n, to
abuse the passengers, as long as they could keep up with the {353} stage
coach; dropping off at last with "Why don't you get down and thrash us?
You're afraid, you're afraid!" They will allow the public to judge for
themselves, but with somewhat of the feeling of the worthy uncle in _Tom
Jones_, who, though he would let young people choose for themselves, would
_have them_ choose wisely. They try to be so awfully moral and so ghastly
satirical that they must be answered: and they are best answered in their
own division. We have all heard of the way in which sailors cat's-pawed the
monkeys: they taunted the dwellers in the trees with stones, and the
monkeys taunted them with cocoa-nuts in return. But these were silly
dendrobats: had they belonged to the British Association they would have
said--No! No! dear friends; it is not in the itinerary: if you want nuts,
you must climb, as we do. The public has referred the question to Time: the
procedure of this great king I venture to describe, from precedents, by an
adaptation of some smart anapaestic tetrameters--your anapaest is the foot
for satire to halt on, both in Greek and English--which I read about twenty
years ago, and with the point of which I was much tickled. Poetasters were
laughed at; but Mr. Slum, whom I employed--Mr. Charles Dickens obliged me
with his address--converted the idea into that of a hit at
mathematicasters, as easily as he turned the Warren acrostic into Jarley.
As he observed, when I settled his little account, it is cheaper than any
prose, though the broom was not stolen quite ready made:

_Forty stripes save one for the smaller Paradoxers._

Hark to the wisdom the sages preach
Who never have learnt what they try to teach.
We are the lights of the age, they say!
We are the men, and the thinkers we!
So we build up guess-work the livelong day,
In a topsy-turvy sort of way,
Some with and some wanting _a_ plus b.
Let the British Association fuss;
What are theirs to the feats to be wrought by us?
{354}
Shall the earth stand still? Will the round come square?
Must Isaac's book be the nest of a mare?
Ought the moon to be taught by the laws of space
To turn half round without right-about-face?
Our whimsey crotchets will manage it all;
Deep! Deep! posterity will them call!
Though the world, for the present, lets them fall
Down! Down! to the twopenny box of the stall!

Thus they--But the marplot Time sta