ENGLISH SPELLING
AND
SPELLING REFORM

BY
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL.D., L.H.D.
Emeritus Professor of English in Yale University

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
MCMIX

Books by
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY

English Spelling and Spelling Reform.

Post 8vo. net $1.50

The Standard of Usage in English.

Post 8vo. net $1.50

The Standard of Pronunciation in English.

Post 8vo. net 1.50

Studies in Chaucer.3 Vols.

8vo. 9.00

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N. Y.

Copyright, 1909, by Harper & Brothers.

All rights reserved.

Published October, 1909.

TO
BRANDER MATTHEWS
AS A TRIBUTE TO A FELLOW-COMBATANT IN
A COMMON CAUSE, AND A TESTIMONIAL OF
THE LONG-CONTINUED FRIENDSHIP OF YEARS

CONTENTS

PREFACE

The main ideas underlying the treatment here found of English orthography were embodied in an article which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1907. The title it there bore was “Confessions of a Spelling Reformer.” This it was the original intention to give to the present work. But with the changes which were required in recasting the article upon which it was based, with the great expansion of many of the points considered in it, more than all with the extension of its scope so as to include many new topics, the personal element which had characterized it none too prominently in the first place sank into almost complete insignificance. Hence followed the inappropriateness of the title. Here, accordingly, it has been confined to the opening chapter, and for it has been substituted that which the volume now bears.

As published in the magazine, the article referred to was of a length so unconscionable that I have always been confident that the editor, however carefully he concealed his feelings, groaned inwardly at the space he obliged himself to give up to it. Still, long as it was, much which had been prepared for it was cut out before transmission. It was felt that there is a point beyond which the patience of the most long-suffering of editors will not stretch. A few passages which were then omitted were later made to do service in a presidential address given at the annual meeting of the Simplified Spelling Board. These have been restored here, though in a much enlarged form, to their old place. With them also has been reinstated a good deal of other matter which had been struck out before the article was forwarded for publication. I have also made use of several paragraphs which had appeared a number of years ago in contributions to the Century Magazine. In addition, it is to be said that one whole chapter in the volume has been printed before, though very much abbreviated, in Harper’s Magazine. But in spite of the extent to which I have drawn upon matter previously published, fully two-thirds of the contents of the present treatise has never up to this time appeared in print. This is true in particular of what in my own eyes is the most important chapter in the book—that on the Orthographic Situation.

The subject of spelling reform is not, strictly speaking, a soul-stirring one, nor is any possible treatment of it likely to contribute to the gayety of nations. If any of the chapters contained in the present volume be of the slightest interest in itself, that on the orthographic situation is assuredly not the one. On the other hand, if there be anything of value in the work, that same chapter has, as I look at it, far the most value. There is in it, indeed, nothing original. The numerous facts it contains are to be found scattered up and down the pages of various volumes—particularly in the introductions to the larger dictionaries, and in orthographic and orthoepic essays produced at various periods. But so far as I know, this is the first attempt ever made to collect and combine and, above all, to put in a form, easily comprehensible by the general reader, the widely scattered facts which go to show the precise character and characteristics of English orthography, and to bring out with distinctness the real nature of the deep-seated disease under which it labors.

At all events, whether or not I have been anticipated in the presentation of these facts, such knowledge of them as can be gained from this volume or from some better source is essential to the comprehension of the subject or to any proper consideration of it. Designedly and avowedly incomplete as is the survey of the subject here taken, it is sufficiently detailed to give any one who cares to understand it a fair degree of familiarity with the situation which confronts him who sets out to effect a genuine and not a spurious reform. It is furthermore sufficient to give him a fair conception of the sort of work that will have to be done before the anarchy which now prevails in our spelling can give way to even the semblance of order.

Assuredly there was ample need of a work of this sort being prepared, and the only regret that need be entertained is that it has not fallen to some one better equipped than myself to prepare it. For I reiterate in this preface what I have said in the body of the work itself: that there is no one subject upon which men, whether presumably or really intelligent, are in a state of more hopeless, helpless ignorance than upon that of the nature and history of English orthography. No serious student of it can read the articles which appear in newspapers, the communications sent to them, or the elaborate essays found in periodicals, without being struck by the more than Egyptian darkness which prevails. In nearly every one of these mistakes of fact not merely exist but abound. Most of the assertions made lack even that decent degree of probability which belongs to respectable fiction. Even in the very few cases where the facts are correct, the inferences drawn from them are utterly erroneous and misleading. Many of these articles, too, contain mistakes of apprehension so gross that one comes to feel that in the discussion of this particular subject the limits of human incapacity to understand the simplest assertion have been reached. Statements of this sort will be resented with all the venomousness of anonymous personal vituperation. They have not been made, however, without full examination of scores and scores of articles which have come out in opposition to spelling reform. No difficulty will be found, if the occasion demands, to substantiate their correctness beyond the shadow of a doubt.

The various chapters contained in this volume follow one another in logical sequence. But I have also sought to make each of them, in a way, independent of the others, and therefore complete in itself. This has necessitated, in a very few cases, the repetition of statements important only for the immediate understanding of the particular subject. I may venture to add that I have taken great pains to make the numerous details scattered through the volume absolutely correct, so that he who quarrels with the conclusions reached may have no cause to question the facts upon which they are based. If in the immense mass of these found here I have made anywhere a slip, I shall be grateful for the detection of it, and none the less so if it come from the most hostile source. In this subject it is the exact truth of which we are in pursuit, and a real though not a fancied exposure of error is to be welcomed gladly.

The movement now going on for the simplification of English spelling has in the few years of its existence attained a success which has never been even remotely approached by any similar attempt in the past. This has been due, in part, to the fact that an effort for reform has for the first time had behind it the support of an organized propaganda. Previous undertakings of the sort have been mainly the work of individuals. It has likewise been due, in part, to the general spread of knowledge as to the nature and history of words belonging to our speech and the changes of form they have undergone. Something also is due to the growing dissatisfaction, a consequence of this increase of intelligence, with the anomalies and absurdities of the present spelling, and the loss of time and labor, the waste of money, and the mental injury which the acquisition of these perverse and perverted forms involves. In our country, also, this feeling of dissatisfaction has been strengthened by the consideration that something must be done to remove from the path of that mighty army of foreigners landing yearly upon our shores the greatest of the stumbling-blocks in the way of the acquisition of the English language, necessary as the knowledge of it is to any comprehension by them of the laws and institutions and political ideas of the land they are henceforth to make their home.

Flourishing as the present movement assuredly is, it of course may fail ultimately, as have several which have preceded it. It certainly will fail if the propaganda does not continue to be vigorously pressed. It will fail if proposals are adopted and methods are followed which, while pleasing sciolists, do not recommend themselves to scholars. That experiment has been too often tried to leave us in any doubt as to the result. But whatever be the success or failure which may attend the present movement, none the less am I confident that the English race will not be content to sit down forever with a system of spelling which has nothing to recommend it but custom and prejudice, nothing to defend it but ignorance, nothing but superstition to make it an object of veneration. An orthography which defies the main object for which orthography was created cannot continue, with the advance of knowledge, to be endured forever; for speaking with absolute reverence, it can be said of it that, not being of God, it cannot stand.

ENGLISH SPELLING AND
SPELLING REFORM

CHAPTER I
CONFESSIONS OF A SPELLING REFORMER

It was my fortune in 1906 to be wandering in lands where English is not spoken, when the President of the United States issued his famous order in regard to spelling. Little, therefore, of the comment it occasioned met my eyes, either at the time or long after; little of the clamor it excited reached my ears. But after my return to my own country I had the opportunity to look over no small number of the productions which came out in opposition to it or in criticism of it, whether they appeared in the form of reported interviews with prominent persons, of leaders in newspapers or letters to them, or of elaborate articles in periodicals. Most of these written pieces were anonymous; but some of them came avowedly from men of recognized eminence in various fields of intellectual activity.

It is with no intention of conveying the slightest suggestion of disparagement of the authors of these various articles that I say that not one of them contained a single argument which every person who has paid even a superficial attention to the history of English orthography has not been familiar with from the time of his first entering upon the study. Even the jokes and sarcastic remarks of the newspapers were hoary with the rime of age. In the case of these latter something must be conceded to the inherent difficulty of the attack, without imputing the feebleness of it, or the lack of originality in it, to mere barrenness of brain. From the very nature of things it is hard to be jocose upon a subject of which one knows nothing at all. A difficulty of a like nature attended the production of the arguments which were put forth seriously. They brought forward no new ideas; they simply inspired recollections. It is only the fact that the writers of the more elaborate articles seemed to regard the reasons they advanced as novel, if not startling, contributions to thought, which to the mind of the veteran of orthographical wars imparted a certain languid interest to what they said. One comes, in truth, to feel a sort of respect for the continuous incapacity to comprehend the exact nature of the problem presented, which year after year of discussion does not impair, nor affluence of argument disturb.

As in a number of the pieces I was privileged to see I found my own name mentioned, I trust it will not be deemed a mark of offensive egotism—egotism of one sort it assuredly is—if I take the occasion of its appearance in these articles to state my views exactly on various points connected with the subject instead of having them stated for me inexactly by others. As confessions seem now to be the literary fashion, it has seemed best to put what I have to say in that form. The method of personal statement enables me also to bring out more distinctly not merely the views held by many, but also the reasons by which their course has been influenced. This consequently may serve as an excuse for a mode of utterance which in the case of one so obscure as myself would be otherwise out of place. Still, while the sentiments indicated may be entertained by numbers, they are here to be considered as nothing more than my own individual opinions. I do not pretend to speak with authority for any person but myself, least of all for any organization which has started out to carry on the work of spelling reform. Some, indeed, of the particular views I express may possibly, or, it may be, will probably, meet with the dissent of those who hold in general the same beliefs.

Now that the storm and stress which followed the President’s order is over, now that every one seems to have regained his equanimity, a fitting moment has apparently arrived to consider the whole subject itself without reference to the particular proposals of anybody or of any organization. This can be done at present with a certain detachment from the feelings which attended the heated controversy that then prevailed—at least, with as much detachment as is consistent with the possession of personal convictions. As this treatise, however, is avowedly egotistical, I may be permitted, before entering into the general discussion, to refer to a specific charge which has been regularly brought against me as well as against others. It is all the more desirable to do so because the consideration of it leads directly to the comprehension of what is really the great mainstay of the existing orthography. The charge is that in what I publish I do not use myself the new spellings, save, at least, on the most limited scale. I am inconsistent. My practice does not conform to my pretended belief.

