; that none of the seventeen could make anything of it; but
that all the seventeen agreed it was very extraordinary.
    Mr. Blotton, indeed - and the name will be doomed to the undying contempt of
those who cultivate the mysterious and the sublime - Mr. Blotton, we say, with
the doubt and cavilling peculiar to vulgar minds, presumed to state a view of
the case, as degrading as ridiculous. Mr. Blotton, with a mean desire to tarnish
the lustre of the immortal name of Pickwick, actually undertook a journey to
Cobham in person, and on his return, sarcastically observed in an oration at the
club, that he had seen the man from whom the stone was purchased; that the man
presumed the stone to be ancient, but solemnly denied the antiquity of the
inscription - inasmuch as he represented it to have been rudely 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 concluding L of his christian name.
    The Pickwick Club (as might have been expected from so enlightened an
Institution) received this statement with the contempt it deserved, expelled the
presumptuous and ill-conditioned Blotton, 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.
    Mr. Blotton though ejected was not conquered. He also wrote a pamphlet,
addressed to the seventeen learned societies, native and foreign, containing a
repetition of the statement he had already made, and rather more than half
intimating his opinion that the seventeen learned societies were so many
humbugs. Hereupon the virtuous indignation of the seventeen learned societies,
native and foreign, 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 set to work upon more
treatises than ever. And to