The Professor and the Madman

by Simon Winchester

auguries,

Vibes

the walking wounded.

(great album by the band, Bayside)

Shakespeare was not even able to perform a function that we consider today as perfectly normal and ordinary a function as reading itself. He could not, as the saying goes, “look something up.”

Fascinating!

In the sixteenth century in England, dictionaries such as we would recognize today simply did not exist.

Few are the books that can offer so much pleasure to look at, to touch, to skim, to read.

I highly doubt that

He was mad, and for that, we have reason to be glad. A truly savage irony, on which it is discomfiting to dwell.