current in all newspapers that no man may write upon any matter save
upon those in which he is more learned than all his human fellows that
drag themselves so slowly daily forward to the grave.

So I had to put the thing in the very common form of a digression, and
very nearly to forget that great subject of cheese which I had put at
the very head and title of this.

Which reminds me: had I followed the rule set down by a London
journalist the other day (and of the proprietor of his paper I will say
nothing--though I might have put down the remark to his proprietor) I
would have hesitated to write that first paragraph. I would have
hesitated, did I say? Griffins' tails! Nay--Hippogriffs and other things
of the night! I would not have dared to write it at all! For this
journalist made a law and promulgated it, and the law was this: that no
man should write that English which could not be understood if all the
punctuation were left out. Punctuation, I take it, includes brackets,
which the Lord of Printers knows are a very modern part of punctuation
indeed.

Now let the horripilised reader look up again at the first paragraph (it
will do him no harm), and think how it would look all written out in
fair uncials like the beautiful Gospels of St. Chad, which anyone may
see for nothing in the cathedral of Lichfield, an English town famous
for eight or nine different things: as Garrick, Doctor Johnson, and its
two opposite inns. Come, read that first paragraph over now and see what
you could make of it if it were written out in uncials--that is, not
only without punctuation, but without any division between the words.
Wow! As the philosopher said when he was asked to give a plain answer
"Yes" or "No."