And this they said was the only true and original
Monomotopan dialect.
Such was the public inconvenience that next year a sharper and much more
drastic law was passed, by which it was laid down that every literary
composition should make sense within the meaning of the Act, and should
be original so far as the reading of the judge appointed for the trial
of the case extended. But though after the first few executions this law
was generally observed, the nasty fellows affected by it managed to
evade it in spirit, for by the use of obscure terms, of words drawn from
dead languages, and of bold metaphor transferred from one art to
another, they would deliberately invite prosecution, and then in the
witness-box make fools of those plain men, the judge and jury, by
showing that this apparently meaningless claptrap could, with sufficient
ingenuity, be made to yield some sort of sense, and during this period
no art critic was put to death.
Driven to desperation, the Emperor changed the whole basis of the
Remuneration of Literary Labour, and ordered that it should be by the
length of the prose or poetry measured in inches.
This reform, however, did but add to the confusion, for while the men of
the pen wrote their works entirely in short dialogue, asterisks, and
blanks, the publishers, who were now thoroughly organized, printed the
same in smaller and smaller type, in order to avoid the consequences of
the law.
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