The laughter proceeded to action. Sneering words rained down upon him. Humour is the folly of assemblies. Their ingenious and foolish ridicule shuns facts instead of studying them, and condemns questions instead of solving them. Any extraordinary occurrence is a point of interrogation; to laugh at it is like laughing at an enigma. But the Sphynx, which never laughs, is behind it.
Contradictory shouts arose,—
"Enough! enough!" "Encore! encore!"
William Farmer, Baron Leimpster, flung at Gwynplaine the insult cast by Ryc Quiney at Shakespeare,—
"Histrio, mima!"
Lord Vaughan, a sententious man, twenty-ninth on the barons' bench, exclaimed,—
"We must be back in the days when animals had the gift of speech. In the midst of human tongues the jaw of a beast has spoken."
"Listen to Balaam's ass," added Lord Yarmouth.
Lord Yarmouth presented that appearance of sagacity produced by a round nose and a crooked mouth.
"The rebel Linnæus is chastised in his tomb. The son is the punishment of the father," said John Hough, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, whose prebendary Gwynplaine's attack had glanced.