er in Chancery, and well known not only
for his Law books, but also for his Life of St. Paul) where I used to
dream and think and jot down Proverbial morsels on odd bits of paper
which gradually grew to be a book. Lewin once, I remember, picked up
from the wastepaper basket these lines which he admired much, and asked
me where they came from:

"For that a true philosophy commandeth an innocent life,
And the unguilty spirit is lighter than a linnet's heart."

They occur in my Essay on Ridicule, first series, so I had to confess as
found out.

When my book appeared Lewin offered to review it for me in the _Literary
Gazette_, then edited by his friend Mr. Landon, L.E.L.'s brother. An
unusual rush of business just then coming in to him, and the editor
pressing for copy, Lewin begged me to write the Article myself, to which
I most reluctantly assented; resolving however to be quite impartial.
The result was that when I handed the critique to my busy friend, he
quickly said after a hurried glance, "Why, this won't do at all; you
have cut yourself up cruelly, instead of praising, as you ought to have
done. I must do it myself, I suppose. Here, copy out this Opinion for
me, if you can read it: it's Mr. Brodie's, and I can't." With that he
threw my MS. into the wastepaper basket, and I did his work for him,
whilst he commended me with due vigour, and sent his clerk off with a
too kind verdict in hot haste to the expectant editor.

The mention of Brodie reminds me that I spent a year copying old deeds
in his murky chamber, 49 Lincoln's Inn Fields, where nobody could read
his handwriting except his clerk (appropriately yclept Inkpen), and
when _he_ couldn't it was handed back to Mr. Brodie for exposition,
wherein if he himself failed, as was sometimes the case, he had to write
a new Opinion. Inkpen was a character, as a self-taught entomologist,
breeding in me then the rabies of collecting moths and beetles, as a
couple of boxes full of such can still prove. He lived at Chelsea, near
the Botanical Gardens there; and attributed his wonderful finds of
strange insects in his own pocket-handkerchief garden to stray
caterpillars and flies, &c., that came his way from among the packets of
foreign plants. He used also to catch small fowl on passengers' coats
and blank walls, as he passed on his daily walks to his office and back,
having pill-boxes in his pocket, and pins inside his hat to secure the
spoil. In the course of ye