LAW AND LAWYERS OF DICKENS

comes the celebrated Sergeant Buzfuz whose opening address it is safe to say will con tinue to serve as a model for future genera tions of advocates. "He began by saying that never in the whole course of his professional career — never from the very first moment of his applying himself to the study and practice of the law, had he approached a case with feelings of such deep emotion, or with such a heavy sense of the responsibility imposed upon him, a responsibility he would say which he never could have supported were he not buoyed up and sustained by a con viction so strong that it amounted to posi tive certainty, that the cause of truth and justice or in other words the cause of his much injured and most oppressed client must prevail with the highminded and in telligent dozen of men whom he now saw in the box before him. "Counsel always begin in this way, be cause it puts the jury on the very best terms with themselves and makes them think what sharp fellows they must be. A visible effect was produced immediately, several jurymen beginning to take volu minous notes with the utmost eagerness." Coupled with the mighty sergeant comes Mr. Skimpkin, while for the defendant appears the great Sergeant Snubbin (we remember his abstracted demeanor during Mr. Pickwick's call) and Mr. Phunkey. Poor Phunkey the infant barrister of but eight years standing, overwhelmed by the thought that at last his chance had come. What member of the bar who recalls his early days of practice can escape a thrill of sympathy for him when Justice Stareleigh pleasantly remarks "I never had the pleas ure of hearing the gentleman's name be fore." Then comes Mr. Perker and those strong upholders of the contingent fee, Messrs. Dodson and Fogg. Also in Pick wick is fat, flabby Mr. Solomon Pell "in a surtout which looked green one minute and brown the next; with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tint" — friend of the Lord Chancellor, who "damns his-self in confidence." But among the whole quiver-full of pol

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ished shafts which Dickens discharges he seeks no mark when he describes the selec tion of the jury. The first twelve men called seem to have been taken despite the protests of the chemist whose boy saw no difference between Epsom salts and oxalic acid, syrup of senna and laudanum. Had he only lived in the 2oth century, how he would have revelled in the spectacle of three weeks consumed in the process of securing twelve men who had not dis cussed, formed an opinion or even heard of a case with which the Russian Jew landed twenty-four hours before was con versant. In David Copperfield are the lovable but weak Mr. Wickfield and the " umble " Uriah, the majestic Mr. Spenlow and the mythical Mr. Jorkins. Here is Doctors Commons — a parallel to the Court of Chancery. (By the way, Dickens was in considerable doubt whether to make David a Proctor or a banker. Think what his readers would have missed had he chosen the latter). And speaking of Spenlow brings up his defense of the Prerogative Office. What was it after all, he asks, but a question of feeling. If the public felt that their wills were in safe keeping and took it for granted that the office was not to be made better, who was the worse for it? Nobody. Who was the better for it? All the sinecurists. Very well, then the good predominated. The law as administered in Doctors Com mons is made the subject of one of Boz's shorter sketches. A half obsolete statute of one of the Edwards forbade "brawling" and "smiting" in any church or vestry adjacent thereto and we are told how Thomas Sludberry, the defendant, as it appeared by some eight and twenty affidavits had used the words "you be blowed " in the course of a discussion with one Michael Bumple at a vestry meeting and "furthermore desired and requested to know whether the said Michael Bumple wanted anything for him self." His introduction in the Old Curiosity Shop