CAR. Here it is. But at least, hear it read.
ER. No ...
CAR. That you may be acquainted with it, sir, I beg.
"TO THE KING.
"_Sire,--Your most humble, most obedient, most faithful and most
learned subject and servant, Caritides, a Frenchman by birth, a
Greek_
[Footnote: The original has _Grec_, a Greek. Can Caritides have
wished to allude to the _graeaca fides_? _Grec_ means also a
cheat at cards, and is said to owe its name to a certain Apoulos, a
knight of Greek origin, who was caught in the very act of cheating at
play in the latter days of Louis XIV.'s reign, even in the palace of the
_grand monarque_.]
_by profession, having considered the great and notable abuses which
are perpetrated in the inscriptions on the signs of houses, shops,
taverns, bowling-alleys, and other places in your good city of Paris;
inasmuch as certain ignorant composers of the said inscriptions subvert,
by a barbarous, pernicious and hateful spelling, every kind of sense and
reason, without any regard for etymology, analogy, energy or allegory
whatsoever, to the great scandal of the republic of letters, and of the
French nation, which is degraded and dishonoured, by the said abuses and
gross faults, in the eyes of strangers, and notably of the Germans,
curious readers and inspectors of the said inscriptions.
Pages:
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65