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--