It was at this moment that Mr Pickwick made that immortal discovery, which has been the pride and boast of his friends, and the envy of every antiquarian in this or any other country. They had passed the door of their inn, and walked a little way down the village, before they recollected the precise spot in which it stood. As they turned back, Mr Pickwick's eye fell upon a small broken stone, partially buried in the ground, in front of a cottage door. He paused.
"This is very strange," said Mr Pickwick.
"What is strange?" inquired Mr Tupman, staring eagerly at every object near him, but the right one. "God bless me, what's the matter?"
This last was an ejaculation of irrepressible astonishment, occasioned by seeing Mr Pickwick, in his enthusiasm for discovery, fall on his knees before a little stone, and commence wiping the dust off it with his pocket-handkerchief.
"There is an inscription here," said Mr Pickwick.
"Is it possible?" said Mr Tupman.
"I can discern," continued Mr Pickwick, rubbing away with all his might, and gazing intently through his spectacles: "I can discern a cross, and a B, and then a T. This is important," continued Mr Pickwick, starting up. "This is some very old inscription, existing perhaps long before the ancient alms-houses in this place. It must not be lost."
He tapped at the cottage door. A labouring man opened it.
"Do you know how this stone came here, my friend" inquired the benevolent Mr Pickwick.
"No, I doan't sir," replied the man civilly. "It was here long afore I war born, or any on us."
Mr Pickwick glanced triumphantly at his companion.
"You - you - are not particularly attached to it, I dare say," said Mr Pickwick, trembling with anxiety. "You wouldn't mind selling it, now?"
"Ah! but who'd buy it?" inquired the man, with an expression of face which he probably meant to be very cunning.
"I'll give you ten shillings for it, at once," said Mr Pickwick, "if you would take it up for me."
The astonishment of the village may be easily imagined, when (the little stone having been raised with one wrench of a spade), Mr Pickwick, by dint of great personal exertion, bore it with his own hands to the inn, and after having carefully washed it, deposited it on the table.
The exultation and joy of the Pickwickians knew no bounds, when their patient assiduity, their washing and scraping, were crowned with success. The stone was uneven and broken, and the letters were straggling and irregular, but the following fragment of an inscription was clearly to be deciphered:
Mr Pickwick's eyes sparkled with delight, as he sat and gloated over the treasure he had discovered. He had attained one of the greatest objects of his ambition. In a country known to abound in remains of the early ages; in a village in which there still existed some memorials of the olden time, he - he, the Chairman of the Pickwick Club - had discovered a strange and curious inscription of unquestionable antiquity, which had wholly escaped the observation of the many learned men who had preceded him. He could hardly trust the evidence of his senses.
"This - this," said he, "determines me. We return to town, to-morrow."
"To-morrow!" exclaimed his admiring followers.
Mr Pickwick looked around him. The attachment and fervour of his followers, lighted up a glow of enthusiasm within him. He was their leader, and he felt it.
"Let us celebrate this happy meeting with a convivial glass," said he. The proposition, like the other, was received with unanimous applause. Having himself
deposited the important stone in a small deal box, purchased from the landlady for the purpose, he placed himself in an arm-chair at the head of the table; and the evening was devoted to festivity and conversation.
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It appears from the Transactions of the Club, then, that Mr Pickwick lectured upon the discovery at a General Club Meeting, cenvened on the night succeeding their return, and entered into a variety of ingenious and erudite speculations on the meaning of the inscription. It also appears that a skilful artist executed a faithful delineation of the curiosity, which was engraven on stone, and presented to the Royal Antiquarian Society, and other learned bodies - that heart-burnings and jealousies without number, were created by rival controversies which were penned upon the subject - and that Mr Pickwick himself wrote a Pamphlet, containing ninety-six pages of very small print, and twenty-seven different readings of the inscription. That three old gentlemen cut off their eldest sons with a shilling a-piece for presuming to doubt the antiquity of the fragment - and that one enthusiastic individual cut himself off prematurely, in despair at being unable to fathom its meaning. That Mr Pickwick was elected an honorary member of seventeen native and foreign societies, for making the discovery; 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 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 protrait 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 work upon more treatises than ever. And to this day the stone remains, an illegible monument of Mr Pickwick's greatness, and a lasting trophy to the littleness of his enemies.