A Chancery judge once
        had the kindness
              to inform me,
           as one
               of a company of
             some hundred
               and fifty men
             and women not
              labouring under
                   any suspicions of lunacy,
         that the Court of Chancery,
           though the shining
               subject of much popular prejudice
         (at which point
             I thought the judge's eye
                had a cast
                       in my direction),
          was almost immaculate.

    There had been,
           he admitted,
         a trivial blemish
              or so
                   in its rate of progress,
           but this was exaggerated
            and had been entirely
                  owing to the
         "parsimony of the public,"
            which guilty public,
         it appeared,
          had been
             until lately
                  bent in the most
                      determined manner on
                           by no means
                         enlarging the number
                               of Chancery judges appointed
          --I believe
               by Richard the Second,
           but any other king
            will do as well.

    This seemed
           to me
               too profound a joke
          to be
              inserted in the body
                   of this book or
         I should have restored it
               to Conversation Kenge
              or to Mr. Vholes,
           with one
              or other of whom
             I think it
                must have originated.

    In such mouths
         I might have coupled it
               with an apt quotation
             from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:

    "My nature is subdued To
         what it works in,
           like the dyer's hand:
        Pity me,
           then,
         and wish I were renewed!"

    But as it is wholesome
         that the parsimonious public
            should know
         what has been doing,
           and still is doing,
         in this connexion,
           I mention here
             that everything set
                   forth in these pages
                 concerning the Court of Chancery
                is substantially true,
         and within the truth.

    The case of Gridley
        is in no essential
              altered from
                   one of actual occurrence,
           made public
               by a disinterested person
             who was professionally
                  acquainted with the whole
                       of the monstrous wrong
                     from beginning to end.

    At the present moment
         (August,
           1853)
          there is a suit
             before the court
                  which was
                      commenced nearly twenty years ago,
           in which
               from thirty to forty counsel
              have been known
                  to appear at one time,
         in which costs
              have been
                  incurred to the amount
                       of seventy thousand pounds,
           which is A FRIENDLY SUIT,
         and which is
           (I am assured)
          no nearer to its termination
              now than
             when it was begun.

    There is another well-known suit
           in Chancery,
         not yet decided,
         which was commenced
             before the close
                   of the last century and
                 in which more than
                      double the amount
                           of seventy thousand pounds
                    has been
                          swallowed up in costs.

    If I wanted
           other authorities
               for Jarndyce and Jarndyce,
           I could
              rain them on these pages,
         to the shame of
          --a parsimonious public.

    There is
          only one other point
         on which
             I offer
                   a word of remark.

    The possibility of
         what is called spontaneous combustion
            has been denied
         since the death
               of Mr. Krook;
     and my good friend
            Mr. Lewes
         (quite mistaken,
           as he soon found,
         in supposing the thing
              to have been abandoned
                   by all authorities)
          published some ingenious
            letters to me
                   at the time
             when that event was chronicled,
               arguing that spontaneous combustion
                could not possibly be.

    I have no
          need to observe
         that I
              do not wilfully or negligently
                  mislead my readers and that
         before I wrote
             that description
               I took pains
                   to investigate the subject.

    There are
           about thirty cases on record,
          of which the most famous,
         that of
            the Countess Cornelia de
                   Baudi Cesenate,
           was minutely
              investigated and described
                   by Giuseppe Bianchini,
         a prebendary of Verona,
           otherwise distinguished in letters,
         who published an account
               of it
             at Verona
               in 1731,
           which he afterwards
              republished at Rome.

    The appearances,
           beyond all rational doubt,
         observed in
             that case
                are the appearances
                      observed in Mr. Krook's case.