Not all commentators on trial by jury took so idealistic a view of that institution as Blackstone. Pope, with characteristic cynicisms whenever he adverted to some hallowed organization of supposed virtue, enshrined his doubts in the oft-quoted couplet:

a couplet in which Pope, in fact, ascribes to the judges of his time a greater concern for the welfare of jurymen than seems warranted, makes it appear, mistakenly, that judge and jury are acting together as if a combined magistracy operating against the interests of the accused, the wretches.

The scholarly, juridical perception of the fundamental distinction between iudicia facere and recognoscere veritatem has a long history. In the nineteenth century Brunner, in his earlier study of Carolingian law, had mentioned the terminological imprecision that blurred the distinction: ‘The factual distinction between “declaring the truth” and “declaring the law” was not strictly adhered to in expression.’ For this blurring of a fundamental legal distinction he has a reference to Jacob Grimm, by the 1860s the Altmeister of the study of Germanic Antiquity; veritatem dicere is shown in Carolingian documentary use in support of Grimm's distinction between, on the one hand, ‘das abgelegte gültige zeugnis entschied die sache’ (the valid testification decided the charge) and ‘der zeuge indem er die wahrheit sagte’ (the witness in delivering the truth), and on the other hand, “urtheilend” (judging):