So, right.  The first line of Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" has just made me laugh more than I have in a long enough time, I trow -- possibly I haven't laughed as much since I drove Holly of the writing center mad during the end-of-semester party. 

"It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature at Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper."

You can read it online here.