rld all over, at least wherever English is
known. I myself was once startled in a fashionable West End church to
hear a preacher, when emphasizing the value and necessity of Prayer, and
the certainty with which it is responded to, use this illustration: "As
Serjeant Buzfuz said to Sam Weller, '_There is little to do and plenty to
get_.'" Needless to say, an amused smile, if not a titter, passed round
the congregation. But it is the Barrister who most appreciates the
learned Serjeant. For the topics he argued and his fashion of arguing
them, bating a not excessive exaggeration, comes home to them all. Nay,
they must have a secret admiration, and fondly think how excellently well
such and such topics are put, and how they must have told with a jury.

Buzfuz, it is now well known, was drawn from a leading serjeant of his
day, Serjeant Bompas, K.C. Not so long since I was sitting by Bompas's
son, the present Judge Bompas, at dinner, and a most agreeable causeur he
was. Not only did Boz sketch the style and fashion of the serjeant, but
it is clear that Phiz drew the figure and features.

"I am the youngest son of Serjeant Bompas," Judge Bompas writes to me,
"and have never heard it doubted that the name Buzfuz was taken from my
father who was at that time considered a most successful advocate. I
think he may have been chosen for the successful advocate because he was
so successful: but I have never been able to ascertain that there was any
other special resemblance. I do not remember my father myself: he died
when I was eight years old. But I am told I am like him in face. He was
tall (five feet ten inches) and a large man, very popular, and very
excitable in his cases, so that I am told that Counsel against him used
to urge him, out of friendship, not to get so agitated. A connection of
mine who knew him well, went over to hear Charles Dickens read the Trial
Scene, to see if he at all imitated him in voice or manner, but told me
that he did not do so at all. I think, therefore, that having chosen his
name, as a writer might now that of Sir Charles Russell, he then drew a
general type of barrister, as he thought it might be satirised. My
father, like myself, was on the Western Circuit and leader of it at the
time of his death."

"I had a curious episode happen to me once. A client wrote to apply to
the court to excuse a juror on the ground that he was a chemist and had
no assistant who understood the drugs.