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31 L. Q. Rev. 96 (1915)
Right Hon. Arthur Cohen, K.C. (1830-1914)

handle is hein.journals/lqr31 and id is 112 raw text is: THE RIGHT HON. ART11UR COHEN, K.C. (1830-1914). T HE death of Arthur Cohen has robbed the Bar of one of'its glories. He came as near as a man could to the ideal of an English lawyer. This assertion may no doubt appear to the ordinary public to savour of exaggeration. But it is in reality the simplest, statement of an indubitable fact. The public, however, know very little about legal eminence. Even 'of the men who have obtained high judicial office (unless they have also been very conspicuous either as politicians or by their success in winning verdicts as advocates) English gentlemen outside the legal profession remember very little. The modern Roll of. Glory is the Dictionary of National Biography. The notices therein of the most distinguished among our lawyers are, as a general rule, few and scanty. You will find, for example, in that excellent work but short lives of Sir George Mellish and of Sir James Shaw Wiles. But for these eminent men such notices mean not so much posthumous celebrity as the 'little wreck of fame'. No reader would imagine for a moment that Mellish was the greatest common law lawyer of the mid-Victorian era, of whom it was often said that his opinion in a client's favour was worth as much as a judgment of the Exchequer Chamber-then the very strongest of our common law Courts of Appeal-or realize that Willes, besides his high repute as a judge, possessed a depth and width of legal learning not often found among English lawyers. Yet both Mellish and Willes attained to high judicial office. It is certain therefore that the real greatness and distinction of Cohen, who did not become a judge of the High Court, though he was at one time offered a judgeship, must be little known to any but barristers or judges. In a legal periodical, therefore, it is well that the nature and the causes of Arthur Cohen's eminence should receive some real, though it must be from the nature of things very inadequate, notice. The high esteem in which Cohen was held, from the time he joined the Bar to the moment of his death, by every lawyer capable of appreciating legal reputation and high professional character, was due to the combination in him of two characteristics. He was endowed with great mental power which, applied to the study of law, gave him legal genius. He also possessed a magnanimity or a greatness of soul not invariably found in men of powerful under- standing; and this earned for him (though I think to himself

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