Now it is very easy to retort the charge of inconsistency. No one can use our present spelling without being inconsistent; for English orthography is nothing but a mass of inconsistencies. Take one of the commonest of illustrations furnished by those opposed to any reform. You must not drop the u from honour, they tell us, because that unnecessary vowel shows that the word was derived immediately from the French, and only remotely from the Latin. On the contrary, you must retain the b of debt and doubt, though this letter hides their derivation from the French dette and doute, and gives the erroneous impression that they were taken directly from the Latin. Still, it is no real justification for one’s own conduct to prove that similar conduct is pursued by those who criticise him for it. Let me bring forward a few reasons which have influenced my own action, as doubtless they have more or less that of others.

There is, first, the printing-office to be consulted. This has generally an orthography of its own, and does not like to have it deviated from. There is next the publisher to be considered. Even if he is personally indifferent on the subject of spelling, he has a pecuniary interest in the work he is bringing out. Naturally he is reluctant to have introduced into it anything which will tend to retard its success with the public. As he usually has the means of enforcing his views, he is very much inclined to employ them.

But far more important, far more restraining than the attitude either of printer or publisher is that of the public itself. It is not simply indifferent: it is largely hostile. To many men a strange spelling is offensive; by the ill-informed it is regarded as portending ruin to the language. Necessarily no writer desires to limit his possible audience by running counter to its feelings in a matter which has no direct bearing upon the subject of which he treats. In my own case the public—most unwisely, as it naturally strikes me—is none too anxious under any circumstances to read what I write. Why, therefore, should I convert what is in my eyes a culpable lack of interest into absolute indifference or active hostility by rousing the prejudices of readers in consequence of insisting upon a point which has only a remote concern with the actual topic that may be under consideration?

These are reasons which I could fairly and honestly give. But, after all, the main one is something entirely different, something altogether independent of the feelings of others. With advancing years knowledge may or may not come; but altruism distinctly lingers. As we get along in life most of us lose the inclination to be constantly engaged in fighting strenuously for the progress of even the most praiseworthy causes. The desire wanes of benefiting your fellow-man, while encountering in so doing not merely his indifference, but his active hostility; of urging him to show himself rational while his proclivities are violently asinine. Even the far keener enjoyment of rendering him miserable by making evident to his reluctant but slowly dawning intelligence how much of an ignoramus, not to say idiot, he has shown himself in his acts and utterances—even this most poignant of pleasures loses its relish if indulgence in it can be secured only at the cost of much personal trouble. This is just as true of spelling reform as of any other movement. In fact, indifference to the propagation of the truth about it may be regarded as a species of that very altruism of which I have just disclaimed the practice. If a man seriously believes that it is essential to the purity and perfection of the English language that honor should be spelled with a u and horror without it; that honorable should be spelled with a u and honorary without it; that meter should have its final syllable in re and diameter and hexameter in er; that deign should terminate in eign and its allied compound form disdain in ain; that convey should end in ey and inveigh in eigh; that precede should end in ede and proceed in eed; that fancy should begin with f and phantom with ph; that deceit should be written without p and receipt with it; if, in fine, spelling in different ways words which have the same origin brings him pleasure, why not leave him in the undisturbed enjoyment of this mild form of imbecility? He will not be made happier by being made wiser.

It is natural, therefore, that the position of the man who has got along in years should tend to be rather that of a looker-on than of a participant in the strife. He feels more and more disposed to content himself with approving and applauding the work of the younger and better soldiers. My own attitude is, indeed, very much the same as that once described to me as his by my dear and honored friend, the late Professor Child of Harvard. He sometimes did and sometimes did not employ in his correspondence the reformed spellings which were recommended by the English and American philological societies. It may be added, in passing, that these changes, with the weight of the greatest scholars of both countries behind them, were in general treated with almost absolute indifference; or, if considered at all, met usually with the same unintelligent opposition as have the lists put forth by the Simplified Spelling Board. “If I am writing,” said Professor Child, “to one of these educated ignoramuses who think there is something sacred about the present orthography, I always take care to use the altered forms; but when writing to a man who really knows something about the subject, I am apt not to take the extra trouble required to conform to the recommendations made by the two philological societies.”[1]

In not following my faith by my practice, I am perfectly willing to concede that my course is not merely inconsistent, but unmanly. I shall not quarrel with any one who calls it pusillanimous, and even mean. Intimations to that effect have been made to me more than once in private letters. These reproaches I recognize as deserved, and I therefore receive them with meekness. But one of the reasons given above for my action, or rather inaction—the hostility of readers to new spellings—points directly to the one mighty obstacle which stands in the way of reforming our orthography. It is, in truth, all-potent. Singularly enough, however, it is so far from receiving consideration that it hardly ever receives much more than mere mention.

The regard for our present orthography is not based at all upon knowledge, or upon reason. It owes its existence and its strength almost entirely to sentiment. We give it other names, indeed. We describe the motives which animate us in big phrases. We talk of our devotion to the language of our fathers, while displaying the amplest possible ignorance of what that language was. We please ourselves with the notion that in denouncing any change we are nobly maintaining the historic continuity of the speech. As a matter of fact, we are governed by the cheap but all-powerful sentiment of association. We like the present orthography because we are used to it. When once the point of intimate familiarity with the form of a word has been reached, it makes thenceforward no difference to us how wide is the divergence between the pronunciation and the spelling which is ostensibly designed to represent the pronunciation. As little difference does it make if the form with which we have become familiar not merely fails to indicate the origin of the word, but on the contrary suggests and even imposes upon the mind a belief in an utterly false derivation. Such considerations do not affect us in the slightest. We simply like the spelling to which we are accustomed; we dislike the spelling to which we are not accustomed. No one who familiarizes himself with the articles in newspapers and magazines written by the defenders of the present orthography can entertain the slightest doubt on this point. The arguments advanced amount to nothing more than this, that any new spelling employed is distasteful to the writer because it breaks up old associations.

Because hostility to change springs not from knowledge, not from reason, but almost entirely from sentiment, it must not be inferred that the obstacle it presents to reform is a slight one. On the contrary, it is peculiarly formidable. So far from being a feeble barrier to overcome, it is of the very strongest, if not the very strongest. The fact that in numerous instances it is based upon foundations demonstrably irrational does not in the least impair its influence. In any matter of controversy we can fight with assurance of success against beliefs which the holder has honestly, even if mistakenly, adopted, because he deems them to be in accordance with reason. Appeal can then be made to his intelligence. But not so in the case of a belief based primarily upon sentiment. This is constantly exemplified in controversies about politics or religion. But nowhere is the fact more conspicuous than in the matter of English orthography. To spell differently from what we have been trained to spell irritates many of us almost beyond the point of endurance. We can manage to put up with variations from the present orthography prevailing in past centuries when we come to learn enough about the subject to be aware that such variations existed. The writers of those times had not reached that exalted plane of perfect propriety on which it is our good fortune to live and move. But no contemporary must venture to free himself from the cast-iron shackles in which we have inclosed the form of our words without subjecting his action to our indignant protest.

It is vain to deny the strength of the feeling of association. Even to those who have ascended out of the atmosphere of serene ignorance in which it flourishes most luxuriantly, a new spelling is always apt to come with something of a sense of shock. No matter how fully we recognize the impropriety and even absurdity of the old form, none the less does the sentiment of association cling to it and affect our attitude toward it. As this treatise sets out to deal somewhat with my own impressions, I may be pardoned the employment of a personal exemplification of the point under discussion. German is, for practical purposes, mainly a phonetic tongue. In modern times anomalies which once existed have been largely swept away. It is merely a question of a few years when they will all go; for, Germany being a nation of scholars, scholars have there some influence. In studying the language as a boy I learned some spellings now rarely used. For instance, thun and todt appeared then in the forms here given. Now I see the one without the h, the other without the d. I recognize the propriety of the action taken in dropping the unpronounced letters. But, while my judgment is perfectly convinced of its correctness, for the life of me I cannot get over a certain sense of strangeness when I come across the words in their new form—at least, it was some time before I could.

How much, indeed, we are all affected by this influence of association one illustration will make convincingly clear. In the sixteenth century there existed an occasional tendency to spell hot with an initial w. It was an effort to represent the pronunciation of the word which had begun to prevail in certain quarters. It did not drive out the present form, but it existed alongside of it. It was a spelling to which Spenser was particularly addicted. There are many instances of the use of it in the Faerie Queene, of which the following may serve as examples:

To pluck it out with pincers firie whot.

—Book I, canto x, st. 26.

He soone approached, panting, breathlesse, whot.

—Book II, canto iv, st. 37.

Upon a mightie furnace, burning whote.

—Ib., canto ix, st. 29.

Now, at the present day, anybody would be either amused at the appearance of such a form as whot if one so spelled the word ignorantly, or outraged if he did it purposely. But all of us in the case of whole are doing precisely the very thing we should condemn in the case of whot. In the former of these words the initial letter has now no more excuse for its existence than in the latter. Whole, by derivation, is precisely the same word as hale. The only real difference between these forms is the difference of vowel sound caused by dialectical variation. They are both related to heal and health. The closeness of the tie between them all is brought out distinctly in the phrase “whole and sound.” For centuries, too, the word had the spelling hole. At a later period, like hot, it took unto itself an initial w; unlike hot, it continued to retain it. Consequently, we find exemplified in the two words the same old influence of which we have been speaking. The very persons who would be horrified, and properly horrified, at giving to hot the spelling whot, would be equally horrified at taking away from whole a letter which, besides being never heard in pronunciation, disguises the derivation; and the recognition of this latter at a glance is insisted upon by many as essential to the proper representation of the word as well as to their own personal happiness. Here, as elsewhere, it is sentiment that rules us, not sense.

It is unquestionably a distinct objection to the introduction of new spellings that they have the temporary effect of breaking up old associations. They consequently distract the attention of the reader from the idea the word conveys to the word itself. This would to some extent be true, even were he strongly in favor of the changes made. Necessarily this is much more the case when he is bitterly opposed to them, and honestly, no matter how unintelligently, fancies that the fate of the language is bound up with the continuance of some particular method of spelling. It is true that the frequent occurrence of a new form on the printed page soon dispels the sense of strangeness with which it is greeted at first. But to produce that effort speedily, the reader must have an open mind. An open mind, however, is just what the ordinary believer in the present orthography lacks. He not only conceives an intense prejudice against the new form itself, but he is sometimes unwilling to read the book or article containing it. This, I have already intimated, is my main reason for not adopting in practice several spellings which in theory I approve. Some of the old ones to which many are devoted are too much for even the large charity I entertain for the most undesirable citizens of the orthographic commonwealth. But with others I put up because it is only by using them that one can succeed in getting a hearing from those who most need to be made conscious of the extent of their linguistic ignorance and the depth of their orthographic depravity. It is the unbelievers that require conversion, and not those who are already firm in the faith. Accordingly, for the sake of a temporary communication between the multitude which still continues to sit in linguistic darkness and him who seeks to enlighten them, the old spelling may be properly used as a sort of material bridge over which to trundle orthographic truth.

