Transcribed from the 1894 Roxburghe Press edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick. _A LECTURE_. With an Original Drawing of "Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz." BY FRANK LOCKWOOD, Q.C. M.P. LONDON: _THE ROXBURGHE PRESS_, _3_, _Victoria Street_, _Westminster_, AND 32, CHARING CROSS, S.W. Uniform with this Edition. CHARLES DICKENS' HEROINES AND WOMEN-FOLK: Some Thoughts Concerning Them. BY CHARLES F. RIDEAL. _With an original Drawing of Edith Dombey_. {Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz: p0.jpg} PREFATORY. At the request of my friend Lord Russell of Killowen, then Attorney-General, I delivered this lecture at the Morley Hall, Hackney, on December 13th, 1893. I had previously delivered it in the city of York at the request of some of my constituents. I feel that some apology is required for its reproduction in a more permanent form, which apology I most respectfully tender to all who may read this little book. F. L. THE LAW AND LAWYERS OF "PICKWICK." Sir CHARLES RUSSELL: I stand but for a single instant between you and our friend, Mr. Lockwood. He needs no introduction here; but I am sure I may in your name bid him a hearty welcome. Mr. FRANK LOCKWOOD: Mr. Attorney-General, Ladies and Gentlemen--It is some little time ago that I was first asked whether I was prepared to deliver a lecture. Now I am bound at the outset to confess to you that lecturing has been and is very little in my way. I spent some three years of my life at the University in avoiding lectures. But it came about that in the constituency which I have the honour to represent, it was suggested to me that it was necessary for me to give a lecture, and it was further explained to me that it did not really very much matter as to what I lectured about. I am bound to say there was a very great charm to me in the idea of lecturing my constituents. I know it does sometimes occur that constituents lecture their representatives, especially in Scotland, and I was anxious, if I might, to have an opportunity of lecturing those who had so many opportunities of reading, no doubt very useful lectures to me. But the difficulty was to find a subject. My own profession suggested itself to me as a fit topic for a lecture, but unfortunately my profession is not a popular one. I do not know how it is, but you never find a lawyer introduced either into a play or into a three-volume novel except for the purpose of exposing him as a scoundrel in the one, and having him kicked in the third act in the other. I do not know how it is, but so it is. All the heroes of fiction either in the drama or in the novel are found in the ranks--no, not in the ranks of the army, but in the officers of the army, or in the clergy. It is so in novels, it is so in dramas; Mr. Attorney-General, I believe it is so in real life.