Note 90 — XII THE METHODS OF LEGAL SCIENCE

Lord Mansfield in the eighteenth century or Lord Cairns in the nineteenth, perhaps the two most philosophical minds that have adorned the English bench, would doubtless, if they had written on law, have shone as legal writers far more than Lord St. Leonards; and it is of course true that in order to have a fair comparison our great judges ought to be thrown into the English scale. But the form in which their wisdom appears makes it less available than the form in which we have that of the Romans. So too Lord Justice Mellish, the most solid and cogent reasoner of his time, and Lord Bowen, the most subtle and ingenious, would doubtless have produced admirable work had not their time been absorbed by their forensic and judicial duties.