Question

Help with "Old English" Interpretation? I just have one question

Answer 1

Using the side notes, restate the second paragraph which begins with "Had we been as free from all sins" in modern English. What joke is Smith making?


Had we been as free from all sins as [we were free from] gluttony and drunkenness we might have been canonized for saints, but our President [Edward Wingfield] would never have been admitted for engrossing to his private,11 oatmeal, sack, oil, aqua vitae, beef, eggs, or what not but the kettle; that indeed he allowed equally to be distributed, and that was half a pint of wheat and as much barley boiled with water for a man a day, and this, having fried some twenty-six weeks in the ship’s hold, contained as many worms as grains so that we might truly call it rather so much bran than corn; our drink was water, our lodgings castles in the air.