in the one, but ever remained a novice in the other: a novice in the law,
but a perfect master in the Welsh tongue.

Yes; very pleasant times were those, when within the womb of a lofty deal
desk, behind which I sat for some eight hours every day, transcribing
(when I imagined eyes were upon me) documents of every description in
every possible hand, Blackstone kept company with Ab Gwilym--the polished
English lawyer of the last century, who wrote long and prosy chapters on
the rights of things--with a certain wild Welshman, who some four hundred
years before that time indited immortal cowydds and odes to the wives of
Cambrian chieftains--more particularly to one Morfydd, the wife of a
certain hunchbacked dignitary called by the poet facetiously Bwa
Bach--generally terminating with the modest request of a little private
parlance beneath the greenwood bough, with no other witness than the eos,
or nightingale, a request which, if the poet himself may be believed,
rather a doubtful point, was seldom, very seldom, denied. And by what
strange chance had Ab Gwilym and Blackstone, two personages so
exceedingly different, been thus brought together? From what the reader
already knows of me, he may be quite prepared to find me reading the
former; but what could have induced me to take up Blackstone, or rather
the law?

I have ever loved to be as explicit as possible; on which account,
perhaps, I never attained to any proficiency in the law, the essence of
which is said to be ambiguity; most questions may be answered in a few
words, and this among the rest, though connected with the law. My
parents deemed it necessary that I should adopt some profession, they
named the law; the law was as agreeable to me as any other profession
within my reach, so I adopted the law, and the consequence was, that
Blackstone, probably for the first time, found himself in company with Ab
Gwilym. By adopting the law I had not ceased to be Lavengro.

So I sat behind a desk many hours in the day, ostensibly engaged in
transcribing documents of various kinds; the scene of my labours was a
strange old house, occupying one side of a long and narrow court, into
which, however, the greater number of the windows looked not, but into an
extensive garden, filled with fruit trees, in the rear of a large,
handsome house, belonging to a highly respectable gentleman, who,
moyennant un douceur considerable, had consented to instruct my father's
youngest son in