Introduction To "The New Guide Of The Conversation In
Portuguese And English"
In this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing which may be pretty
confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, that this celebrated little phrase-book will
never die while the English language lasts. Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness, and
its enchanting na:ivet'e, as are supreme and unapproachable, in their way, as are
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:
