_What is a Lawyer?_--A lawyer is a man with a pale face and sunken eyes;
he passes much time in two small rooms in one of the inns of court; he
is surrounded with sheets of foolscap folio paper, tied up with a red
string; he has more books than one could read in a year, or comprehend
in seven; he walks slowly, speaks hesitatingly, and receives fees from
those who visit him, for giving "hypothetical answers" to "specious
questions."
_What is a Doctor?_--A doctor, _videlicit_ an M.D., is a sedate-looking
personage; he listens calmly to the story of your ailments; if your eye
and skin be yellow, he shrewdly remarks that you have the jaundice; he
feels your pulse, writes two or three unintelligible lines of Latin, for
which you pay him a guinea; he keeps a chariot, and one man-servant. The
standard board behind, _intended_ for a footman, is fearfully beset with
spikes, to prevent little boys from riding at the doctor's expense. He
ingeniously lets himself in and out of his vehicle, by means of a strap
attached to the steps, so contrived, that when in, he can dexterously
cause the steps to follow. His servant is a coachman abroad, and a
footman, valet, and butler at home.
_What is an Author?_--He is a man who weaves words into sentences; he
dissects the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, and
ingeniously dovetails the pieces together again, so that their real
owners can scarcely recognise them. He is furnished with a pair of
scissors and a pot of paste. He frequents the Chapter Coffee-house by
day, and the Cider-Cellar by night. He ruralises at Hampstead or
Holloway, and perhaps once a year steams it to Margate. He talks
largely, and forms the nucleus of a knot of acquaintances, who look up
to him as an oracle. He is always _going_ to set about some work of
great importance; he writes a page, becomes out of humour with the
subject, and begins another, which shares the same fate. His coat is
something the worse for wear; his wife is the only person in the world
who is blind to his transcendant abilities; and he has too much to do in
cultivating his own genius, to descend to the minutias of his children's
education.