eleven A.M.
Fortune favoured us . My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out . He intrusted Miss Hudson 's packet to his waiter , the waiter confided it to the Boots , the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy Mercury , who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a walk to the Lancaster Road . At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands . I have devoted the best part of to-day to the contents of this packet . They consist of letters written by Matthew Haygarth , and distinguished by a most abominable orthography ; but I remember my own father 's epistolary composition to have been somewhat deficient in this respect ; nor is it singular that the humble citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy . That the pretender to the crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems a small thing ; but that Frederick the Great , the most accomplished of princes , bosom-friend of Voltaire , and sworn patron of the literati , should not have been able to spell , is a matter for some astonishment .