SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does 'not necessarily preclude subsequent revise.]
Sir Walter Scott as a Judge. By John Chisholm. (Edinburgh : W. Green. '7s. 6d. net.)—The present Sheriff of Roxburgh, Berwick, -and Selkirk has disinterred from his Court archives- the judgments which his great predecessor, Sir Walter Scott, delivered as Sheriff of Selkirk between 1799 and 1832. The " Shirra's " office was /evidently not a sinecure, for, though he seldom attended the Court, he read the pleadings and wrote his judgments, which were delivered by his Sheriff Substitute. Scott was also till 1830 a Clerk of the Court of Session, where he had to pass his days in term time. His vast literary output is all the more astonishing when we realize how much of his working day had to be given to the law. Sheriff Chishohn has annotated Scott's leading judgments in a very attract- ive way, and shows how they illustrate the Waverley Novels. especially The Antiquary, which is full of Scotalaw. In one ease the plaintiff, a girl, pleaded that the defendant was in meditations fugae, and asked for a warrant against him, Peter Peebles la Bedgazintkt asks the English Magistrate.: " Is't here they eon the • • Eriaget. By B. E. Croker. Loudon: Hutchinson and Co. [Cs. net.]
fugie warrants ? " And Edie Ochiltree, referring to these warrants' admits : " I has some skeel in them." Many lovers of Scott will be interested in this scholarly hook.
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