BOUCHIN
(His Curious Pleadings.)

This Civilian printed a second edition of his “ Pleadings,” at Paris, in 1620. This work is very curious, and contains a great many love stories. The first plea is, on the case of one pretended to be under age who was accused and brought to trial, for having said in several places that a married woman was criminally connected with the curate of her parish. The second against a young woman accused of having by a pretended charm hindered the consummation of a marriage. The third against a son, accused as a criminal by hit father. The fourth, for a husbandman condemned in a fine, for stealing some bread-dough in a time of famine. The fifth, touching the preference of creditors, and privileged persons, at the sale of goods left by an ecclesiastic. The sixth, on a charivary, or burlesque music, given to a woman that was married again immediately after the death of her husband. They who had given it, the next day demanded money of the new married couple for the charge they had been at; and being refused, they brought them before a judge, who ordered them a small sum. The married folks appealed from the sentence. Bouchin concluded by the evidence that it was ill judged, and the appeal good. He leaves no manner of commonplace untouched;

he begins with praising virginity, and widowers who do not marry again; then he proceeds to declaim against second marriages; and especially against the impatience of widows who marry too hastily, and against the impudence of old men that marry, and lastly against step-mothers; and then on a sudden, excuses or justifies all that he had been condemning; and confirms the whole by quotations and examples as before.

To give an idea of his motley style, I will give a specimen of it from the place where he details the inconveniences of second marriages Ibid. par. 330, and following. ⁶³.

“ So that one may say with Hesiod, that he who marries a second time

Naufragus navigat bis profundum difficile.
Ναυηγὸς πλώ ειδὶς βυθὸν αργάλενο
Hesiod. ex I. Epigram.

he is shipwrecked in a place where there is no bottom; after the death of one wife to seek a second, is, according to the opinion of the comic Philemon, to desire to float again on a sea of disquiet and misery: it is a game where chance has more share than reason, and an effect of a blank lottery, where everybody is hunting for benefits, and the luckiest get them: and it is in vain for the unlucky to complain that Cupid has not struck them with a golden dart armed with a shining point.

- - - cujus fuit aurea cuspis.
Ovid. vii. Met. Fab. 26. ver. 673.

which is the dart that begets love in hearts wounded with it; but, with that which is endowed with a contrary virtue, and creates hatred instead of love,

being quite blunt and armed only with lead.

---fugat hoc, facit illud amorem.
Idem. i. Met. Fab. ix. pag. 469.

That if there be in the wife some small remains of beauty plastered according to custom—

Quosit sit riguum pictum in pariete,
Plaut. in Merc. Act. 2. Sc. 2.

Says Plautus,

Nam isthæc veteres quæ se unguentis unctitans, interpoles
Vetulæ, edentulæ, quæ vitia corporis fuco occulunt,
Ubi sese sudor cum unguentis consociavit, illico
Itidem oient, quasi quom una multa Jura co u fun dit coquus.
Plaut. in Mostellaria, Act. 1. Sc. 2.

That if they adjust their hair with a little more artifice than ordinary—

------comptis arte manùque comis:

Ovid. i. Fast. ver. 406.

If they dip it in the water of the river Cratis or Cybaris, to make it look like thread of gold—

Electro similes faciunt auroque capillos:

Id. i. Met. ver. 315. Fab. 18.

If they never go without their chains and necklaces,

Auratis circumdata colla catenis:
Propert. lib. ii. Eleg. 1.

And if there is still any thing agreeable—

Et faciunt curâ,, ne videantur anus:
Ovid. ii. de Arte Amandi, ver. 678.

If, contrary to Sosastra in Plautus, they are complaisant and cajoling, the husband’s head aches, and he grows jealous:

Esse metus cœpit, ne jura jugalia conjux
Non bene servasset.
Idem. vii. Met. Fab. 26. ver. 715.

The wife, as susceptible of jealousy as the husband, more pale than the jealous Procris—

Palluit ut serâ lectus de vite racemus:

Idem. iii. de Arte Amandi, ver. 703.

More dry of this peccant humour, and yellower than leaves blown off’ by an ill wind, or nipped by the cold—

Frondes quas nova læsit Hyems;
Id. ib. ver. 704.

And who would not suffer her maids to enter the temple of the goddess Leucothea, if it were not to box them, may on the other hand complain with old Syra, that the husbands imagine they have greater privileges than the wives.

Ecastor lege durâ vivunt mulieres,
Multoque iniquiore miseræ, quam viri;
Nam si vir scortum duxit clam uxore, suâ,
Id si rescivit uxor, impune est viro:
Uxor vero, si clam domo egressa est foràs,
Viro fit causa, exigitur matrimonio.
Utinam lex esset eadem uxori, quæ est viro.
Plaut. in Merc. Act. 4. Sc.6.

She is susceptible of jealousy if a heifer but break into her pasture (these are the words of Oenone to Parié) or if her husband

Fundum alienum arat, incultum familiarem deserit;
Plaut. in Asinariâ, Act v. Sc. 2.

which she does not think more lawful for him than for herself. Periniquum est ut pudicitiam vir ab uxore exigat, quam ipse non prestet, says the civilian Papinian: if he takes too much liberty, or arrogates too much to himself, she commonly follows his steps:

Vitio est improba facta viri:
Ovid. ii. de Arte Amandi, ver. 400.

this, among other inconveniences of marriage, causes domestic quarrels, which happen, it may be, for want of having sacrificed to Juno Jugalis, the

inventress of marriage, who takes care of the nuptials—

Toris quæ præsidet alma maritis—
Idem. Epist. ii. Phil. Demophoon. ver. 4.

to whom Dido, desiring to marry Æneas, took care to make the first sacrifice—

Junoni ante omnes, cui jura jugalia curæ.
Virg. 4. Æneid. 49.

This ill custom, which prevailed not only at the bar, but also in the pulpit, is by degrees abolished. Mr de la Bruyere expresses this change very well. ' It is not an age ago, says he, that a French book was a certain number of Latin pages, with a few lines or a few words of French scattered here and there in them. Passages, instances, citations, would not suffice barely as such. Ovid and Catullus decided finally concerning marriages and wills, and came with the Pandects to the assistance of widows and orphans; sacred and prophane did not shun each other; they were got together even into the pulpit; where St Cyril, Horace, St Cyprian, and Lucretius, talked alternately. The poets were of the opinion of St Austin and all the fathers; they would talk Latin a long while together, and even Greek, before the women and sextons. A man must have a prodigious deal of learning to preach so ill. Different times, different customs: the text is still Latin; all the discourse is French, and fine French; the gospel itself is hardly cited. Now a man needs but little learning to preach well. The advocates were not alone in this practice; the advocates-general and first presidents ran into it as well as they. This appears by the collections of harangues pronounced at the opening of sessions, and arrêts pronounced in the red robe. Mr Balzac very much disapproved this custom, and makes merry with a first president who in the middle of his speech made an apostrophe

to the attorneys, telling them they might learn their duty in the Scholiast on Homer, on ten or a dozen verses which he recited. I myself heard him (the first president) in the midst of his discourse, addressing himself to the attorneys and solicitors in these words: “ Homer will teach you your duty, ye attorneys, in the tenth Iliad, and Eustathius, the Scholiast of Homer, on these verses which he repeated by heart to the number of ten or twelve, without any regard to numbers or accents, to let you see he was truly free from laws. This is an old distemper of the law courts of Paris, with which your Fayes, your Pibracs, your Brissons, tho’ really learned and excellent men, were miserably affected.’

Let us observe, by the way, that even when this mixture of literature was most in use at the bar, there were advocates who seldom cited classic authors, either because they saw the abuse, or they wanted the art to apply their learning, or else they were not well versed in the classics. Their method was certainly better than the other; for what purpose could this train of citations serve, but to withdraw the judge’s attention, and hide the true state of the cause? An advocate such as our Stephen Bouchin, pleaded more for himself than for his client; he laboured more to shew his own learning than to prepare the judges to determine rightly. What could Homer’s verses signify to the judges of Beaune? Did the people understand Greek in these little jurisdictions? It is to be feared that the opposite extreme, which we have since fallen into, will make the advocates despise learning as a piece of furniture entirely useless: but what can be done? It is destined that the remedy of one abuse should be the introduction of another. More modern advocates can manage to be tedious and long winded without classical quotation; and in respect to time, the pedant of the sixteenth century could scarcely prove more merciless than his counterpart of the nineteenth. In certain equity practice it is well known that half the oratory is utterly useless, and neither has, nor on the part of the advocate is expected to have, any effect on the bench. “ The court awards it, and the law allows it,” for the benefit of the professors.—Ed. ⁶⁴—Art.Bouchin.