Shakespeare's sublimities. Whatsoever is perfect in its kind, in
literature, is imperishable: nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody
can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect, it must and will stand
alone: its immortality is secure.

It is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have
received such wide attention, and been so much pondered by the grave and
learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful,
the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish. Long notices of it have
appeared, from time to time, in the great English reviews, and in
erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it has been
laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly every
newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world. Every scribbler,
almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time or another; I had
mine fifteen years ago. The book gets out of print, every now and then,
and one ceases to hear of it for a season; but presently the nations and
near and far colonies of our tongue and lineage call for it once more,
and once more it issues from some London or Continental or American
press, and runs a new course around the globe, wafted on its way by the
wind of a world's laughter.

Many persons have believed that this book's miraculous stupidities
were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume carefully
through and keep that opinion. It was written in serious good faith and
deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew
something of the English language, and could impart his knowledge to
others. The amplest proof of this crops out somewhere or other upon each
and every page. There are sentences in the book which could have been
manufactured by a man in his right mind, and with an intelligent and
deliberate purposes to seem innocently ignorant; but there are other
sentences, and paragraphs, which no mere pretended ignorance could ever
achieve--nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance, when
unbacked by inspiration.

It is not a fraud who speaks in the following paragraph of the author's
Preface, but a good man, an honest man, a man whose conscience is at
rest, a man who believes he has done a high and worthy work for his
nation and his generation, and is well pleased with his performance:

We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, and
for her typographical correction) that may be worth the acc