s leader "to
take Mr. Pickwick away" and "hear anything he may wish to communicate."
The party was then bowed out.

The truth was, Mr. Pickwick's attorney was too much of a social character
and of the "old family solicitor" pattern for so critical a case. The
counsel he "instructed" were unsuitable. Serjeant Snubbin was an
overworked "Chamber lawyer," whose whole time and experience was given to
furnishing "opinions" on tangled cases; so pressed was he that he took
"expedition fees" to give certain cases priority: an illegitimate
practice that now the Bar Committee would scarcely tolerate. What could
such a man know of nisi prius trials, of cross-examining or handling
witnesses? It is enough to give his portrait, as supplied by the author:

[Picture: Serjeant Snubbin, K.C.]

Mr. Serjeant Snubbin was a lantern-faced, sallow-complexioned man, of
about five-and-forty, or--as the novels say--he might be fifty. He
had that _dull-looking boiled eye_ which is often to be seen in the
heads of people who have applied themselves during many years to a
weary and laborious course of study; and which would have been
sufficient, without the additional eye-glass which dangled from a
broad black riband round his neck, to warn a stranger that he was
very near-sighted. His hair was thin and weak, which was partly
attributable to his having never devoted much time to its
arrangement, and partly to his having worn for five-and-twenty years
the forsenic wig which hung on a block beside him. The marks of hair
powder on his coat collar, and the ill-washed and worse tied white
neckerchief round his throat, showed that he had not found leisure
since he left the court to make any alteration in his dress: while
the slovenly style of the remainder of his costume warranted the
inference that his personal appearance would not have been very much
improved if he had. Books of practice, heaps of papers, and opened
letters, were scattered over the table, without any attempt at order
or arrangement; the furniture of the room was old and ricketty; the
doors of the bookcase were rotting in their hinges; the dust flew out
from the carpet in little clouds at every step; the blinds were
yellow with age and dirt; the state of everything in the room showed,
with a clearness not to be mistaken, that Mr. Serjeant Snubbin was
far too much o