Necessarily, violent hostility to new spellings has always to be reckoned with. It is by no means so intense or so wide-spread as it was once. The language employed is now much more guarded. Men have come to gain some comprehension of the boundlessness of their ignorance of the subject, and have learned in consequence the wisdom of putting restraint upon expression. Intemperate invectives will, indeed, continue to be heard for a long while yet. Rarely, however, will they proceed from any quarter where we have a right to expect real intelligence. Doubtless belated survivals of the previous era of good old-fashioned gentlemanly ignorance will occasionally thrust themselves upon the attention; but these ebullitions now surprise and amuse rather than irritate. A case in point comes to my mind. In the latter part of 1906 I chanced to be in London during the period when a violent controversy was going on between the Times and the publishers as to the prices at which books were to be offered for sale. Every morning the columns of the great daily were filled with letters on one side or the other of the matter at issue. Naturally the participators in this bibliopolic tournament did not invariably confine themselves to the special subject under discussion. Toward the very close of the year a particularly precious effusion on a side issue came from one of the correspondents.[2] His patriotic soul had been stirred to the depths by the fact, as he asserted, that English publishers had been guilty of using what he called American spelling in their books. They had indulged in this heinous crime from the ignoble lust of gain. He had declined, in consequence, to buy works he needed and desired because they were printed in this fashion. “It is a treason against our language and country,” he wrote, “and not merely an offence against taste.” Further, the writer of this extraordinary communication incidentally took pains to inform us that he had been the winner of a prize essay at Cambridge University. Presumably, therefore, he had reached an appreciable degree of mental development and was in possession of some intelligence, however little his utterances might seem to indicate it.

English scholarship has been too commonly distinct from scholarship in English; but in these latter days it creates some little surprise to find displayed publicly by a presumably educated man so gross a manifestation of all-pervading ignorance as is exemplified in the communication just mentioned. Undoubtedly there are still many who think just such thoughts, if it be proper to dignify sentiments of this sort with the name of thoughts. But it is really too late to give them public utterance—at least, with the writer’s name attached. That should be safely sheltered behind the bulwark of type. Better still, such opinions should be reserved for the circle of one’s private friends, either ignorant enough to sympathize with them, or too much attached to the speaker to expose them to the comment of a more intelligent, but also more unfeeling, world. Things, indeed, cannot be said now that could be said with impunity, and to some extent with applause, fifty years ago—and even twenty-five years ago could be said with safety. During the last half century men have been running to and fro, and knowledge has been increased. This is true in particular of the knowledge of English orthography, of its history and its character. So generally, indeed, have special students, and even occasionally highly educated men, become familiar with the fact of the differences between the spelling of the present and that of the past, and to a less extent, with the changes that have taken place at various periods and with the causes that have brought them about, that it startles one at first to discover that there are quarters into which not even a ray of this light has penetrated.

It is, however, no difficult matter to point out the grand source of erroneous beliefs of this sort. It all goes back to the sentiment of association. Unhappily this sentiment of association never receives check or correction, because we familiarize ourselves with the language of the past in the spelling of the present. In the matter of orthography, the dead author is considered to have no rights which the living publisher is bound to respect. His spelling is regularly altered so as to conform to that of the particular dictionary which has been adopted in the printing-house as a sort of official guide. This is done even when the writer himself has felt and expressed solicitude as to the form in which his words should appear. There was a period when a somewhat similar treatment was meted out to his grammar. The great works of the past underwent at one time more or less revision at the hands of the veriest literary hacks, who made changes in the language in order to reconcile it to their notions of propriety of usage. Idioms had their structure sometimes modified, sometimes improved out of existence. Sentences were recast in order to correct supposed errors, and bring them into accord with the rules laid down in the latest school grammar. This was particularly true of the latter half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. Hence, editions of the classic authors of our tongue then appearing can frequently not be consulted with confidence by him to whom it is of importance to ascertain, in any given case, the words, forms, and constructions actually used by the writer.

This condition of things is no longer true of the grammar and expression. Modern editors, as a general rule, pay scrupulous heed to the exact reproduction of the words and constructions of the original, whether these accord or not with their ideas of propriety. But as yet there is little of this sensitiveness of feeling about the orthography. It may be conceded that the matter is not in itself so important for a certain class of readers. The expression, after all, is the vital concern. Accordingly, in a work designed for the use of the great body of men, it may not be desirable to reproduce peculiarities of orthography so numerous and so variant from present use as to interfere with ease of reading, or distract attention from the thought to the form of the words in which the thought is clothed. While, therefore, the reproduction of the exact spelling of a classic work is essential to the educated man who desires to be acquainted with the history of the speech, it is of but subsidiary importance to perhaps a majority of ordinary readers. Even an author so late as Shakespeare would hardly have been the popular writer he is had the mass of men been compelled to read him in the spelling in which his works originally appeared. Something has undoubtedly been lost by conforming his orthography to that of the present time, but doubtless much more has been gained in the wider reading his works have received in consequence.

Considerations of this sort do not apply to works designed strictly for the specialist and the highly educated. But even in the case of the great mass of men they do not apply to works which have been published since English orthography fell under the sway of the printing-house. The variations from the existing forms are indeed increasingly numerous the farther we go back; but even where they most prevail they are not really large in number or serious in character. Certainly they would not present to an intelligent human being the slightest obstacle to ease of reading or of comprehension. Hence, we have a right to demand that the few variations which exist should be reproduced both in their integrity and their entirety; that an edition of an author belonging to these later periods should represent his spelling as well as his grammar. In the vast majority of instances—excluding avowed reprints—this is not now the case. In the matter of orthography, rarely do editors or publishers have any conscience. The works of the past, even of the immediate past, are presented to us not in the spelling of the past, but in that of the present.

Hence, there is no occasion for surprise that such pitiful exhibitions of ignorance are so constantly displayed by men from whom we should naturally expect better things. The large majority of even cultivated readers do not see the words used by any great author of the past in the way in which he himself spelled them. They see them only as the modern printer chooses to spell them for him. It is, therefore, not surprising that the existing orthography should come to seem to such men not the comparatively late creation it is, but as something which has about it all the flavor of antiquity. As an inevitable result, there has been further imparted to it the odor of sanctity. Ignorance is recognized everywhere as a mother of devotion. Nowhere has there been a more striking manifestation of this truth than in the case of our spelling. The adoring worship of it seems to be more widely diffused in England than in America—at least, it is there more shameless in the exhibition of its lack of knowledge, though that is saying a good deal. We have all of late been made familiar with the somewhat unfortunate remark of an English writer, that the spelling of Shakespeare was good enough for him. Now an assertion of this sort would be worthless as an argument, even were it based upon a foundation of ascertained fact. We do not deprive ourselves of existing facilities of any sort, because they were not only unused, but were unheard of in the time of Queen Elizabeth. No one now feels himself under the necessity of refraining from making a rapid trip to Stratford by rail because Shakespeare was compelled to journey thither slowly and laboriously over the wretchedest of roads.

But in this instance an argument, worthless in itself, is made even more worthless, if possible, because the facts upon which it is presumed to be founded do not exist. Shakespeare flourished in a period when no eager desire existed for the maintenance of any strict orthographic monopoly. Within certain well-defined limits every one spelled pretty much as he pleased. Hence, the same word cannot infrequently be found in his writings, and in those of his contemporaries, with marked diversities of form. His usage, furthermore, differed in some cases entirely from any known to the modern world. But if his printed works fairly represent his practice, he evinced in many instances a perverse preference for what the semi-educated call American spelling. Let us test the truth of this last assertion by examining the attitude he assumed in a matter about which an orthographic controversy has been raging for centuries. This is the case of certain words which, according to one method of spelling, end in er, according to the other, in re.

As regards orthography, these words naturally divide themselves into two classes. In the first of these the termination is preceded by c. When this is the case the words fall under the influence of a general principle regulating pronunciation—so far as general principles can be said to regulate anything in English. According to it, c before the vowel e assumes the sound of s. The words of this particular class which Shakespeare uses are acre, lucre, and massacre. Were they made to end in er, they would have to come into conflict with the rule just mentioned. As a result they would mislead, as to their proper pronunciation, those who saw them for the first time. Under present conditions, they therefore cannot well undergo any change. The only way out of the difficulty would be to substitute k for c. Such a course we have taken, for instance, in the case of the word joke. This comes from the Latin joc-us with the same meaning. At its first introduction into the speech, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, it was spelled joque or joc. It finally gave up the c of the original and substituted for it k. On the other hand, in the adjective jocose, we retain the letter of the primitive which we have discarded in the noun.

This state of things is modern, because in Anglo-Saxon c had always the sound of k. Consequently, in æcer, the original of our word acre, there was neither difficulty nor confusion created by the employment of the letter. All this, however, was changed by the Norman Conquest. The pronunciation of c was in consequence affected, as it still is, by a following e. The result was that for a long time k was largely substituted in this particular word for the original letter. But in the fourteenth century the present method of spelling it came into fashion. It has remained in fashion ever since. The earlier form maintained itself for a while as of equal authority. It, indeed, died out slowly and reluctantly; but it died at last. In the collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, which appeared in 1623, acre was practically the only recognized spelling. The word occurs in this work just seven times. In one instance only does the older form crop up. When Hamlet tells Laertes, “Let them throw millions of acres on us,” the word is spelled akers.[3] In a similar way Bacon in his Advancement of Learning uses lukar for lucre. But examples of practices such as these are exceptional.

Consideration of a like sort does not, however, apply to the words of the second class to be considered. There are several of these now found with the ending er or re which do not appear in Shakespeare’s writings. Conspicuous among those not used by him are fibre or fiber, miter or mitre, niter or nitre, sabre or saber, specter or spectre. But the words of this second class which actually occur are more numerous than those of the first class. The most common ones employed by him, about which variation of usage now prevails, are center or centre, luster or lustre, meager or meagre, meter or metre, scepter or sceptre, sepulcher or sepulchre, theater or theatre. It becomes a matter, therefore, of some interest to discover which of these forms must be chosen by the writer who professes that Shakespeare’s spelling is good enough for him. The evidence afforded by the printed page—in this case the only evidence that can be secured—is accordingly given in the following paragraph.

Take the spelling of the words just mentioned as it is found in the folio of 1623. Center appears precisely twelve times in that volume. It is never spelled with re. In ten instances it has the termination er. Once the form centry is found, and once centure. Meager occurs five times. In every instance it ends in er. This similar statement may be made of meter, which is used but twice. In both these cases it has the termination er. Scepter is a word found far more frequently. It appears just thirty-five times.[4] Not once does it have the ending re; it is invariably er. The case is not essentially different with sepulcher. Thirteen times it occurs; eleven times with the termination er, twice with the termination re.[5] About the theater Shakespeare may be supposed to have had some knowledge. The word itself appears but six times in his plays. But even in these few instances he seems to have felt a perverse preference for the spelling in er over that in re. The former occurs just five times, the latter but once. The only consolation left for him who combines devotion to Shakespeare with devotion to the ending in re is found in the word spelled lustre or luster. It appears exactly thirteen times. Seven times it is spelled the former way, six times the latter.

