The seisin of the husband, for a _transitory instant only_, when the
same act which gives him the estate conveys it also out of him again,
(as where, by a fine, land is granted to a man, and he immediately
renders it back by the same fine,) such a seisin will not entitle the
wife to dower: for the land was merely _in transitu_, and never rested
in the husband, the grant and render being one continued act. But if the
land abides in him for the interval of but a _single moment_, it seems
that the wife shall be endowed thereof.--_Black. Comm._ book ii. c. 8.
p. 132.
The author adds in a note: “This doctrine was extended very far by a
jury in Wales, where the father and son were both hanged in one cart,
but the son was supposed to have survived the father, _by appearing to
struggle longest_; whereby he became seised of an estate in fee by
survivorship, in consequence of which seisin his widow had a verdict for
her dower.”--_Cro. Eliz._ 503.[520]
AN UNINTENTIONAL IMITATION EXTEMPORE _of the 196th and 7th stanzas of
the 2d canto of Don Juan_.
A mother bending o’er her child in prayer.
An arm outstretch’d to save a conquer’d foe.
The daughter’s bosom to the father’s lips laid bare.
The Horatii when they woo’d the blow
That say’d a nation’s blood, a young girl fair
Tending a dying husband’s bed of woe,
Are beautiful; but, oh, nor dead nor living.
Is aught so beautiful as woman wrong’d forgiving.
For there she is, the being who hath leant
In lone confiding love and weakness all
On us--whose unreproaching heart is rent
By our deed; yet on our cheek but fall
A tear, or be a sigh but spent.
She sinks upon the breast whence sprang the gall
That bitter’d her heart’s blood, and there caressing.
For pain and misery accords a blessing.----
_Note for the Editor._--“An unintentional imitation” may sound something
like a solecism, although a very little reflection will prove it to be
far otherwise. I had been reading Don Juan till I had it by heart, and
nightly spouted to the moon Julia’s letter and the invocation to the
isles of Greece. I had a love fracas; a reconciliation, as one of the
two alternative natural consequences, took place, and the foregoing were
part of some propitiatory measures that effected it. At the time of
writing them I had no more idea of imitating Byron, than has my Lord
Chief Justice Best, in his charge to the jury in a newspaper cause, or
crim. con. I wrote them rapidly, scarcely lifting my pen till they were
finished, and certainly without bestowing a word or thought on any
thing, except the image I pursued; but my mind had received a deep
impression from my late reading, and my thoughts assumed the form they
did from it, unknown to me. Some months afterwards, I was reciting the
passage from Byron alluded to; I had heard something like it; I repeated
it: I was more struck; I rack’d my brain and my lady’s letter-box, and
made this discovery.