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Imprisonment once over, he hastily quitted for England; shaking the dust of ungrateful France off his feet, resolved to change his unhappy name, for one thing. "Smelfungus, denouncing the torpid fatuity of Voltaire's Biographers, says he never met with one Frenchman, even of the Literary classes, who could tell him whence this name VOLTAIRE originated.
Curiosity, which is now nothing like so vivid as it then was, would be glad to listen a little, in this meeting of two Suns, or of one Sun and one immense Tar-Barrel, or Atmospheric Meteor really of shining nature, and taken for a Sun. Only Fancy; and this of Smelfungus, by way of long farewell to one of the parties:
Peace be to them! if it is to be found; but heaven itself, were it possible to get there with such tempers, would want objects to give it; every gentle spirit would come flying upon the wings of Love to hail their arrival. Nothing would the souls of Smelfungus and Mundungus hear of, but fresh anthems of joy, fresh raptures of love, and fresh congratulations of their common felicity.
Mumbudget looked with a quiet smile at the excited little doctor, and replied, calmly: "Gentlemen, I am the professor of COMMON SENSE." At this reply, the learned friends, Smelfungus not excepted, presented a series of remarkably open countenances, as respected eyes and mouths, while Dr.
Primary EPITRE; written, I perceive, in that interval of waiting for Keith and the magazines, though the final date is "Bernstadt, August 24th." Concerning which, Smelfungus takes, over-hastily, the liberty to say: "Strange, is it not, to be on the point of fighting for one's existence; overwhelmed with so many businesses; and disposed to go into verse in addition!
The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on; but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he pass'd by was discoloured or distorted. He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings. I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon: he was just coming out of it.
Smelfungus, indeed, would insist upon it that the coco-nut is not a nut at all, and would thrill us with the delightful information, innocently conveyed in that delicious dialect of which he is so great a master, that it is really 'a drupaceous fruit with a fibrous mesocarp. Still, in spite of Smelfungus with his nice hair-splitting distinctions, it remains true that humanity at large will still call a nut a nut, and that the coco-nut is the highest known development of the peculiar nutty tactics.
"In short," says the specialist, with his familiar sneer, "you want a smattering." Well, yes, dear Sir Smelfungus, if it gives you pleasure to put it so just that; a smattering, an all-round smattering. But remember that in this matter the man of science is always influenced by ideas derived from his own pursuits as specialist.
There is no better and more typical nut in the whole world than a coco-nut that is to say, from our present point of view at least, though the fear of that awful person, the botanical Smelfungus, compels me to add that this is not quite technically true.
Gyrating again among the bright planets, circum-jovial moons, in the Court Firmament; is again in favor, and might Alas, he had his FELLOW-moons, his Maupertuis above all! Incurable that Maupertuis misery; gets worse and worse, steadily from the first day. Take this of Smelfungus; this Pair of Cabinet Sketches, "hasty outlines; extant chiefly," he declares, "by Voltaire's blame:"
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