[224] Eleven genders seem nine more than are necessary, and the use of such a large number suggests to one that in Sir Thomas's Universal Language the distinctions in question were to receive an undue amount of attention. At the same time, fault has been found with our English language for being somewhat defective in accentuating these distinctions; and an attempt to correct this shortcoming, to a certain extent, has been made by Southey in _The Doctor_. He proposed to anglicise the orthography of the female garment, "which is indeed the sister to the shirt," and then to utilise the hint offered in its new form: thus _Hemise_ and _Shemise_. In letter-writing every person knows that male and female letters have a distinct character; they should therefore, he thought, be generally distinguished thus, _Hepistle_ and _Shepistle_. And as there is the same marked difference in the writing of the two sexes, he proposed _Penmanship_ and _Penwomanship_. Erroneous opinions in religion being promulgated in this country by women as well as men, the teachers of such false doctrine may be divided into _Heresiarchs_ and _Sheresiarchs_, so that we should speak of the _Heresy_ of the Quakers and the _Sheresy_ of Joanna Southcote's people. The troublesome affection of the diaphragm, which every one has experienced, is, upon the same principle, to be called, according to the sex of the patient, _Hecups_, or _Shecups_, which, upon the principle of making our language truly British, is better than the more classical form of _Hiccups_ and _Hæcups_. In its objective use the word becomes Hiscups or Hercups; and in like manner Histerics should be altered into Herterics, the complaint never being masculine. It is perhaps a little surprising that this suggestion should have lain before the British public for half a century, and have been left unutilised. [225] _Works_, pp. 316-318. [226] _Works_, pp. 316-318. [227] _Ibid._ p. 332. [228] _Scenes and Legends_, chap. vii. [229] A somewhat similar project was described in the Marquis of Worcester's _Century of the Names and Scantling of ... Inventions_ (1663), in which the steam-engine is anticipated. The passage is as follows:--"32. How to compose an universal character, methodical, and easie to be written, yet intelligible in any language; so that if an Englishman write it in English, a Frenchman, Italian, Spaniard, Irish, Welsh, being scholars, yea, Grecian or Hebritian, shall as perfectly understand it in their owne Tongue, as if they were perfect English, distinguishing the Verbs from the Nouns, the Numbers, Tenses, Cases as properly expressed in their own Language as it was written in English."