Spellings of this sort, it may be added, are far from being limited to Shakespeare’s age. They were followed by many writers much later. Modern editions, to which we are accustomed, do more, as already intimated, than hide the fact from our eyes. They actually prevent, for most of us, the possibility of discovering it. Hence, the prevalent lack of intelligence, with its consequent hardiness of assertion, not unfrequently accompanied with the feeling of distress and repulsion at any proposal for change. He whose heart is affected with sadness at the sight of the spelling theater for theatre or center for centre, and whose prophetic soul foresees disaster as the result of the general adoption of such forms, would find his grief alleviated and his fears dispelled if he could only extend his knowledge sufficiently to familiarize himself with the real practice of the past, instead of getting his notions about it from the falsifications of the present. Examine, for instance, in regard to the very usage under discussion, the first edition of Addison’s Remarks on Italy. This work was brought out in 1705 by Tonson, the most noted publisher of the time. The same variation which prevailed earlier in the use of these terminations still continued. But there continued also a distinct preference for er over re. Fiber, salt-peter, and scepter are found as here printed. Theater occurs seven times, six times as theater, and once—in poetry—as theatre. Amphitheater is used ten times in all. Once its plural is spelled amphitheatres; in the other nine instances it has the ending in er.[6] On the other hand, meager and niter, both of which are used once, and sepulcher, which appears five times, have the termination re. Or, take Gulliver’s Travels, which came out more than a score of years later. The first edition of the work was published in 1726 in two volumes. In it center is found just seven times. In every instance it is spelled with the ending er, not once in re. Meager, it may be added, occurs twice, and in both cases as here spelled.[7] But here again, as in most other works, modern reprints falsify the record.

In these instances it is easy enough to exaggerate the importance of the evidence furnished on this point; at least, it is so in the case of the Elizabethans. In any fair discussion of orthography, two things are to be kept in view. One is to ascertain the exact facts; the other is not to get from them erroneous impressions. Let us go back, for instance, to Shakespeare and his spelling of words with the endings er or re. It is not in the least desirable to attribute to him feelings which he never had, nor even dreamed of having. Like his contemporaries, he found two forms of these words in use. Like them, he attached no particular sanctity to either. He unquestionably felt himself at liberty to use both. All, therefore, that one can positively say in the case of these words is that if Shakespeare had any preference, it was manifestly in favor of the termination in er.

If it be urged that the plays published after his death do not represent either his opinion or his practice, it is fair to say in reply that a like condition of things is revealed in the minor poems. All of these appeared in his lifetime. Over the printing of some of them he may have had no oversight. For the spelling of the words found in these he cannot, therefore, be held directly responsible. Still, the two most important of them—Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece—must, in going through the press, have passed under his own eye. In consequence, the spelling employed could not have failed to receive his tacit sanction at least, if even, what is more probable, he was not himself primarily responsible for it. Yet in these very two poems scepter[8] and sepulcher[9] are found so spelled in the original editions. A like statement may be made of this last word in the single instance in which it occurs in the Sonnets.[10] Further, the same thing may be said about his use of center[11] and meter.[12] Each appears but once, but it appears as just given. On the other hand meager, which is found five times in this form in the plays, has the spelling meagre[13] in its solitary occurrence in the poems. For neither one of these forms is Shakespeare likely to have felt any decided preference. Still, he could not have failed to see that there was no more reason for the spelling meagre instead of meager than there was for eagre in place of eager, or, to adopt the more common earlier orthography, egre.

Besides these words there were two others of the class considered, about which variation of usage existed or exists. Because of their single occurrence in his writing, their spelling can be regarded of importance only as indicating tendency. Othello, in his account of his life, speaks of “antres vast and deserts idle,” as it is found in all modern editions. But Shakespeare has no such form as antres. In the first folio it is antars; in the quarto of 1622 it is antrees, indicating a difference of pronunciation. The word itself is rare at any period. Its later use, so far as it has been used at all, is due to its appearance in a favorite play of the great dramatist. No one among his contemporaries seems, so far as is now known, to have felt it desirable or incumbent to resort to its employment; though later investigations may cause it to turn up at any time. But the form in which we know it is not due to Shakespeare himself, but to his editors. There seems little reason for denying him the privilege of spelling the word in his own way. There is still another term, now not uncommon, which is found but once in his writings. But the villainous stuff which Henry IV.’s ambassador told Hotspur was digged from the bowels of the earth to destroy brave men, was not salt-petre, as modern editions have it, but salt-peter in the original.[14]

These are all the disputed words of this class which are found in the poems of Shakespeare as well as in his plays, as also the number of times of their occurrence. Facts of this sort are familiar, at least in a general way, to all special students of our speech. But even from the highly educated they are hidden more or less, and in many cases hidden altogether. These see ordinarily nothing but modern editions of the greatest writers; and in modern editions modern orthography is substituted for the orthography which the authors of the past favored, or at least endured. The result is that the feeling of association which attaches to every word a particular form is never subjected to the counteracting influence which would spring from coming even into occasional contact with the earlier usage. The strength of this feeling has in consequence become abnormal. From it has further developed the singular belief of the orthographically uneducated that the present spelling is somehow bound up with the purity of the language, if not with its continued existence.

It is because I look upon this sentiment of association as the main bulwark of our present orthography that I have always taken the ground that it is only through a rising generation that any thorough-going reform can ever be accomplished. It is asking too much of human nature to expect a generation already risen to go a second time through the fiery ordeal of learning to spell. Individuals belonging to it will adopt proposed changes, especially those in whom conviction is reinforced by the energy of youth or of personal character. Of these there will be a regularly increasing number with the enlightenment which is sure to follow discussion of the subject. But the action of the great mass of even highly educated men will not be affected. This state of things would probably be true of the spelling of any language; but in one so defiant of all law as our own, the aversion to change would increase in proportion to the lawlessness. We are not disposed to give up what with so much toil we have acquired. Furthermore, there comes to be in the minds of many a certain fondness for the existing orthography because of its very irrationality, of its constant unfitness to fulfil its professed aim of representing pronunciation. Its uncouthness inspires them with the same sort of devotion with which the lower order of savage tribes regard their gods. The uglier they are, the more fervently they are adored.

In the case of a rising generation there are no such feelings to be encountered. The soil is virgin. No prejudices are to be overcome, no sentiments to be shocked, no customs to be changed. The reasoning powers have not been so blunted by association that the mind looks with favor upon what is defiant of reason. Furthermore, about the changed and correct forms would speedily gather the same sentiment which has caused the previous forms to be cherished by their elders. The younger generation will in time do more than look upon the new spellings as the only conceivably rational ones. They will wonder by what perversity their fathers came to tolerate the old ones in defiance of reason. If a child has been accustomed from his earliest years to use exclusively the forms vext and mixt, the spellings vexed and mixed will not only seem offensive to him when he becomes a man, but it will be difficult for him to comprehend the precise nature of the irrationality which could ever have insisted upon it as a virtue that the combination ed should have the sound of t.

A risen generation, accordingly, cannot reasonably be expected to adopt a new spelling. The most that can be asked of it is that it shall not put itself in active opposition, that it shall let the task of improving our present barbarous orthography go on unimpeded. This, however, is the very last thing it is inclined to do. The fathers have eaten sour grapes; they have no intention of keeping their children’s children’s teeth from being set on edge. Yet there is plainly to be recognized now the existence of a steadily increasing number of persons who are disposed to consider this whole question carefully. In the case of such men—upon whose co-operation the success of any movement must ultimately depend—it is all-essential that the changes proposed should recommend themselves by their manifest propriety or by the probability of their general acceptance. They may be unwilling to take the trouble to use these new forms in their own practice, even if convinced of their desirableness; but they will be ready to cast their influence in favor of their adoption by the members of that rising generation to whom the spelling of certain words in certain ways has not yet become almost a second nature.

The permanent success of any spelling reform, according to this view, depends upon its adoption by a rising generation. To have it so adopted, it must recommend itself to the risen generation as being both desirable and feasible. Unreasoning ignorance, intrenched behind a rampart of prejudice, can be ignored. Not so the honest ignorance of those whose training naturally inclines them to favor what has been long received, but who are not averse to consider the question in dispute fully and fairly. In any case the changes proposed, in order to succeed, must follow the line of least resistance; for they have to encounter that peculiarly formidable of hostile forces—the unintelligent opposition of the intelligent. The altered forms recommended for adoption must, therefore, have at the outset some support either in present or past usage, or they must be in accord with the operation of some law modifying orthography, which has always been steadily, even if imperceptibly, at work in the language.

It is because it does not conform to either of these principles that, had I had anything to say about it, I should have objected to the recommendation of the spelling thru. My reasons for taking such ground would have had nothing to do with the abstract propriety or impropriety of the new form. Nor could exception be taken to it on the score of derivation. The original word, indeed, from which it came was thurh. Later this appeared at times as thruh. No fault could, therefore, be found with the alteration beyond the dropping of the sign of the no longer pronounced guttural. It is not principle, therefore, that would have come into the consideration of it, but expediency. I should have objected to it solely on the ground that it is a violent break with the literary past. Therefore, instead of following the line of least resistance, it would follow the line of greatest. It would be sure, in consequence, to excite bitter hostility and to repel support from the other recommendations made. Its adoption into the list would, therefore, not have seemed to me good policy. This is a view of the matter entirely independent of my personal indisposition to favor vowel changes in the spelling until a settled plan for the representation of the vowel sounds has been agreed upon and accepted. Yet it is fair to add that in consequence of the frequency with which the new form has been made the subject of attack, the sense of strangeness and the resultant hostility with which it was first greeted have now largely worn away.

It has been asserted that hostility to the very idea of reforming the spelling has largely its source in the erroneous beliefs, with the prejudices engendered of them, that have come to prevail in consequence of tampering with the orthography found in the works of the past, and reproducing them in the orthography of the present. In time, and with effort, the widely diffused ignorance so generated can be trusted to disappear. But even when this obstacle is removed, another of the same general nature still remains. It is, perhaps, full as formidable. There is no reference here to the difficulty inherent in the very character of our spelling—a difficulty that is far the most serious of all. This is, however, a subject which will come up for consideration by itself. The obstacle here in mind lies in the very nature of the men of our race. It is an obstruction by no means confined to them; only in them it is more pronounced than in the case of other nations with other tongues. The English-speaking people, in their attempts at carrying out any reform, are little inclined to act logically. They do not place clearly before themselves the exact nature of the evil they propose to attack, and then set out to extirpate it root and branch, according to certain well-defined principles. On the contrary, they work by the rule of thumb. They find a flaw here, a defect there. They then proceed to remedy it as best they can without disturbing and disarranging the rest of the structure. Accordingly, no symmetry is displayed in the character of the alteration made and no perfection in the result.

