text:  He supposed that an obscure and penniless youth such as he could have little chance of attention or fair play in the world if he appeared in his proper character; so he painfully assumed another of a nature that could not long have been supported even had he been a various linguist deeply versed in etymologies and especially proficient in our extinct idioms and their several dates of usage instead of wanting even Latin enough to understand the easiest parts of Skinner's Etymology of the English tongue one of the books that he consulted and guessed at