eard the aforesaid Hawk a-coming,
Or Buzzard on the staircase humming,
At once the fair angelic maid
Into my coal-hole I convey'd;
At once with serious look profound,
Mine eyes commencing with the ground,
I seem'd like one estranged to sleep,
'And fixed in cogitation deep,'
Sat motionless, and in my hand I
Held my 'Doctrina Placitandi,'
And though I never read a page in't,
Thanks to that shrewd, well-judging agent,
My sister's husband, Mr. Shark,
Soon got six pupils and a clerk.
Five pupils were my stint, the other
I took to compliment his mother."

Having fleeced pupils, and worked as a special pleader for a time, Mr.
Surrebutter is called to the bar; after which ceremony his action
towards 'the inferior branch' of the profession is not more dignified
than it was whilst he practised as a Special Pleader.

It appears that in Mr. Surrebutter's time (_circa_ 1780) it was usual
for a student to spend three whole years in the same pleader's chambers,
paying three hundred guineas for the course of study. Not many years
passed before students saw it was not to their advantage to spend so
long a period with the same instructor, and by the end of the century
the industrious student who could command the fees wherewith to pay for
such special tuition, usually spent a year or two in a pleader's
chambers, and another year or two in the chambers of an equity
draughtsman, or conveyancer. Lord Campbell, at the opening of the
present century, spent three years in the chambers of the eminent
Special Pleader, Mr. Tidd, of whose learning and generosity the
biographer of the Chancellors makes cordial and grateful acknowledgment.
Finding that Campbell could not afford to pay a second hundred guineas
for a second year's instruction, Tidd not only offered him the run of
his chambers without payment, but made the young Scotchman take back the
L105 which he had paid for the first twelve months.

In his later years Lord Campbell delighted to trace his legal pedigree
to the great pleader and 'pupillizer' of the last century, Tom Warren.
The chart ran thus: "Tom Warren had for pupil Sergeant Runnington, who
instructed in the mysteries of special pleading the learned Tidd, who
was the teacher of John Campbell." With honest pride and pleasant vanity
the literary Chancellor maintained that he had given the genealogical
tree another generation of forensic honor, as Solicitor General Dundas
and Vau