Still, about this method there are manifest advantages. Whatever changes are effected are effected with the least possible friction, and after the least possible struggle. They are brought about so gradually that the minds of men are comparatively little disturbed by the break with the past which has been made. There still remain relics of its absurdities with which they can console themselves for what they have lost. Consequently, the alterations, however much an object of dislike, cause nothing of that intense hostility which attends any scientific and, therefore, sweeping reform.

In this respect our race stands in sharpest contrast with that foreign one with which its connections have been closest—which has often been its enemy and occasionally its ally. The French mind, unlike the English, is by nature severe and logical. It cares little for precedent. It fixes its eyes upon principle. It is disposed to follow any reform it accepts to its remotest conclusion. It drops without hesitation long-cherished excrescences, brings order out of chaos, even if in so doing it is forced to disregard traditions and override cherished sentiments. We can see the attitude of the French mind as contrasted with that of the English best illustrated in comparatively recent French history. The Revolution was a period of storm and stress. Things were then attempted which would hardly have been thought of, far less tried, at any ordinary period. But the point here is that such things could never have been carried out by the men of the English race at the most extraordinary period. It is not merely that they would not have been done; they would not have been contemplated. To unify France, for illustration, it was essential, in the eyes of the revolutionists, that the ancient provinces should be obliterated, so far as their size would permit their entire effacement. They therefore cut up the land into departments. In these the old boundaries were disregarded. Sections of different provinces were brought into political union wherever practicable. New affiliations were to take the place of the old. The idea of federation was to be destroyed. The provinces were to be made to disappear as living entities from the minds of men. In place of them the department, a purely artificial creation, was to be constantly before their eyes. Men were no longer to be Normans or Bretons or Gascons or Burgundians; they were to be simply Frenchmen. In diverting the thought of the people from the provinces to the whole country, the reformers had no hesitation in uprooting the traditions and common associations which the inhabitants of these provinces had inherited from the past, and in running counter to sentiments which had been the outgrowth of centuries.

It is safe to say that in the time of most violent revolution, no idea of this sort would occur to the men of the English-speaking races. Even in the case of the counties of Great Britain, where the tie is by no means strong, it can hardly be conceived as undergoing consideration. But contemplate the reception that would be given to the project of breaking up the United States into a series of departments, or provinces, in which the present boundaries should be obliterated, and in which all the members should have, as far as possible, the same size or the same population! Now there would be with us no advantage worth mentioning in any such action. But suppose there would arise from it advantages which every one would admit to be of the most immense and far-reaching importance? Even in that case, imagine the favor any such proposition would meet with, and the chances there would be for its adoption. Yet this is something which revolutionary France not only set out to accomplish, but actually did accomplish. She accomplished it, too, not in the case of political entities which, as with us, had often only a few years of existence, and at best but two or three hundred, but in the case of provinces whose history went back to the very beginnings of modern Europe. She overrode all local ties, all provincial prejudices, in her resolution that her inhabitants should no longer be citizens of Provence or Normandy or Brittany, but citizens only of France.

Exactly the same thing may be said of another experiment then made. It is practically inconceivable to imagine the men of our race, on their own initiative, devising and setting up such a violent alteration of all existing practices as was involved in the introduction, in 1799, of the metrical system of weights and measures. There is no need of discussing here its abstract superiority or inferiority. The only point to be made prominent is that the English could not, or at least would not, have gone at the problem that way. Even if they had solved it to their satisfaction, they would not have thought of at once proceeding to put into practice the conclusions reached. The French mind, clear and logical, saw, as it believed, the advantage of a uniform system of weights and measures. One method, for illustration, of weight for gold and silver, another for drugs and chemicals, another for ordinary objects, struck them as having no justification in reason. They took advantage of a period when all ancient beliefs and customs were on trial for their life to reduce these varying practices to uniformity. They created a commission of men to study the subject. To them they intrusted the consideration of it, and instructed them to report the measures that ought to be taken. Once satisfied that their recommendations were worthy of adoption, they did not, as would have been done with us, pigeon-hole the report containing them. Instead, they enacted them into law and imposed them upon the whole country, whether men were willing to accept them or averse.

This is the way the French mind works, or, rather, is disposed to work; for the things accomplished then could not have been accomplished so suddenly, if even at all, in any ordinary period. But the English mind does not act in that way. Just as it is in the French blood to reduce everything to a system of orderly completeness, no matter what inconveniences may attend the process, so it is in our blood to love an anomaly for its own sake, frequently to extol it as something desirable in itself. This difference of mental attitude between the two races is made strikingly manifest in their treatment of this very subject of spelling. A difficulty of somewhat the same nature, though far less in degree, confronts the French as confronts the English. Their orthography is wretched. It is not by any means so wretched as ours. Still, it is bad enough to attract the attention of men of learning and of those engaged in the business of education. The evil was admitted. What should be the nature of the remedy? To what extent should, or rather could, reform of the orthography be carried? These are not revolutionary times, and things which are capable of being carried through in revolutionary times cannot even be attempted now. Therefore, one point assumed the place of prominence. This was not what it was theoretically desirable to do, but what, under modern conditions, it was practicable to do. Accordingly, as far back as 1903, the French government appointed a commission to consider the matter. It embraced some of the most eminent scholars. The committee made a report, which was submitted by the government to the French Academy. Disagreement arose, not so much on matters of principle as of detail. A second commission was appointed to prepare a final plan upon which the minister of public instruction could take action. Its report has been published and its conclusions promulgated. They are not binding, to be sure. Yet, with the weight of the government and the French Academy behind them, it is merely a question of time when any changes recommended will be adopted by all.

It is evident from this one fact that the desire to make the spelling conform as far as possible to the pronunciation—the one object for which spelling was devised—is far from being confined to the men of the English-speaking race. Even when it cannot succeed in its main object, it aims to bring about uniformity by sweeping away the anomalous. The movement for spelling reform now going on with us is, therefore, no isolated undertaking. It is simply part of a world-wide movement in the interests of law and order. There is an intellectual conscience as well as a moral one. On this subject the intellectual conscience of the users of speech among all thoroughly enlightened nations has now been distinctly awakened. The only peculiarity about English is that the need of such an awakening is far more pressing than in other tongues, and the difficulty of discovering the right track to follow is far greater. Neither Italian nor Spanish requires any sweeping change. For all practical purposes, these tongues are phonetic. Irregularities can unquestionably be found, but they are neither numerous nor important. Above all, they do not affect the vital representation of pronunciation by giving, as with us, different signs to the same sound and different sounds to the same sign. Their deviation from the phonetic standard is confined to the retention of unnecessary letters. This is a matter that can be grappled with easily. On the limited scale it exists, it is not of much moment. Any variations from the ideal can be easily corrected if the project is once taken seriously in hand.

In German, the variation from the phonetic standard is greater than in the two tongues just mentioned. As compared with English, however, it is exceedingly slight. Even in those instances where it has different signs to represent the same sound, it does not, as is the case with our speech, make the confusion more confounded by giving to these same signs the representation of sounds altogether different. But the public mind is awake in Germany to the importance of this subject. Many of the more marked variations from the phonetic ideal have already been done away with by the action of the several governments. For, in Germany, a nation of scholars, the control of educational methods is immediately or remotely in the hands of scholars. These men, not satisfied with what has already been accomplished, are at work to do away with the anomalies that continue to exist. When once they come into accord over the measures to be adopted and the changes to be made, it is merely a question of time when their proposals will be carried into effect. The various governments will do the work of promulgation and enforcement. The reforms recommended will be embodied in the text-books and taught in the schools. That action once taken, the whole work itself has practically been done.

Unfortunately, none of the means just mentioned are practicable with us. The administration of education is nowhere in England or America really centralized, as it is in France and Germany. In those countries any changes which have behind them the best expert opinion can be carried through with comparative ease. The German government will venture on any educational experiments which have the united support of German scholars. In France the almost superstitious deference paid to the decisions of the Academy will cause any orthographic changes having the sanction of that body to be accepted by the great mass of the community. Individuals may growl, but they will submit. More than once the Academy has recommended reforms, and these have been adopted because they were so recommended. About the middle of the eighteenth century it altered the spelling of five thousand words. Perhaps it would be juster to say that it indicated, in the case of a number of these, what one should be adopted of several forms which were then in use. No one would think now of going back to those against which it then pronounced. When, therefore, the department of public instruction and the Academy work together in harmony, their union is irresistible. Once the reformed spelling is authorized to be taught in the public schools, the simpler forms can be trusted to work their way by that inherent strength of their own which comes from inherent sense. Of course, objection will be made; but it will manifest itself in little else but empty spluttering or impotent invective on the part of those who mistake custom and association for reason, and fancy that the life of a word is found in the form in which they are in the habit of seeing it clothed.

“They order these matters better in France,” are the words with which Sterne begins his Sentimental Journey. Any action of the sort just mentioned is impossible with the men of the English-speaking race. We have neither the machinery to use, nor the disposition to use it, if we had it. There is nowhere, either in England or America, any great centralized authority, literary or administrative, to which deference if not obedience is felt to be due. With us in the United States in particular, we have no national government which can authorize examination of the subject, still less enforce any action. As little respect is paid to the conclusions of scholars who have made the matter a special study. With a great body of men the words of the veriest ignoramus who is able to get access to the columns of a newspaper are as likely to be heeded as those of him who has spent years in the investigation of the character and history of English orthography. But if the ignoramus is merely an ignoramus in this subject, if he chances to be a man who has shown ability and gained deserved repute in some other distinct field of endeavor, the authority he has justly secured for himself in matters he knows a great deal about is transferred to any pronouncements he chooses to make in a matter he knows little or nothing about. In considering the construction or reconstruction of a bridge or building, every one is willing to defer to the judgment of experts. When, however, it comes to the consideration of spelling, there is no one who does not have the comfortable consciousness that on this question his opinion is distinctly more valuable than the conclusions reached by the wretched cranks who have taken pains to master the subject, and are necessarily hampered in the views they entertain by the knowledge they have been unfortunate enough to acquire.

Therefore, as contrasted with other nations and races, we are at a disadvantage. We have not the controlling influence of an academy. The government cannot well take the initiative. If one party embraced it, the other party would be fairly sure to set itself in opposition. This would not be necessarily because of any dislike to the project itself, but for the sake of making party capital. “If I were younger,” once remarked Gladstone, speaking of the spelling, “I would gladly take hold of this reform.” Had he done so, can any one doubt that whatever scheme he proposed would have had arrayed against it all those who were hostile to the views he advocated on other subjects, irrespective of any feelings they chanced to entertain on this particular one. Political machinery, so constantly used to effect reforms, is consequently barred. In every English-speaking country the general government cannot well take any action, except under the impulse of a popular demand too wide-spread and too powerful to be resisted. There is, furthermore, in this country a special difficulty. In America it is not the action of the general government that is of importance, but the independent action of the several states. Even if reform were carried through in some of them, there would always be danger of discordant measures being taken in others.

