Page:The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.djvu/164

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POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF

carved by himself in an idle mood, and to display letters intended to bear neither more nor less than the simple construction of—" Bill Stumps, his mark :" and that Mr. Stumps, being little in the habit of original composition, and more accustomed to be guided by the sound of words than by the strict rules of orthography, had omitted the con- cluding " L " of his christian name.

The Pickwick Club, as might have been expected from so enlight- ened an Institution, received this statement with the contempt it deserved, expelled the presumptuous and ill-conditioned Blotton from the society, and voted Mr. Pickwick a pair of gold spectacles, in token of their confidence and approbation ; in return for which, Mr. Pickwick caused a portrait of himself to be painted, and hung up in the club-room — which portrait, by the by, he did not wish to have destroyed when he grew a few years older.

Mr. Blotton was ejected but not conquered. He also wrote a pamphlet, addressed to the seventeen learned societies, containing a repetition of the statement he had already made, and rather more than half intimating his opinion that the seventeen learned societies afore- said, were so many " humbugs." Hereupon the virtuous indignation of the seventeen learned societies being roused, several fresh pamphlets appeared ; the foreign learned societies corresponded with the native learned societies, the native learned societies translated the pamphlets of the foreign learned societies into English, the foreign learned societies translated the pamphlets of the native learned societies into all sorts of languages : and thus commenced that celebrated scientific discussion so well known to all men, as the Pickwick controversy.

But this base attempt to injure Mr. Pickwick, recoiled upon the head of its calumnious author. The seventeen learned societies unanimously voted the presumptuous Blotton an ignorant meddler ; and forthwith remains an illegible monument of Mr. Pickwick's greatness, and a lasting trophy of the littleness of his enemies.
 * et to work upon more treatises than ever. And to this day the stone