[10] Alcofribaz Nazier is well known as Rabelais' anagram, formed from his own name. It was the signature under which he published his Pantagruel.—Trans.
[11] A piece of typtological dictation of the same kind has been recently sent to me. Here it is:
Iutptuoloer
eirfieuebn
ssoagprsti
Read successively, from top to bottom, one letter of each line, beginning on the left, and the sense will appear as follows: "Je suis trop fatiguê pour les obtenir." ("I am too tired to obtain them.")
[12] This and the next dictation are rhymed verse in the original French.—Trans.
[13] In rhymed verses in the original.—Trans.
[14] A word of recent origin, meaning ambitious or pretentious people who want "to arrive," the would-be's. The word forms the title of a recent French novel, L'Arriviste, and (translated) of an English one called The Climber.—Trans.
[15] So in the original. Possibly M. Sardou was under the mistaken impression that Gulliver was a nom-de-plume for Dean Swift.—Trans.
[16] This inclination is really 82°, reckoning from the south, or 98° (90 + 8°), counting from the north (see Fig. A).
[17] I have just found in my library a book which was sent to me in 1888 by the author, Major-General Drayson, the title of which is Thirty Thousand Years of the Earth's Past History, Read by Aid of the Discovery of the Second Rotation of the Earth. This second rotation would take place about an axis the pole of which would be 29° 25' 47" from the pole of the daily rotation, about 270 right ascension, and would be accomplished in 32,682 years. The author seeks to explain it by the glacial periods and variations of climate. But his work is full of confusions most strange and even unpardonable in a man versed in astronomical studies. The truth is that this General Drayson (who died several years ago) was not an astronomer.