on that occasion. If Mr.
Pickwick had been called he would have been cross-examined. Let us
imagine for a moment what that cross-examination would have been. Suppose
merely for the sake of example that that operation had been performed by
my honourable and learned friend the Attorney-General. Cannot you
imagine how in the first place he would forcibly but firmly have
interrogated Mr. Pickwick with regard to his conduct after the cricket
match at Muggleton; how he would have asked him whether he was prepared
to admit, or whether he was prepared to deny, that he was drunk upon that
occasion? Could you not imagine how my honourable and learned friend,
passing on from that topic, would have alluded to what I think he would
have termed the disgraceful incident when, on the 1st of September, Mr.
Pickwick was found in a wheelbarrow on the ground of Captain Boldwig, and
was removed to the public pound, from which he was only extricated by the
violence of his friends and servant? Passing on from that topic, would
not my honourable and learned friend have reminded him of how he had been
bound over at Ipswich before Mr. Nupkins, together with his friend Mr.
Tupman, and called upon to find bail for good behaviour for six months?
Then in conclusion how my friend would have turned to that incident in
the double-bedded room at Ipswich, at the Great White Horse, and how my
learned friend, with that skill which he possesses, would, bit by bit, by
slow degrees, have extricated from that miserable man the confession that
he had been found in that double-bedded room, a spinster lady being there
at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, what would have been left of Mr.
Pickwick after that process had been gone through? His only relief would
have been to write to the _Times_ newspaper, and to complain of cross-
examination.

Indeed, no notice of this case, as indeed no reference to the lawyers of
"Pickwick," would be regarded as in any sense complete that did not
include the remarkable forensic efforts of Serjeant Buzfuz. Oft read,
oft recited, oft quoted, it stands to-day, perhaps, the best-known speech
ever delivered at the Bar.

We are told that the speech of Serjeant Snubbin was long and emphatic,
but at any rate it was ineffective, and that learned gentleman committed
a grave error in entrusting the cross-examination of Mr. Winkle to Mr.
Phunky. Now it does sometimes happen, in the course of a case, that
owing to the absence of