Abstract

A Great Judicial Magistrate

The article presents information on the book "Lemuel Shaw: Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, 1830-1860," by Frederick Hathaway Chase. Shaw seems to have been wanting in the forethought displayed by so many of his Boston, Massachusetts contemporaries, which made the task of writing their biographies chiefly the mechanical one of transcription and condensation of voluminous notes. Chase recognizes to the full the handicaps under which he labors. He tells that "the work of the biographer of a judge is largely completed when he has traced his life from the cradle to the bench," and that there is little more to be said of the years of the busy lawyer "than of the life of the busy merchant engrossed in forwarding profitable ventures."