Although Mr. Maudslay was an unceasing inventor, he troubled himself very little about patenting his inventions. He considered that the superiority of his tools and the excellence of his work were his surest protection. Yet he had sometimes the annoyance of being threatened with actions by persons who had patented the inventions which he himself had made.[16] He was much beset by inventors, sometimes sadly out at elbows, but always with a boundless fortune looming before them. To such as applied to him for advice in a frank and candid spirit, he did not hesitate to speak freely, and communicate the results of his great experience in the most liberal manner; and to poor and deserving men of this class he was often found as ready to help them with his purse as with his still more valuable advice. He had a singular way of estimating the abilities of those who thus called upon him about their projects. The highest order of man was marked in his own mind at 100 degrees; and by this ideal standard he measured others, setting them down at 90 degrees, 80 degrees, and so on. A very first-rate man he would set down at 95 degrees, but men of this rank were exceedingly rare. After an interview with one of the applicants to him for advice, he would say to his pupil Nasmyth, "Jem, I think that man may be set down at 45 degrees, but he might be WORKED UP TO 60 degrees"--a common enough way of speaking of the working of a steam-engine, but a somewhat novel though by no means an inexpressive method of estimating the powers of an individual. But while he had much toleration for modest and meritorious inventors, he had a great dislike for secret-mongers,--schemers of the close, cunning sort,--and usually made short work of them. He had an almost equal aversion for what he called the "fiddle-faddle inventors," with their omnibus patents, into which they packed every possible thing that their noddles could imagine. "Only once or twice in a century," said he, "does a great inventor appear, and yet here we have a set of fellows each taking out as many patents as would fill a cart,--some of them embodying not a single original idea, but including in their specifications all manner of modifications of well-known processes, as well as anticipating the arrangements which may become practicable in the progress of mechanical improvement." Many of these "patents" he regarded as mere pit-falls to catch the unwary; and he spoke of such "inventors" as the pests of the profession.