ter that he was a constable and had been sent from the Old Bailey
to fetch her husband's watch. When the recorder returned home and found
he had lost his watch, it is to be feared that Lady Sylvester lost her
usual equanimity. _Apropos_ of these stories Lord Campbell tells--how,
at the opening period of his professional career, soon after the
publication of his 'Nisi Prius Reports,' he on circuit successfully
defended a prisoner charged with a criminal offence; and how, whilst the
success of his advocacy was still quickening his pulses, he discovered
that his late client, with whom he held a confidential conversation, had
contrived to relieve him of his pocket-book, full of bank-notes. As soon
as the presiding judge, Lord Chief Baron Macdonald, heard of the mishap
of the reporting barrister, he exclaimed, "What! does Mr. Campbell think
that no one is entitled to _take notes_ in court except himself?"

By the urbane placidity which marked the utterance of his happiest
speeches, Sir Nicholas Bacon often recalled to his hearers the courteous
easiness of More's _repartees_. Keeping his own pace in society, as well
as in the Court of Chancery, neither satire nor importunity could ruffle
or confuse him. When Elizabeth, looking disdainfully at his modest
country mansion, told him that the place was too small, he answered with
the flattery of gratitude, "Not so, madam, your highness has made me too
great for my house." Leicester having suddenly asked him his opinion of
two aspirants for court favor, he responded on the spur of the moment,
"By my troth, my lord, the one is a grave councillor: the other is a
proper young man, and so he will be as long as he lives." To the queen,
who pressed him for his sentiments respecting the effect of
monopolies--a delicate question for a subject to speak his mind
upon--he answered, with conciliatory lightness, "Madam, will you have me
speak the truth? _Licentia_ omnes deteriores sumus." In court he used to
say, "Let us stay a little, that we may have done the sooner." But
notwithstanding his deliberation and the stutter that hindered his
utterances, he could be quicker than the quickest, and sharper than the
most acrid, as the loquacious barrister discovered who was suddenly
checked in a course of pert talkativeness by this tart remark from the
stammering Lord Keeper: "There is a difference between you and me,--for
me it is a pain to s-speak, for you a pain to hold your tongue." That
the famil