“Estates go to the issue (item) Of him last seized in infinitum; Like cow-tails, downwards, straight they tend, But never, lineally, ascend. _Canon II._ This gives the preference to males, At which a lady justly rails. _Canon V._ When lineal descendants fail, Collaterals the land may nail; So that they be (and that a bore is) De sanguine progenitores.” Little better is the style of most wills which have appeared in verse. Of these the rhyming will of Will Jackett (1789), who died in North Place, Islington, is well known:— “I leave and bequeath When I’m laid underneath, To my two loving sisters most dear, The whole of my store, Were it twice as much more, Which God’s goodness has granted me here. And that none may prevent This my will and intent, Or occasion the least of law racket; With a solemn appeal I confirm, sign, and seal, This the true Act and Deed of Will Jackett.” Such wills have naturally been seized upon by collectors of verse and oddities. But for the most part they are scarcely worth transcription in full, so that space and time may be saved by quoting a few fragments only. A will, “found in the house of an old Batchelor lately deceased” according to “The Muses’ Mirror” (1783), begins thus:— “With a mind quite at ease, in the evening of life, Unencumbered with children, relations, or wife; Not in friendship with one single creature alive, I make my last will, in the year sixty-five; How I leave my affairs, though I care not a straw, Lest a grocer should start up my true heir-at-law; Or of such in default, which would prove a worse thing, My land unbequeathed should revert to the king, I give and bequeath, be it first understood, I’m a friend, and a firm friend to the general good, And odd as I seem, was remarked from my youth, A stickler at all times for honour and truth....” Four years later Nathaniel Lloyd, Esquire, of Twickenham, followed the “old Batchelor’s” example.