THE CHOICE OF THE LAW AS A PROFESSION

George Elliot, Daniel Deronda (1876) (" 'You don't repent the choice of the law as a profession, Rex?' said his father. 'There is no profession I would choose before it,' said Rex. 'I should l like to end my life as a first-rate judge, and help to draw up a code. I reverse the famous dictum--I should say, "Give me something to do with the making the laws, and let who will make the songs." 'You will have to stow in an immense amount of rubbish, I suppose--that's the worst of it,' said the Rector. 'I don't see that law-rubbish is worse than any other sort. It is not so bad as the rubbishy literature that people choke their minds with. It doesn't make one so dull. Our wittiest men have often been lawyers. Any orderly way of looking at things as cases and evidence seems to me better than a perpetual wash of odds and ends bearing on nothing in particular. And then, from a higher point of view, the foundations and the growth of law makes the most interesting aspects of philosophy and history. Of course there is a good deal that is troublesome, drudging, perhaps exasperating. But the great prizes in life can't be won easily--I see that.' " Id. at 613-614.).

George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-1872).