FORTESCUE, SIR JOHN, K.stones an eminent lawyer, lord chief justice of England in the reign of Henry VI., and afterwards chan cellor. The date of his birth is unknown, and of the place it is only conjectured that it was somewhere in Devonshire, to which county his family belonged. lie is said by Tanner to have been educated at Oxford. He was a member of Lincoln's Inn ; in 1430 became serjeants at-law ; in 1441 King's eerjeant; and in 1442 chief justice of the King's Bench. lie accompanied Henry VI. into Scotland, and was included in the bill which attainted the king, Queen Margaret, Prince Edward, and their chief adherents of high treason. In 1643 he fled with Queen Margaret to the continent, and remained there in exile till the return of the queen to England. lie is believed to have been sub sequently permitted to live in England in retirement. The year of his death does not appear to be known. He wrote several works, but his great work is a treatise ' De Laudibua Legum Anglian;' a work which has been several times quoted with the highest approbation from the bench, illustrated by the notes of Selden, and recommended by such writers as St. German and Sir Walter Raleigh, in former times, and by every writer who has since given directions for the study of the law. It has been several times translated into English. It is in the form of a dialogue between himself and the young l'rince Edward, with whose education he appears to have been intrusted. The author undertakes to show that the common law was the most reasonable and the most ancient in Europa, and superior to the civil law and the laws of other countries. Ho considers at length, In particular, the mode of trial by jury ; and after examining some other points of difference between the civil and the common law, he concludes with a short account of the societies where the law of England was studied. This book, as well as the other works relating to English law of an early date, is written in a bold style, and displays many sentiments upon liberty and good government which aro very remarkable, considering the fierce and bar barous period at which they were written. "We cannot," says Chan cellor Kent, "but pause and admire a system of jurisprudence which, in so uncultivated a period of society, contained such singular and Invaluable provisions in favour of life, liberty, and property as those to which Fortescue referred. They were unprecedented In all Greek and Roman antiquity, and being preserved in some tolerable degree of freshness and vigour amidst the profound ignorance and licentious spirit of the feudal ages, they justly entitle the common law to a share of that constant and vivid eulogy which the Epglish lawyers have always liberally bestowed upon their municipal institutions." The English translation of the treaties,' De Laudibus Logum and the original Latin text, together with some notes by Mr. Amos, were published In 1825 at the expense of the University of Cambridge.
' (Kent, Commentaries • Reeve, Etstory of English Law.) FOItTIGUEIIIIA, NUCOLO, an Italian prelate, whose writings dis play little of the austerity or seriousness of a churchman, was born at Pistoja, November 7, 1674. In his youth ho studied jurisprudence, and afterwards distinguished himself by his attainments in Greek. Having published a funeral discourse in honour of Innocent XII., he was appointed secretary to the papal nuncio in Simla, and on his return to Rome, iu consequence of hie ill-health, had asituation as one of his chamberlains bestowed upon him by Clement Xl. in 1712, and was likewise made a canon of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. By another pope (Clement XII.) he expected to be raised to the dignity of cardinal; but although en encourager of both poetry and poets, that pontiff evaded from time to time the fulfilment of the promise which he appears to have made, until Fortiguerra was lying on his death bed, when he rejected the honour then proffered him In terms the reverse of courtly. Monsignor Fortiguerra's lyric poetry, in which ho showed himself au imitator of Petrarch, is now forgotten ; his fame rests entirely upon his • Ricciardetto,' an heroic-comio poem in thirty cantos. This production, which was first published with its author's name Grecianised into Carteromaco, was begun by him without any plan, merely by way of proving with what facility he could imitate Ariosto, Pulci, and Bcrni, both in regard to their style and their fertile invention of incidents ; when, at the instance of those friends for whom the first canto was hit off as • specimen, be was induced to proceed till ho completed the whole, at the rate, we are assured, of a canto per day. Little therefore is it to he wondered at that the plot should be so desultory and the incidents so extravagant. Yet, not withstanding the grotesqueness of the characters and events, and likewise the occasional carelessness of the style, this long 'improvi satore poem abounds with so much comic humour, droll satire, and happy burlesque, that it has long taken its place as a classical work of its kind, and has gone through numerous editions. There are two French translations of it ; and a German ono by Odes, the translator of Ariosto and Tasso, was published 1831-33. In English we have a poetical version of the first canto, with an introduction and notes, by the late Lord Glenbervie (1822). glicciardetto' was not published till after the author's death, which happened on the 7th of February 1735, the date of tho first edition being 1738. Fortiguerra was pro bably aware that, however it might contribute to his fame as a poet, it was not likely to advance him in the church, since many of the descriptions are more spirited than dcooroue; through much of it there is a seasoning of profanity ; and he has been not at all sparing of his satire ou the monks.