had
come so near to existence as to be entered into the Vice-Chancellor's book
for his signature, which it wanted, as was not seen till Mr. Frend exposed
it: in fact, the statute had never actually passed.

There is an absurd mistake in Gunning's[446] _Reminiscences of Cambridge_.
In quoting a passage of Mr. Frend's pamphlet, which was very obnoxious to
the existing Government, it is printed that the poor market-women
complained that they were to be _scotched_ a quarter of their wages by
taxation; and attention is called to the word by its being three times
printed in italics. In the pamphlet it is "sconced"; that very common old
word for fined or mulcted.

Lord Lyndhurst,[447] who has [1863] just passed away under a load of years
and honors, was Mr. Frend's private pupil at Cambridge. At the time of the
celebrated trial, he and two others amused themselves, and vented the
feeling which was very strong among the undergraduates, by chalking the
walls of Cambridge with "Frend for ever!" While thus engaged in what, using
the term legally, we are probably to call his first publication, he and his
friends were surprised by the proctors. Flight and chase followed of
course: Copley and one of the others, Serjeant Rough,[448] escaped: the
{199} third, whose name I forget, but who afterwards, I have been told was
a bishop,[449] being lame, was captured and impositioned. Looking at the
Cambridge Calendar to verify the fact that Copley was an undergraduate at
the time, I find that there are but two other men in the list of honors of
his year whose names are now widely remembered. And they were both
celebrated schoolmasters; Butler[450] of Harrow, and Tate[451] of Richmond.

But Mr. Frend had another noted pupil. I once had a conversation with a
very remarkable man, who was generally called "Place,[452] the tailor," but
who was politician, political economist, etc., etc. He sat in the room
above his shop--he was then a thriving master tailor at Charing
Cross--surrounded by books enough for nine, to shame a proverb. The blue
books alone, cut up into strips, would have measured Great Britain for
oh-no-we-never-mention-'ems, the Highlands included. I cannot find a
biography of this worthy and able man. I happened to mention William Frend,
and he said, "Ah! my old master, as I always call him. Many and many a
time, and year after year, did he come in every {200} now and then to give
me instruction, while I was sitting on the board, w