sophistical evasions--that, in fact, minute learning was an obstacle to
clear-sighted judgment, more especially with regard to the Magicodumbras
and Zuzumotzis, and that the best preparation in this matter was a wide
survey of history and a diversified observation of men. Still, Merman
was resolved to muster all the learning within his reach, and he
wandered day and night through many wildernesses of German print, he
tried compendious methods of learning oriental tongues, and, so to
speak, getting at the marrow of languages independently of the bones,
for the chance of finding details to corroborate his own views, or
possibly even to detect Grampus in some oversight or textual tampering.
All other work was neglected: rare clients were sent away and amazed
editors found this maniac indifferent to his chance of getting
book-parcels from them. It was many months before Merman had satisfied
himself that he was strong enough to face round upon his adversary. But
at last he had prepared sixty condensed pages of eager argument which
seemed to him worthy to rank with the best models of controversial
writing. He had acknowledged his mistakes, but had restated his theory
so as to show that it was left intact in spite of them; and he had even
found cases in which Ziphius, Microps, Scrag Whale the explorer, and
other Cetaceans of unanswerable authority, were decidedly at issue with
Grampus. Especially a passage cited by this last from that greatest of
fossils Megalosaurus was demonstrated by Merman to be capable of three
different interpretations, all preferable to that chosen by Grampus, who
took the words in their most literal sense; for, 1°, the incomparable
Saurian, alike unequalled in close observation and far-glancing
comprehensiveness, might have meant those words ironically; 2°, _motzis_
was probably a false reading for _potzis_, in which case its bearing was
reversed; and 3°, it is known that in the age of the Saurians there
were conceptions about the _motzis_ which entirely remove it from the
category of things comprehensible in an age when Saurians run