On the Bench his lips would often be seen to move, but no sound proceeding from them would be heard by the Bar. The associate sitting beneath him could tell another tale. … ‘What a damned fool that man is!’ — then, after an interval, ‘Eh, not such a damned fool as I thought;’ then another interval. ‘Egad, it is I that was the damned fool.’

— J.B. Atlay on Lord Lyndhurst, in The Victorian Chancellors, 1906