John Campbell, 1st Baron Campbell

Its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is for those who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and to discuss legal doctrines.

There is nothing so dangerous, wrote Lord Campbell, as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry.

A layman is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a lawyer would never employ.

Mr. Sidney Lee himself supplies us with an example of this.

The error is indeed a venial one, but it is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or one of the craft.

But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence.

Let a non-professional man, however acute, writes Lord Campbell again, presume to talk law or to draw illustrations from legal science in discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable absurdity.

And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He had a deep technical knowledge of the law, and an easy familiarity with some of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence.