20). He observes of the printers and writers of his age
that they care "for noe more arte then may win the pennie" (p. 2), and
on the same page he says, "quhiles I stack in this claye," which appears
to be equivalent to our term "stuck in the mud." At p. 3 he says, "and
it wer but a clod;" at p. 14, "neither daer I, with al the oares of
reason, row against so strang a tyde;" and again, on p. 18, we find
reason under another aspect, thus, "noe man I trow can denye that ever
suked the paepes of reason."
It seems that the expression, _Queen's English_, is by no means of
modern date, as we have it as the _king's language_ at p. 2.
Hume laments, in his Dedication, the uncertainty of the orthography
prevailing at the time he writes, and yet we find him spelling words
several different ways, even within the compass of a single sentence,
without being able to lay the blame upon the printers; thus we find him
writing ju_d_gement on p. 11, ju_d_ge p. 8, and ju_d_g p. 33, but juge
p. 18; and there are numberless other instances that it would be tedious
to enumerate. Again, the author uses a mixture of Scotch and English, so
we have sometimes ane and sometimes one; nae on page 1 and noe on p.
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