His face was rubicund, and not without keenness; but the most remarkable thing about him was the crown of his head, which was bald, and shone like polished ivory, nothing more white, smooth, and lustrous.

Some people have said that he wore false calves, probably because his black silk stockings never exhibited a wrinkle; they might just as well have said that he waddled, because his boots creaked; for these last, which were always without a speck, and polished as his crown, though of a different hue, did creak, as he walked rather slowly.

I cannot say that I ever saw him walk fast.
He had a handsome practice, and might have died a very rich man, much richer than he did, had he not been in the habit of giving rather expensive dinners to certain great people, who gave him nothing in return, except their company; I could never discover his reasons for doing so, as he always appeared to me a remarkably quiet man, by nature averse to noise and bustle; but in all dispositions there are anomalies.

I have already said that he lived in a handsome house, and I may as well here add that he had a very handsome wife, who both dressed and talked exceedingly well.
So I sat behind the deal desk, engaged in copying documents of various kinds; and in the apartment in which I sat, and in the adjoining ones, there were others, some of whom likewise copied documents, while some were engaged in the yet more difficult task of drawing them up; and some of these, sons of nobody, were paid for the work they did, whilst others, like myself, sons of somebody, paid for being permitted to work, which, as our principal observed, was but reasonable, forasmuch as we not unfrequently utterly spoiled the greater part of the work intrusted to our hands.[45] [Illustration: WILLIAM SIMPSON From a portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A.
Mr.Simpson was Chamberlain of the city of Norwich and Treasurer of the county of Norfolk.

He was Town-Clerk of Norwich in 1826, and has an interest in connection with George Borrow in that Borrow was articled to him as a lawyer's clerk and describes him in _Wild Wales_ as 'the greatest solicitor in East Anglia--indeed I may say the prince of all English solicitors.' The portrait hangs in the Black Friars Hall, Norwich.] And he goes on to tell us that he studied the Welsh language and later the Danish; his master said that his inattention would assuredly make him a bankrupt, and his father sighed over his eccentric and impracticable son.