could not have been wholly a legal dry-as-dust: for the man
who could have gravely entered Bardell _v._ Pickwick in his notes and
have quoted a passage must have had a share of humour.

Most people know that it is a strict principle that "hearsay evidence" of
an utterance will not be accepted in lieu of that of the person to whom
the remark was made. Neither can we think it out of probability that
such an objection may have been made by some over punctilious judge
wishing to restrain Sam's exuberance. A Scotch judge once quoted in
court a passage from _The Antiquary_ in which he said the true view of an
intricate point was given; but then Scott was a lawyer.

It is requisite, says Mr. John Pitt Taylor (p. 500) speaking of "hearsay
evidence" that whatever facts a witness speaks, he should be confined to
those lying within his own knowledge. For every witness should give his
testimony on oath, and should be subject to cross examination. But
testimony from the relation of third persons cannot be subject to these
tests. This rule of exclusion has been recognised as a fundamental
principle of the law of evidence ever since the time of Charles II. To
this he adds a note, with all due gravity: "The rule excluding heresay
evidence, or rather the mode in which that rule is frequently
misunderstood in Courts of Justice, is amusingly caricatured by Mr.
Dickens _in his report_ of the case of Bardell _v._ Pickwick, p. 367."

Bardell _v._ Pickwick! He thus puts it with the many thousand or tens of
thousand cases quoted, and he has even found a place for it in his index
of places. He then goes on to quote the passage, just as he would quote
from Barnwall and Adolphus.

How sagacious--full of legal point--is Boz's comment on Winkle's
incoherent evidence. Phunky asked him whether he had any reason to
suppose that Pickwick was about to be married. "'Oh no; certainly not,'
replied Mr. Winkle with so much eagerness, that Mr. Phunky ought to have
got him out of the box with all possible dispatch. Lawyers hold out that
there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses: a reluctant witness,
and a too willing witness;" and most true it is. Both commit themselves
in each case, but in different ways. The matter of the former, and the
manner of the latter do the mischief. The ideal witness affects
indifference, and is as impartial as the record of a phonograph. It is
wonderful where Boz learned all this. No doubt from his friend