Only one resource, therefore, is left to the men of English-speaking countries. It is by the slow processes of discussion and agitation. The great mass of men must be convinced by methods which will convey to the general mind the truths that are known now only to the few. They must be made to see both the desirableness and the practicability of change before any wide-reaching results can be secured. They must be made to see the futility of the arguments by which men seek to bolster up the pretensions of the existing orthography; the waste of time and efforts involved in its acquisition, and even in its use. More than all—though this is a matter little touched upon—they must be made to recognize the actual mental injury wrought to the young by its present condition. The accomplishment of this is not merely a great work, but in English-speaking lands it is one peculiarly difficult. In other countries it is necessary to convince those who have more or less studied the subject; for in their hands lies largely the control of the machinery of education. But with us it is necessary to convince those who are unfamiliar with the subject, and who not unfrequently have had their ignorance strongly reinforced by prejudice. In the multitude of these is found no small proportion of the educated class.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] As this opinion of Professor Child has been questioned, I give here an extract from a letter written by him for publication, and printed in the Home Journal of New York for June 21, 1882. This paper was then engaged in gathering the opinions of scholars and men of letters on the subject of English orthography. “One of the most useful things just now,” wrote Professor Child, “is to break down the respect which a great, foolish public has for the established spelling. Some have a religious awe, and some have an earth-born passion for it. At present I don’t much care how anybody spells, so he spell different from what is established. Any particular individual spelling is likely to be more rational than the ordinary.”

[2] Times, December 27, 1906.

[3] Act V, scene 1, line 269.

[4] Mrs. Cowden Clarke’s Concordance gives but thirty-four. She omits the instance of its occurrence which is found in I Henry IV., act ii, scene 4.

[5] The form sepulchre is found in the folio of 1623, in Richard II., act i, scene 3, and in III Henry VI., act i, scene 4.

[6] Addison’s Remarks on Italy, etc., ed. of 1705, fiber, p. 212; salt-peter, p. 239; scepter, pp. 19, 124; theater, pp. 102, 155, 156, 433 (twice), 521; theatre, p. 50; amphitheater, pp. 57 (twice), 127, 176, 219, 224, 302, 345, 379; amphitheatres, p. 225.

[7] Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Captain Lemuel Gulliver, London, 2 vols., 1726. Center appears in vol. i, pp. 60, 67; vol. ii, pp. 36 (twice), 37, 43 (twice); twice meager appears in vol. ii, pp. 63, 105.

[8] The Rape of Lucrece, l. 217.

[9] Venus and Adonis, l. 622.

[10] Sonnets, lxviii.

[11] Sonnets, cxlvi.

[12] Sonnets, xvii.

[13] Venus and Adonis, l. 931.

[14] I Henry IV., act i., scene 3.

CHAPTER II
ATTITUDE OF THE EDUCATED

The unintelligent opposition of the intelligent! I have specified this as the most formidable of the active forces hostile to reform of English orthography. No duty is imposed upon those who have that end in view more arduous than that of propagating knowledge among the educated classes. It is hard to enlighten the ignorant man. But as regards this particular subject, his mind is practically a blank page. As he has not mastered the conventional spelling, he not only has no knowledge of it, but he is aware that he has no knowledge of it. But in the case of the educated man there is nothing of this open-mindedness. In his opinion he knows already everything about the subject that can be known or that is necessary to be known. It is only within a very recent period that he has begun to suspect his limitations. Only within a recent period has he exhibited any hesitation about exposing to the gaze of the public the scantiness of the intellectual wardrobe with which he is clad.

This imputation of ignorance of the subject has been much resented. Nowhere has the resentment been keener than where the ignorance is manifestly profoundest. To the fact itself not any opprobrium necessarily attaches. No educated man considers it discreditable to lack knowledge of the chemical constituents of the food he eats, or of the things he sees and handles every day. If, indeed, because of his familiarity with these objects, he fancies that he is competent to form a judgment about their properties and draws conclusions as to their use, then his course becomes objectionable. It is exactly so in language. Pronunciation, and the proper way of representing it in spelling, and the ways in which it has been represented at various periods—these are subjects which demand long and severe study before one has a right even to state facts. Naturally, still less has he a right to draw conclusions. He who presumes to sit in judgment upon the questions in controversy without having undergone this preliminary training, no matter if he possess ability, has little reason to complain if his pretensions meet with a good deal of contempt from those who have paid even a comparatively slight attention to the subject. That his utterances are received with favor by a public as ignorant as himself is no evidence of his fitness to discuss the matter in dispute. It is simply proof of the existence of that wide-spread belief in the community, that because a person may have attained deserved eminence in some field of literary activity, about which he knows a great deal, he is therefore entitled to speak with authority in some other field of which he knows little or nothing.

This unintelligent hostility of the intelligent is an obstacle peculiarly difficult to overcome, because it is based upon the combination of the minimum of knowledge with the maximum of prejudice. These characteristics frequently meet, too, in those who on other disputed subjects have the right to demand respectful attention to all they choose to say. To this class belong many men of letters—not by any means all of them, and far more of them in England than in America. Some of these have made themselves conspicuous by the violence of their utterances, some by the extent of their misapprehension of the question at issue, and some by the display of a store of misinformation so vast and varied that one gets the impression that no small share of their lives must have been spent in accumulating it. To many persons it does not seem to occur that before discussing English orthography it is desirable to equip one’s self with at least an elementary knowledge of its character and history. As the acquisition of this preliminary information is not deemed essential, there is little limit to the surprising statements made upon this subject and the more surprising facts by which they are fortified. The annals of fatuity will in truth be searched in vain for utterances more fatuous than some of those produced in the course of the controversy aroused by the President’s order. There is a strong temptation to substantiate this assertion by illustrating it from sayings and writings of those who took a part in it opposed to spelling reform. But it is not desirable to impart to the discussion of the subject a personal character by selecting such examples from the utterances of living persons. That the statement of the ignorance of men of letters is not unwarranted, however, can be shown as well by bringing in the testimony of the dead. In this instance it will be taken from an author of the past generation, of highest literary eminence.

Many will remember an essay of Matthew Arnold on the influence of academies, that panacea for all literary and linguistic ills so constantly held before our eyes. According to him they raised the general standard of knowledge so high that no one could wantonly run counter to its requirements and escape with impunity. The force of critical opinion would control the vagaries and correct the extravagant assertions of the most learned. In the case of our own tongue he adduced an illustration of the injury wrought to the language by the lack of such a central authority. It was taken from what he told us was one of those eccentric violations of correct orthography in which men of our race wilfully indulge. The offender was the London Times. That paper for a good part of the nineteenth century was addicted to printing the word diocese as diocess.

This act aroused Arnold’s indignation. It is clear from his words that resentment for the course of the London Times in this matter had long been rankling in his bosom. A lawless practice of such a sort could not have been possible, he felt, in a country where speech had been subjected to the beneficial sway of an academy. Only in a land where no restraining influence was exerted upon the performances of the educated class could such a violation of linguistic knowledge and literary good taste be permitted. Here are his words:

“So, again, with freaks in dealing with language; certainly all such freaks tend to impair the power and beauty of language; and how far more common they are with us than with the French! To take a very familiar instance. Every one has noticed the way in which the Times chooses to spell the word ‘diocese’; it always spells it diocess, deriving it, I suppose, from Zeus and census. The Journal des Débats might just as well write ‘diocess’ instead of ‘diocèse,’ but imagine the Journal des Débats doing so! Imagine an educated Frenchman indulging himself in an orthographic antic of this sort, in the face of the grave respect with which the Academy and its dictionary invest the French language! Some people will say these are little things. They are not; they are of bad example. They tend to spread the baneful notion that there is no such thing as a high correct standard in intellectual matters; that every one may as well take his own way; they are at variance with the severe discipline necessary for all real culture; they confirm us in habits of wilfulness and eccentricity which hurt our minds and damage our credit with serious people.”

No one will question the earnestness with which these words are spoken. The difficulty with them is that they are at variance with the severe discipline necessary for all real culture—the discipline which forbids us to discuss magisterially matters we know nothing about. Consequently, they are of particularly bad example because of the eminence of the writer. What are we to think of the opinions of an author who could presume to express himself in this manner on what he called correct orthography? Where did he get his knowledge of that somewhat elusive substance? How was he enabled to pronounce authoritatively on the proper spelling of a word about whose origin and history he had not taken the slightest pains to inform himself? Arnold supposed that the London Times may have derived diocess from Zeus and census. Where did he himself think it came from?

Still, as these words of his have been more than once triumphantly quoted as an unintended, and therefore all the more crushing, argument against spelling reform by a leading man of letters, it may be worth while to give a brief account of the actual facts in regard to the appearance of diocese in our speech, and the changes of form it underwent—so far, at least, as dictionaries of various periods have recorded the usage. By so doing one may gain some conception of the amount of research necessary to pronounce positively upon the orthographic history of even a single word. He will further learn to recognize the wisdom of refraining from the expression of large judgments upon the correctness or incorrectness of a particular spelling which are based upon limited knowledge. To clear the ground, it is to be said—though it seems needless to say it—that the first part of the word diocese has nothing to do with Zeus, though one gets the impression that its genitive Dios was in some way associated with it in Arnold’s mind. It comes remotely from a Greek word meaning the management of a household. After its appearance in our language in the fourteenth century, various were the forms it assumed. Students of Chaucer are well aware that his spelling of it was diocise. But it occurs but once in his writings, and then as a ryme to gyse, the modern guise. Later, under Latin influence, and for phonetic reasons, it became commonly either diocesse or dioces.

Between these two forms the language seems finally to have made a sort of compromise by recognizing the claims of both. It dropped the e from the one or it added an s to the other, just as one is disposed to look at it. Though there were other forms, diocess became accordingly the standard. Such it remained for a long period. But its triumph was slow and, comparatively speaking, late. Diocesse is the form given, for example, in Minsheu’s Guide to the Tongues, which appeared in 1617. In Edward Phillips’ dictionary of 1658, entitled A New World of Words, it is dioces. But in later editions—certainly in that of 1696—diocess is the spelling found. Such also was the form of the word in Bullokar’s dictionary of 1684; in the Glossographia Anglicana Nova of 1719; and in Edward Cocker’s English dictionary of 1724—the only editions of these works I have had the opportunity to consult. On the other hand, in Coles’s English dictionary of 1713, it is diocese. This is repeated in the edition of 1717. It is the earliest instance I have met of the modern spelling, though others may exist.

