SPEECH: LONDON, MAY 1, 1853



[At a dinner given by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House, on the
above date, Mr. Justice Talfourd proposed as a toast "Anglo-Saxon
Literature," and alluded to Mr. Dickens as having employed fiction
as a means of awakening attention to the condition of the oppressed
and suffering classes:-]

"Mr. Dickens replied to this toast in a graceful and playful
strain. In the former part of the evening, in reply to a toast on
the chancery department, Vice-Chancellor Wood, who spoke in the
absence of the Lord Chancellor, made a sort of defence of the Court
of Chancery, not distinctly alluding to Bleak House, but evidently
not without reference to it. The amount of what he said was, that
the Court had received a great many more hard opinions than it
merited; that they had been parsimoniously obliged to perform a
great amount of business by a very inadequate number of judges; but
that more recently the number of judges had been increased to
seven, and there was reason to hope that all business brought
before it would now be performed without unnecessary delay.

"Mr. Dickens alluded playfully to this item of intelligence; said
he was exceedingly happy to hear it, as he trusted now that a suit,
in which he was greatly interested, would speedily come to an end.
I heard a little by-conversation between Mr. Dickens and a