Notwithstanding it has been established by his late Majesty
that children raised in perfect silence teach themselves Hebrew,
& harried by interruptions to my studies (marching south
from Turriff we took and lost the fair city of Aberdeen,
while at Worcester I carried my papers into battle & suffered
their most grevious loss: all my quinternions – used for
the packing up of figs in the marketplace – gone!); more
tremendous yet than this, a vision has been vouchsafed me
of a dialect above all others perfect. Alone among places
the dwellings, temples, and dens of Cromarty have retained
their Greek names of old, awaiting only the perfection
of human speech that we might enter the New Arcadia.
Should I utter a word never before heard in this tongue,
it is understood readily by all; in fourscore words and ten
it conveys whole folios at once. There is no English word
but I will translate it into another of the same length,
employing identical letters, daydreaming the while
of a bald-pated fellow I saw in Madrid who believed
he was Julius Caesar. Daydreaming that I am Julius Caesar,
Alexander the Great, Isaiah the Prophet, the Prince of Denmark,
all conversing most sagely in the tongue I have fashioned.
The which I did roar at my equerry amid the skirmish
at Worcester, to gather my scattering papers, to no avail.
My studies beset by damnable intermittences (the trumpeting
of clergymen, their scolding more like a tripe-seller’s wife
than good counsel). The which tongue I am at last resolved
to unveil. Which I shall now unveil. Which I shall shortly unveil:
shortly, which is to say never. Which I shall never unveil.
1655