'You may as well do that as anything else, I suppose ?' I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and professions so equally; and I told him so.
'What is a proctor, Steerforth ?' said I.
'Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,' replied Steerforth.

'He is, to some faded courts held in Doctors' Commons,--a lazy old nook near St.
Paul's Churchyard--what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity.
He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things, would have terminated about two hundred years ago.

I can tell you best what he is, by telling you what Doctors' Commons is.

It's a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards.

It's a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people's wills and people's marriages, and disputes among ships and boats.' 'Nonsense, Steerforth!' I exclaimed.