Before the publication of the dictionary of Dr. Johnson in 1755, the two principal works of this character which the early part of the eighteenth century produced were that of Bailey, and that of Dyche improved and completed by Pardon. The former was the first to appear. It indeed seems always to have outranked in popular estimation its successor and rival. It came out first in 1721. Before the end of the century it had passed through a very large number of editions. At the outset its spelling of the word under consideration was diocess. So it remained in the half dozen editions that followed. But after 1730 diocese took its place, and held it during the whole of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, Dyche’s dictionary, which began to be published in 1735, not only authorized diocess, but clung to it in subsequent editions. Later in the century—certainly in the seventeenth edition of 1794—it permitted the alternative spelling diocese. This practice, indeed, can be met much earlier. For instance, in the second edition of Benjamin Martin’s dictionary, which appeared in 1754, both diocese and diocess are given.

It was the choice of diocess by Doctor Johnson that turned the tide for a while in one direction. For the rest of the century it settled the spelling, so far as the practice of most men was concerned. He was followed by nearly all the later lexicographers. This was true in particular of Sheridan and Walker. These two were widely accepted as authorities, especially the latter. The edition of Walker’s dictionary, which came out in 1802, just after his death, but containing his latest revisions, was long regarded by our fathers as a sort of orthographic and orthoepic statute-book. It still showed diocess as the only way of spelling this particular word. So did the dictionary of James Sheridan Knowles, which was first published in 1835. It continued to retain this form of the word in the editions of 1845 and 1877. It is found even in the edition of Walker, as revised by Davis, which appeared in 1861. On the other hand, Smart’s revision of the same work, or remodelling, as he called it, was largely responsible for the prevalence and general adoption of diocese. This dictionary was first published in 1836. It had a wide circulation, and for a long time its successive editions were regarded as authoritative works of reference.

This survey of the matter is by no means exhaustive, but it is sufficiently complete to render certain the results reached. It shows that a long contest went on between the two forms of the word, and that the later gradually triumphed over the earlier. It shows too that diocess, though slowly going out of fashion, continued still in the best of use long after Arnold had reached maturity. As always happens, indeed, there was a certain body of conservatives who refused to accept what was in their eyes the new-fangled monstrosity. The ancient usage was good enough for them. Among these the London Times, owing to its position in the newspaper world, occupied a specially prominent place. It not impossibly felt that in standing by the time-honored diocess it was resisting an insidious attempt to ruin the language.

All, therefore, that Arnold needed to do, before expressing his opinions, or rather his prejudices, in the matter was to learn these easily accessible facts. To use his own phraseology, it was incumbent upon him to let his mind play about the subject until he had fully informed himself upon it. His failure to do this led him to fall into the mistake he did. A note to the later edition of his essays conveys the glad tidings that the London Times has at last renounced the error of its ways, and has succumbed to the authority of fashion. Like the rest of us, it now spells the word diocese. But the irrevocable printed page will continue to stand and bear perpetual witness to the blunder of its critic.

One is not, indeed, astonished at the lack of familiarity with the facts just recorded on the part of a man of letters. They lie outside of his particular province. They are not, indeed, generally known. Nor are they in themselves so exciting as to attract the attention, still less the study, of anybody, without some external provocation. Ignorance of them is, therefore, nothing discreditable. Indeed, we may almost expect it from those who have made the study of literature their pursuit in contradistinction to that of language. It gives one, however, a sort of shock to find that this same ignorance has been occasionally exhibited by linguistic scholars of the previous generation. A kind of sanction is given to Arnold’s assertion by the remark of Richard Gordon Latham on this same word diocese. In his revision, published in 1871, of Todd’s edition of Johnson’s dictionary, he observed under it that it was “once ignorantly spelled diocess.” No wonder that the Times succumbed to this combined attack of learning and letters marching under a common banner of inadequate investigation and erroneous assertion.

I have gone at great length into the consideration of this particular example, not entirely from the eminence of the author who chose to furnish it. As much were these details supplied in order to make manifest how patient and protracted must be the study which will authorize any one to pronounce decisively upon a question of disputed spelling. As long as the advocates of the existing orthography confine themselves merely to the expression of their prejudices and opinions, they are comparatively safe, even though their prejudices have no foundation in reason and their opinions have behind them no trace of investigation. The moment, however, they attempt to fortify their notions by illustrations and argument, they are lost.

This is the moral of the tale told of Arnold. There are circumstances in which no amount of genius can make up for the lack of a little accurate knowledge. It is not often given to an essayist to exemplify himself a practice he vehemently condemns in the very paragraph containing the condemnation. If academies really exerted the power with which Arnold credited them; if they could exercise a controlling influence over public opinion; if they could establish so broad a basis of intelligence that men would be prevented from giving utterance to crude and hasty dicta; if they could keep writers from palming off upon the public the results of imperfect knowledge acting through the medium of perfect prejudice—if these things were so, it is quite clear that in this particular instance it would have been the utterances of Matthew Arnold that would have been suppressed, and not the assumed orthographical vagaries of the London Times. In Germany, where there is no academy, but where there is a broad and lofty level of linguistic intelligence, observations of a similar character would have met with immediate and crushing exposure and censure. In England and America, where there is a broad and deep level of linguistic ignorance, this blundering statement has long been hailed by many as a proper rebuke to the miscreants who are seeking to defile the sacred altar of English orthography.

An extravagant outburst like the one just cited—it could easily be paralleled from recent utterances—coming from a man occupying a far higher position than any literary defender of the present spelling, reveals what a fathomless abyss of ignorance and prejudice must be filled up or bridged over before there can be even a calm discussion of the subject by the mass of educated men. If we are unable to treat with respect the utterances of great men who are capable of falling into errors like the one just exposed, how can we be expected to be impressed by the words of little men who cite these easily detected blunders as an authoritative justification for their own hostility? Because they deal with language as an art, they fancy they know all about it as a science. There is no intention of conveying the impression that men of letters are more remarkable than others for erroneous assertions on this subject. As a class they are probably less so. In their ranks, too, are to be found some of the most earnest sympathizers with the movement for the simplification of the spelling. These, too, stand in the first rank. It must not be assumed, therefore, that those among them who have gained an unenviable notoriety by the blunders into which they have fallen in opposing it are more ignorant than other men. They have simply had furnished them by their position unequalled opportunities to make their ignorance conspicuous.

Now, to any real student of the subject, it is evident that both in French and in English the most conservative of courses has been contemplated and taken, so far as any change in orthography has been recommended. No attempt has been made to introduce phonetic spelling. Any intention of that sort has been distinctly disclaimed by those among us who have set the reform on foot. Yet it is a charge from which they have been unable to escape. One of the most striking as well as most entertaining features of the controversy that went on was the persistent assertion of those concerned in the movement, that they had no design or desire to introduce phonetic spelling; and the equally persistent assertion of their assailants that it was the very thing they were aiming to introduce. One side laid down precisely what it sought to do. The other side denounced it for doing the very thing it disclaimed doing. One side declared that it purposely limited its efforts to the removal of some of the anomalies in our present orthography, and the obstacles put by these in the way of its acquisition. The other employed two methods of attack: on the one hand, it inveighed against its opponents for going as far as they did; on the other, it reproached them for their inconsistency in not going further.

Any one who has the slightest conception of what a reform of our spelling on pure phonetic principles means will absolve those now urging reform from putting forward any scheme of that sort. It requires, indeed, a singular innocence of all knowledge of this particular subject to make such a charge. Certain changes recommended would, indeed, have brought particular words nearer a phonetic standard. But if everything proposed were to be universally adopted—and even ten times more—the real disease which afflicts our orthography would be but partially alleviated. It would do little more than set us on the road to a thorough-going reform. No one, indeed, who comprehends what is required, in a language so lawless as ours, to bring about a perfect accordance between orthography and orthoepy, is ever likely to underrate the difficulties which stand in the way of the establishment of phonetic spelling, even were men as eager for its adoption as they are now hostile to it. In the present state of feeling, therefore, no one need distress himself about its immediate coming.

But why should any one distress himself at all? Little is there more extraordinary to witness in these days of assumed general enlightenment than the horror which many estimable persons seem to feel at the danger of being devoured by this dreadful ogre which they call phonetic spelling. They have no idea what it is, but they know from its name that it must be something frightful. Now, written language was designed to be phonetic. Its intention, however incomplete its realization, was to represent invariably the same sound by the same letter or by the same combination of letters. This idea lies at the root of the conception of the alphabet; otherwise the alphabet would have had no reason for its existence. To picture to the eye the sound which has fallen upon the ear, so that it should never be mistaken for anything else, was the problem that presented itself to the man or men who devised that invention which, imperfect as it is, still remains the greatest and most useful to which the human mind has given birth. To represent a sound by one character in one place and by another in another would have seemed to them as absurd as it would to a painter to have the figure of a horse stand for a horse in one picture, and in another picture for a different animal. Of course, in this comparison the symbol is in one case real, and in the other arbitrary; but the underlying principle is the same.

So far as the original invention of the alphabet failed to secure the individual representation of every sound then used, the invention was itself incomplete and imperfect. So far, again, as the characters of the alphabet have been diverted from their original design of representing particular sounds, it is not an application of the invention, but a perversion of it to inferior purposes, and to purposes for which it is not really fitted. One general statement applicable to all languages can be safely made. So far as written speech deviates from the phonetic standard, it fails to fulfil the object for which it was created. It shows to what an extent the English race has wandered away in feeling and opinion from the original motives which led men to seek the representation of the spoken word by written characters, that its members have come to look upon the perfect accordance of orthography and orthoepy as a result, not merely impracticable—which is a thoroughly defensible proposition—but as something in itself undesirable, as something fraught with ruin to the speech itself. The written word was devised to suggest the sound of the spoken word. Yet this ideal is more than discredited with us; it is treated as if it were in some way peculiarly monstrous. Yet all there is of value in our existing orthography is due to what still survives of the phonetic element. This is a condition of things which will be brought out fully when the orthographic situation comes to be considered.

The real life of a language consists in its sounds, not in the signs intended to represent them. The one is the soul of speech; the other can hardly be considered a necessary bodily framework, for the former could and does exist without the latter. In earlier times, when language was learned almost exclusively by the ear, this fact would naturally force itself upon the attention of every reflecting man. But with the spread of education, when acquaintance with a tongue is acquired largely through the eye, the knowledge of the symbolic representation of sounds has come to predominate in the minds of the men of our race over the knowledge of the sounds themselves. While all of us are familiar with the one, but few are with the other. Ask any person of ordinary attainments the number of letters in the English alphabet. He will unhesitatingly answer twenty-six; though the chances are that he will be ignorant of the fact that some of the twenty-six are really supernumerary. But extend the inquiry further. Go with it to the vast body of educated men, excluding those whose pursuits require of them more or less the study of phonetics. These being excepted, ask any single person belonging to the most highly cultivated class—opponents of spelling reform to be preferred—how many are the sounds which the letters of the alphabet and their combinations are called upon to represent. Ask him how many are the sounds which he is in the habit of employing himself in his own utterance. The chances are fifty to one that he will be utterly at a loss what to reply. He has learned the symbols of things; he has not learned the things themselves.

