Burke's Will.

For a copy of this will, see Bissett's "Life of Burke," vol. ii. p. 440, ad ed.

his wife, absolutely, his entire estate, with no restrictions upon any part of it. His vocabulary was copious and famous. Of him it was first said, referring to his redundant adjectives, what, in our times, has been applied to Choate, "He drives a substantive and six." With this habit of language, and forgetting that he could not possibly accomplish his object so surely as by simply saying, "To my wife, Jane Mary Burke, and her heirs," he actually used instead of these last three technical words, seventy-one words, and then added the following forty-four words to clinch the seventy-one: "I hope these words are sufficient to express the absolute, unconditional, and unlimited right of complete ownership I mean to give her to the said lands and goods; and I trust, that no words or surplusage or ambiguity may vitiate this my clear intention." This was written. in August 1794. But in July 1795, he made a codicil and devises the same lands over again to his "wife, Jane Mary Burke, and her heirs forever."

We thus have presented to our readers a portion of the evidence on the issue, whether or not Shakespeare was professionally versed in the "nice sharp quillets of the law,"

"And by their verdict [the issue] is determined."

If the verdict is in the affirmative, it may safely be concluded, that neither a motion in arrest of judgment nor a writ of error will lie.

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