"‘May I’ I asked with diffidence, ‘take a moment to acquaint myself with, and taste the fine qualities of, the most sterling and serious, and therefore of course the most read and most quickly acknowledged and purchased, reading matter? You would pledge me to unusual gratitude were you to be so kind as to lay before me that book which, as certainly nobody can know so precisely as you, has found the highest place in the estimation of the reading public, as well as that of the dreaded and thence surely flatteringly circumvented critics, and which furthermore has made them merry.’"