Understanding a Text

This Althouse post on the death of Publisher Barney Rosset of Grove Press and Evergreen Review, reminded me of part of our reading assignment in class for Thursday evening.  The money quote is:

The man who published all those dirty books... and turned down Lord of the Rings because he "couldn’t understand a word."

Our texts were:

• "Discourse on Western Planting", by Richard Hakluyt (A Plan for English Colonization of North America)
• George Percy's 1625 description of life in Jamestown in 1606-07, and
• An extract from "A Modell of Christian Charity" (A City on the Hill), by the Hon. John Winthrop, Esqr

Seventeenth Century English is a whole other language.

Regards  —  Cliff