NEW CANAAN.
Book III. Chapter 31.
And now mine Host being merrily disposed, haveing past many perillous adventures in that desperat Whales belly, beganne in a posture like Ionas, and cryed Repent you cruell Seperatists repent, there are as yet but 40. dayes if Iove vouchsafe to thunder, Charter and the Kingdome of the Seperatists will fall a sunder: Repent you cruell Schismaticks repent.
LETTER TO JEFFREYS.
Savage’s Winthrop, vol. II. p. *190.
So that now Jonas being set ashore may safely cry, repent you cruel separatists, repent, there are as yet but forty days. If Jove vouchsafe to thunder, the charter and kingdom of the separatists will fall asunder. Repent you cruel schismatics, repent.
The letter to Jeffreys is curiously characteristic of Morton. It is written in the same inflated, metaphorical, enigmatic style as the New Canaan. It is, however, perfectly intelligible and even energetic. The reason is obvious. It was correctly copied by a man who understood what the writer was saying. Accordingly it is as clear as Winthrop’s own text. The New Canaan would have been equally clear had it been deciphered at the compositor’s form by a man with Winthrop’s familiarity with English.
There is some reason to think that the fancy for exact reproduction in typography has of late years been carried to an extreme. Not only have peculiarities of spelling, capitalization and type, which were really characteristic of the past, been carefully followed, but abbreviations and figures have been reproduced in type, which formerly were confined to manuscripts, and are certainly never found in the better printed books of the same period. It is certainly desirable in reprinting quaint works, which it is not supposed will ever pass into the hands of general readers, to have them appear in the dress of the time to which they belong. Indeed they cannot be modernized in spelling, the use of capitals, or even, altogether, in punctuation, without losing something of their flavor. Yet, this notwithstanding, there is no good reason why gross and manifest blunders, due to the ignorance of compositors and the carelessness of proof-readers, should be jealously perpetuated as if they were sacred things. This assuredly is carrying the spirit of faithful reproduction to fanaticism. It is Chinese.