[In a recent libel action, brought against an author by an
African merchant, Mr. GEORGE MEREDITH was called as a witness.
He said:--
"The story in dispute passed through his hands as reader for
the publishers. Asked in cross-examination if he thought that
the opening of the story relating to the hero's mother did not
offend against the canons of good taste, the witness answered
that it was the attempt of a writer of serious mind to be
humorous. It might be almost called a stereotype of that
form of the element of humour. It was a failure but still
passed with the public.--The Judge: A kind of elephantine
humour?--The Witness: Quite so. I did not like it, but one
would have to object to so much."
There the report of Mr. MEREDITH'S evidence ends. Exigencies
of space apparently caused the omission of a great deal of
it. Fortunately it is in our power to supply this
deficiency.--ED.]
[Illustration: Very much En Évidence; or, George in the box.]
_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--
_Sir Charles Russell_ (_interrupting_). Thank you. The passage is from
_One of our Conquerors_. Here is another:--"Reverting to the father
and mother, his idea of a positive injury, that was not without its
congratulations, sank him down among his disordered deeper sentiments,
which were a diver's wreck, where an armoured livid subtermarine, a
monstrous puff-ball of man, wandered seriously light in heaviness;
trebling his hundredweights to keep him from dancing like a
bladder-block of elastic lumber." And while you are about it,
pray inform the Court what you mean by "the vulgarest of our
gobble-gobbets," or by "a trebly cataphractic Invisible."
_Mr. G.M._ Truly, the louder members of the grey public are
fraternally instant to spurn at the whip of that which they do not
immediately comprehend. But to me, plunged chokingly in translucent
profundities of aquamarine splendour, not of a truth that in the
heights above splendour resides not, chidingly offering a fat
whiskerless cheek to the blows of circumstance, this was ever the
problem of problems. How to write. How not to write. This way and
that the raging fates tug the hapless reader, pillowed he upon the
vast brown bosom of his maternal earth, or lurefully beckoning the
dim shadow-shapes of dodecahedronic cataplasmatic centipede fatally
conditioned to the everlasting pyramid of a star-pointing necessity.
So--
_The Judge_ (_with determination_). Mr. MEREDITH, the Court is
sincerely obliged to you for your extremely valuable evidence. We are
unwilling to detain you any longer. Besides, after what you have said,
the point is as clear as daylight. Good morning, Mr. MEREDITH, good
morning. You may become a trebly cataphractic Invisible.
* * * * *