as well as they do him, he were a very just and righteous man; but when he has made his most of it, he leaves it, like his client, to shift for itself.  He fetches money out of his throat like a juggler; and as the rabble in the country value gentlemen by their housekeeping and their eating, so is he supposed to have so much law as he has kept commons, and the abler to deal with clients by how much the more he has devoured of Inns-of-Court mutton; and it matters not whether he keep his study so he has but kept commons.  He never ends a suit, but prunes it that it may grow the faster and yield a greater increase of strife.  The wisdom of the law is to admit of all the petty, mean, real injustices in the world, to avoid imaginary possible great ones that may perhaps fall out.  His client finds the Scripture fulfilled in him, that it is better to part with a coat too than go to law for a cloak; for, as the best laws are made of the worst manners, even so are the best lawyers of the worst men.  He hums about Westminster Hall, and returns home with his pockets like a bee with his thighs laden; and that which Horace says of an ant, Ore trahit quodcunque potest, atque addit acervo, is true of him, for he gathers all his heap with the labour of his mouth rather than his brain and hands.  He values himself, as a carman does his horse, by the money he gets, and looks down upon all that gain less as scoundrels.  The law is like that double-formed, ill-begotten monster that was kept in an intricate labyrinth and fed with men’s flesh, for it devours all that come within the mazes of it and have not a clue to find the way out again.  He has as little kindness for the Statute Law as Catholics have for the Scripture, but adores the Common Law as they do tradition, and both for the very same reason; for the Statute Law being certain, written and designed to reform and prevent corruptions and abuses in the affairs of the world (as the Scriptures are in matters of religion), he finds it many times a great obstruction to the advantage and profit of his practice; whereas the Common Law, being unwritten, or written in an unknown language which very few understand but himself, is the more pliable and easy to serve all his purposes, being utterly exposed to what interpretation and construction his interest and occasions shall at any time incline him to give it; and differs only from arbitrary power in this, that the one gives no account of itself at all, and the other such a one as is perhaps worse than none, that is implicit and not to be understood, or subject to what constructions he pleases to put upon it:—­

   Great critics in a noverint universi
   Know all men by these presents how to curse ye;
   Pedants of said and foresaid, and both Frenches,
   Pedlars, and pokie, may those rev’rend benches
   Y’ aspire to be the stocks, and may ye be
   No more call’d to the Bar, but pillory;
   Thither in triumph may ye backward