The Judge. Quite so, Mr. MEREDITH. I may say for myself that I fully understand you. But perhaps it would be well to explain yourself a leetle more clearly for the benefit of the jury.
Mr. George Meredith. My Lord, I will put it with a convincing brevity, not indeed a dust-scattering brevity fit only for the mumbling recluse, who perchance in this grey London marching Eastward at break of naked morn, daintily protruding a pinkest foot out of compassing clouds, copiously takes inside of him doses of what is denied to his external bat-resembling vision, but with the sharp brevity of a rotifer astir in that curative compartment of a homoeopathic globule—so I, humorously purposeful in the midst, of sallow—
The Judge. One moment, Mr. MEREDITH. Have you considered—
Mr. G.M. Consideration, my Lord, is of them that sit revolving within themselves the mountainously mouse-productive problems of the overtoppingly catastrophic backward ages of empurpled brain-distorting puzzledom: for puzzles, as I have elsewhere said, come in rattle-boxes, they are actually children's toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Nor have the antic bobbings—
Sir Charles Russell (cross-examining). Really, Mr. MEREDITH, I fail to follow you. Would it not be possible—
Mr. G.M. Ay, there you have it. In truth, the question looks like a paragraph in a newspaper, upon which a Leading Article sits, dutifully arousing the fat worm of sarcastic humour under the ribs of cradled citizens, with an exposure of its excellent folly. For the word. That is it. The word is Archon, with extended hand summoning the collaboratorically ordained, misbegotten brood of shock-shilling pamphlets to his regal presence—
The Judge (testily). No doubt that would be so, but it brings us no nearer to a decision upon the question of humour in the particular passage of the book which contains the alleged libel.
Sir Charles Russell. Perhaps I can shorten matters, my Lord. Now, Mr. MEREDITH, will you be kind enough to explain the following passage from a book with which you may perhaps be acquainted. (Reads.) "This he can promise to his points. As for otherwhere than at the festive, Commerce invoked is a Goddess that will have the reek of those boards to fill her nostrils, and poet and alderman alike may be dedicate to the sublime, she leads them, after two sniffs of an idea concerning her, for the dive into the turtle-tureen. Heels up they go, poet first—a plummet he!" Is that humorous, or, if not, what is it?
Mr. G.M. Elephantine, I think; yet not elephantine altogether, since of them that crash amid jungle of atrophied semi-consciousness, strivingly set upon an overtopping mastery—