniclers, whose very language Shakespeare used, and in those of the playwrights his contemporaries. Our new advocates of the old cause, however, quote two passages which, from the freedom with which law-phrases are scattered through them, it is worth while to reproduce here. The first is the well-known speech in the grave-digging scene of "Hamlet":-- "_Ham_. There's another: Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his _cases_, his _tenures_, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave, now, to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his _action of battery_? Humph! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his _statutes_, his _recognizances_, his _fines_, his _double vouchers_, his _recoveries_: Is this the _fine_ of his _fines_, and the _recovery_ of his _recoveries_, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his _vouchers_ vouch him no more of his _purchases_, and _double ones_, too, than the length and breadth of a pair of _indentures_? The very _conveyances_ of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the _inheritor_ himself have no more? ha?"--Act v. Sc. 1.