The earliest text here in Moroni 9:1 is a rather difficult reading, even when we ignore the dialectal grievious: “but I write somewhat that which is grievious”. In modern English we expect either of or concerning to separate somewhat from the following noun phrase, “that which is grievious”. The 1920 LDS edition emended the text here by supplying of, giving “but I write somewhat of that which is grievous”. (The 1830 typesetter replaced the original grievious with the standard grievous; for discussion of the nonstandard variant, see under 1 Nephi 17:25.)
There is minor evidence in the transmission of the text for the momentary loss of concerning,namely, in 𝓟 as Oliver Cowdery was copying the text from 𝓞:
Note here, however, that concerning was probably omitted because the preceding word was visually similar; both are fairly long and begin with the same syllable, con, thus leading Oliver to initially skip concerning.
In contrast to concerning, there is considerably more evidence in the manuscripts for the occasional loss of the preposition of between two noun phrases, as in these examples where Oliver Cowdery made the error:
In all these cases, Oliver caught his error.
As we might expect, the Book of Mormon text does have examples of “somewhat of NP” and “somewhat concerning NP”, where NP is a noun phrase, as in 1 Nephi 10:1 (“I must speak somewhat of the things of my father and also of my brethren”) and in the Words of Mormon 1:3 (“and now I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written”). Yet the original text had two more examples of somewhat immediately followed by a noun phrase (that is, without any intervening of or concerning):
In the first case, of was supplied in the 1920 LDS edition; but in the second case, the original text has been kept. Also note that the second of these is in this same chapter of Moroni, which argues that the first instance in this chapter, here in verse 1, is correct. Thus the expression “somewhat
” appears to be textually possible since it occurs elsewhere in the text. The critical text will therefore maintain the instance of “somewhat a few things” in Moroni 9:24 and restore the two original instances of “somewhat ” (in the Words of Mormon 1:12 and here in Moroni 9:1).
Summary: Restore in Moroni 9:1 the earlier reading without the preposition of between somewhat and the noun phrase “that which is grievious”.