Men and women
who, perhaps, naturally very calm, and with feelings moderate in
degree, and little marked in kind, have been trained from their
cradle to observe the utmost evenness of manner and guardedness of
language, will hardly know what to make of the rough, strong
utterance, the harshly manifested passions, the unbridled
aversions, and headlong partialities of unlettered moorland hinds
and rugged moorland squires, who have grown up untaught and
unchecked, except by Mentors as harsh as themselves. A large class
of readers, likewise, will suffer greatly from the introduction
into the pages of this work of words printed with all their
letters, which it has become the custom to represent by the initial
and final letter only--a blank line filling the interval. I may as
well say at once that, for this circumstance, it is out of my power
to apologise; deeming it, myself, a rational plan to write words at
full length. The practice of hinting by single letters those
expletives with which profane and violent persons are wont to
garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however
well meant, is weak and futile.
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