... My homble request is that you will be charitable of me.... Let
justies and merci be goyned.... You may plese to soggest youer will to this
barrer you will find him tracktabel."
My sense of drollery is always most keenly tickled when I read Underhill's
epistles, with their amazing and highly-varied letter concoctions, and
remember that he also--wrote a book. What that seventeenth-century printer
and proof-reader endured ere they presented his "edited" volume to the
public must have been beyond expression by words. It was a pretty good book
though, and in it, like many another man of his ilk, he tendered to his
much-injured wife loud and diffuse praise, ending with these sententious
words, "Let no man despise advice and counsel of his wife--though she be a
woman."
And yet, upon careful examination we find a method, a system, in
Underhill's orthography, or rather in his cacography. He thinks a final
tion should be spelt chon--and why not? "proposichon," "satisfackchon,"
"oblegachon," "persekuchon," "dereckchon," "himelyachon"--thus he spells
such words. And his plurals are plain when once you grasp his laws:
"poseschouse" and "considderachonse," "facktse," and "respecktse." And
his ly is alwajs li, "exacktli," "thorroli," "fidelliti," "charriti,"
"falsciti." And why is not "indiered," as good as 'endeared,' "pregedic,"
as 'prejudice,' "obstrucktter" as 'obstructer,' "pascheges," and
"prouydentt," and "antyentt," just as clear as our own way of spelling
these words? A "painful" speller you surely were, my gay Don Juan
Underbill, as your pedantic "writtingse" all show, and the most dramatic
and comic figure among all the early Puritans as well, though you scarcely
deserve to be called a Puritan; we might rather say of you, as of Malvolio,
"The devil a Puritan that he was, or anything constantly but a
time-pleaser .
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