Fpsti. Difficilia quæ pulchra.
Hard to be dun, a dute iz sur dhe gratest bute.
A Table of the self-same Leters, Spelling words ov a far different sound.
As with, with, bath, bathe, sith, sithe, both, both, loath, loath, oath, oathes, smith, smithy, breath, of, off, then, yet, liveth or liveth, joth or joth, mouth, mouth, path or path, wrath, wreath, faith or faith, thy, thigh, this, thistle, thou, thousand, thank, they, them, theame, thus, thunder, thine, thin, goal or goal, as afore, motion, crimson, action, Acteon, singed, hanged, changed, shepherd, Shaphat, dishonour, asham’d, bishop, mishap, character, charity, duckherd, blockhead, Dutchess, gather, success, suggest, or suggest, or suggest, or suggest, haov, rij, [w]heg and who, come, on, you know what I mean, as well as [h]orses. War rod: scepter, sceptic, syllables, bless, access, axes, oxen, Christ-cross, beaux, beauty, ancre, kernel, acres, craz’d, threatned, knead, bootes, Bootes, winged, gnaw’d: th is cut of from with, cum, after another of the same, at wi’ them.
To Read English after the names ov the Letters, which is blameless, max English as strang as to read after the French fashion; what would become of Gire-eagle, wither, league, thing, Jehosaphat.
Put an Apostrophe (call’d Swa in Hebru) between every two consonants (viz. a short i) the spelling is discern’d as well as with a touch-stone, that you may perseve easily that falsehood is not in good earnest.
So george, gorge, Gomorrha, Esau, Hus or uz, Nubes, Ragau, Joshua, where ([V] [v]) is the first letter in the four first, middlemost in fist, a in the last all wrong. That no wonder if the Bible Translators took up the blanket, and left the Child behind ’em, when St. Hierom says, the Hebrew Letters are not to be exprest by the Western figures (I think truly) And for want of axents Church-Readers wickedly miscall Bible-words, as Theobulus, Jericho, Goliah, Cæsarea, a Decapolis, Penacutes or Prepenacutes, also Haggi four ways.
A duble Letter in Hebrew of the same sort, being dageshed, prevents all mistakes, as הגּי So ’[G]od”es” for the Goddesses.
But for example sake, as far as any thing can really be exprest by English Letters, without bodging patching, or bungling balderdash or barbarous gallimofry of our Romantic Letters, obscurer than the Egiptian Hieroglifix. I will subscribe an old saing in English, as easy as any thing, if custom and fashion tnu it:
An As an Mul carrid Runlets ov Wine,
But d’ Ass did gron undr er burdn gret: