The Lawyers of Dickens-Land (having been for many years an enthu siastic member of that order) in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Bennettsville. His resting place was a veritable bovver of
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floral tributes from various bar asso ciations and his many friends, all mak ing a last testimonial of the great esteem in which he was held.
Bennettsville, S. C.
The Lawyers of Dickens-Land BY DENIS JE. BEHEN OF THE PITTSBURGH, PA., BAR DICKENS' amazing versatility in creating types of character, in becoming a part of them and in making them think and talk and act so realistic ally, is nowhere more in evidence than in his characterizations of types of men of law. When we consider his short clerkship in an attorney's office and his limited experience as a law reporter, it is astonishing with what familiarity he makes use of the technique of legal forms and phraseology and describes legal manners and customs. Satire and caricature require an intimate knowledge of the subject, yet to lawyers themselves there are no more delicious bits of this phase of Dickens' humor than those con tained in his pictures of courts and lawyers, and his accounts of legal trials. His descriptions of the Chancery Court in "Bleak House," of Doctors' Commons in "David Copperfield," and of the Old Bailey in "Great Expectations"; his re ports of the famous cases of Bardell v. Pickwick, in "Pickwick Papers," of Rex v. Darnley, in "The Tale of Two Cities," and of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, in "Bleak House"; and his delineations of all his lawyer-characters, though reflecting the ludicrous squint of the satirist, have the technical touch of the master. And such is the power of the artist, that the lawyer who loves his Dickens, while reading of these court scenes and legal
lights, will suppress the wince that fol lows the treading of his professional toes, to join in the universal chuckle over the follies of humanity and the unmasked pretensions of the sciolist and the hypocrite. How many lawyers have not appreciated what a difficult witness Sam Weller makes, in his cross-examina tion by Sergeant Buzfuz, and have not sympathized with the learned crossexaminer in his discomfiture when he finally thinks better to drop the witness altogether. What a fluent opening is that of Mrs. Bardell's counsel, so pat in its statement of his client's case, so flattering in its unction of the jury, so characteristic in its exaggeration of all that bears on his own side and its belittlement of all that appertains to Pick wick's. There may be still heard in our courts any day much of this Buzfuzzian style of oratory, which seeks to bamboozle a jury by flattery, and makes a mountain of evidence out of every little mole-hill of circumstance. Among the gallery of portraits, gro tesque and otherwise, which go to make up the inhabitants of Dickens-land, we find many lawyers. Dickens has intro duced almost forty men of law into his different romances,1 every one — even 1 In "David Copperfield" there are six — Uriah Hcep, Mr. Wickfield, Tommy Traddles, Mr. Spikcr, Francis Spenlow and Mr. Jorkins; in