That this should be so in the case of our own tongue is not particularly surprising. It is, perhaps, inevitable. The attention of the men of our race has been more than distracted from any consideration of the subject by the character of our orthography. Their minds have been thrown into a state of bewilderment. As a single illustration, take the representation of the sound usually termed “long i.” This third so-called vowel of our alphabet is not really a vowel, but a diphthong. Its sound is most commonly represented by the single letter itself, seen, for instance, in such a word as mind. But some idea of the uncertainty and range attending its use, with the consequent perplexity to its users, can be gathered from a few selected examples. It is represented by ai in aisle; by ay in aye; by ei in height; by ey in eye; by ie in lie; by oi in choir; by uy in buy; by y in try; and by ye in dye. Or, reverse the operation, and see how many sounds the same sign can represent. Take the combination ou, and observe the differences of its pronunciation in the words about, young, youth, four, fought, would, and cough.

English orthography, therefore, instead of teaching the English-speaking man the knowledge and distinction of sounds, takes the speediest and most effectual means of preventing his attaining any such knowledge. It not merely fails to call his attention to it, it forces him to disregard it, to look upon it as an element not properly to be considered. He does not come to forget, he has never learned to know that there is a particular value that belongs or ought to belong to any vowel or combination of vowels. When he grows up, he is naturally ready to despise what he is unable to comprehend. The educated class has with us come generally to look upon the alphabet as a mere mechanical contrivance. They have so largely lost sight of the object for which it exists, that in many cases they are almost disposed to resent the proposition that they should employ it for the purposes for which it was created. It would be thinking too meanly of human nature to believe that men would delight in this condition of things did they once come fully to appreciate it. But to that point few of them ever arrive. Accordingly, ignorance of the real evil disposes them to look with distrust upon any attempt to remedy it.

In truth, as a consequence of the confusion which exists in the written speech, the English race, as a race, has no acquaintance whatever with sounds. It has largely lost the phonetic sense. One whole important domain of knowledge, which ought to have come to it through the spelling, has entirely disappeared from recognition without their being aware of it. Examples of the prevalent lack of any conception of the distinction of sounds and of their proper representation are brought constantly to the attention of those engaged in the work of instruction. But the comments and communications which appear in the course of any controversy on spelling reform, especially those intended to be satirical, furnish the most striking illustrations of this all-prevailing, all-pervading ignorance. There is rarely furnished a more edifying spectacle than the attempt made, in some cases by men of very genuine ability, to write what they call phonetically. In every discussion there are sure to come up with unfailing regularity certain examples that indicate the density of the darkness in which the minds of men are enveloped. Several years ago a series of articles appeared in a Western periodical attacking the reform of the orthography. In one of them occurred this observation: “We are asked,” said the author, “to spell are without the e, because the letter is not pronounced. Very well: then drop the a, for that is not pronounced either.” In the same spirit the writer went on to say that fanatical advocates of change should denote the words see and sea simply by c—“spelling only the letter sounded.”

Here was a person producing a series of articles on orthography who was so utterly unacquainted with the primary elemental facts of orthoepy as to fancy that the sound of r and of c by themselves is the same as the name we give to those letters; who did not know that the name cannot be pronounced unless a vowel precedes the r in one case and follows the c in the other. Exactly the same examples were adduced in the course of the latest controversy. It is perfectly clear that not one of those who made use of them had the slightest conception of what was essential to convey the representation of a given sound. Any arbitrary symbol, pronounced in a particular way, seemed to them all-sufficient. Their action evinced hardly higher intelligence than would have been shown by considering the word five as phonetically represented by the Arabic numeral 5, which in all languages conveys the same meaning, and in all languages has a different pronunciation. One characteristic there is which denotes most distinctly the infantile state of knowledge that still continues to prevail on the whole subject. By most men any bad spelling is invariably termed phonetic spelling. That is all the idea of the latter they have. The spelling of Chaucer would in their eyes be indistinguishable in character from that of Josh Billings.

More than once have advocates of spelling reform been rebuked for the arrogance manifested by them in their references to the inaccurate assertions and loose thinking which largely make up the chatter of the uninformed on this subject. On the contrary, much of this gabble seems to me to have been treated with singular leniency. Especially has this been the case when it comes from men who have shown knowledge on other subjects and ability in other directions. These have too often missed opportunities, which were fairly obtrusive, of remaining silent on this matter. But no such forbearance is due to the rank and file of the noisy intruders into a controversy they do not understand. There was a writer who gravely informed us that it is an insuperable objection to a change in our orthography, that it would make necessary a new formative period in the history of the language. For fear that the full force of this terrible indictment should be overlooked, he proceeded to put the words containing it in italics. What possible conception could exist in the mind of such an objector as to what constitutes a formative period in the history of a language? Does spelling reform introduce new words? Does it give new meanings to old ones? Does it destroy existing inflections? Does it add any to their number? Does it vary in the slightest the order of words in the sentence? Does it cause the least modification of the least important rule of syntax? A new spelling meaning a new language! Fancy a boy refusing to wash his face, on the ground that if the dirt were removed he would not be the same boy. Fancy a man objecting to putting on a new suit of clothes, on the ground that by so doing he could never be again what he was before; that the integrity of his character and the continuity of his traditions would be destroyed; that he would no longer be the same man to those who had known him and loved him. This is not a travesty of the argument which has been advanced. It is the argument itself, applied not to the dress of the body, but to that of the speech. The men who hold such opinions are really in the same grade of intellectual development as regards language, as in literature are those who fancy that beginning a line with a capital letter is the one essential thing which constitutes poetry.

But of all the educated opponents of spelling reform, I have to confess that the most entertaining to me are women. As devotion to the present orthography is a matter of sentiment and not one of reason, it is perhaps not strange that some of the most violent opponents of the present movement are to be found among the members of that sex with which appeals addressed to the feelings are peculiarly potent. It must not, however, be assumed for a moment that this characterization is meant to apply to all women. On the contrary, among them can be found not only many of the most earnest advocates of reform, but an especially large proportion of the most intelligent and clear-headed. This observation is particularly true of those of them who are connected directly or indirectly with the profession of teaching. To the hands of women, indeed, the business of the instruction of the very young is almost entirely committed. They make themselves familiar with the character of the orthography from the side of both theory and practice. They have, in consequence, forced upon their attention, as have few men, the absurdities and anomalies of our present spelling, the unnecessary and utterly irrational obstacles it puts in the path of the learner; the time and toil which must be spent, or rather wasted, in mastering rules to which the exceptions are as numerous as the examples, and in which exceptions abound to the exceptions. The intelligent among them naturally come to know whereof they speak, and to have decided opinions born of experience and observation.

But experience and observation of this sort have not been forced upon the majority of even educated women. Acquaintance with the real nature of our orthography is not, in their eyes, a matter of intrinsic importance. Accordingly, in the case of those who feel intensely on this subject and exhibit a virulent hostility toward reform of the spelling, we can observe the peculiar mental effervescence which is produced when the maximum of emotion is allowed to operate upon the minimum of knowledge. With them the question is not at all one of argument. It is entirely one of taste, as they regard taste; though occasionally there seems to be an honest even if unfounded belief that arguments have been employed. It is their sensibilities that are outraged, not their reason. I confess to liking the attitude of these opponents of spelling reform, and to receiving gratification from their extremest utterances. They are entirely free from the sham in which men indulge, of pretending to be influenced in their beliefs on this subject by logical principles. Sojourning in that upper rarefied air of sentiment in which common-sense staggers and reason swoons, there is an indefinable charm in the irrationality they display in resolutely ignoring facts they find inconvenient to consider and arguments they disdain to comprehend.

No pleasure, indeed, can be conceived more delightful than in listening to the discussion of this subject by its female opponents. As this is largely a book of personal confessions, I may be permitted to say that I like to hear them talk and to read what they write. They feel about reform of the spelling as did in another way certain of their high-born sisters who have left behind memorials of their experiences when the great cataclysm of the French revolution took place. It was apparently not the scenes of horror and massacre that shocked these scions of noble families; not the victims carted in tumbrils to the guillotine; not the fusillades which swept the streets and stained the pavements with the blood of those who felt fighting for the old régime. Nor was it the question of right or wrong, of relieving oppression, of establishing justice. Not one of these things seems to have made a particular impression upon their minds. What really affected them was something altogether different. The revolution was in such bad taste. Men like Danton and his associates did not behave in a gentlemanly way. They were not really nice. Just so—if we can compare small things with great—is the impression one gets of the attitude of many women who are hostile to the new spellings proposed. Such may be nearer the pronunciation. They may be nearer the derivation or some other old thing for which nobody cares. But these new spellings are not really nice.

This devotion of woman to the fixed orthography is largely a modern sentiment. There was little of it in the past, either in theory or practice. In fact, high position and sex were once largely regarded as entitling those belonging to either to be exempt from orthographic trammels. Richardson represents Charlotte Grandison as describing one of her lovers as “spelling pretty well for a lord.” But in this same particular several of the most noted women in the past have also been defective. There was nothing then of the superstition of the sacredness of the orthography which now prevails. They apparently did not deem it possible to secure the leisure to make themselves as attractive as they wished to be, were they compelled to waste their time in memorizing the exact spelling of words whose forms they had the sense to see exhibited no sense. As time went on their indifference not unfrequently came to disturb those of their lords and masters who were getting to be punctilious on this point. Swift, who in one way or another was always in a state of anxiety about the English language, had frequent occasion to chasten Stella on the subject. “I drink no aile (I suppose you mean ale),” he writes to her under date of September 29, 1710. “Who are these wiggs,” he asks again on October 8, “who think I am turned Tory? Do you mean Whigs?” “Pray, Stella,” he says, in April of the following year, “explain those two words of yours to me, what you mean by Villian and Dainger.” “Rediculous, madam?” he expostulated, on another occasion; “I suppose you mean ridiculous: let me have no more of that; it is the author of the Atlantis’ spelling.”[15] One infers from this remark that the then noted Mrs. Manley was as notorious for the scandalous form in which her words appeared in her manuscript as she was for the scandalous meaning they conveyed when appearing in print.

One could fill page after page with the extraordinary views on spelling reform which have come from men and women of education and sometimes of genuine ability. The controversy, indeed, which has been going on of late has brought out more sharply than ever before the existence of the singular situation which prevails in regard to it. The highly trained expert opinion is practically all on one side; the large preponderance of educated lay opinion is apparently on the other. Several eminent men have taken part in the discussion in opposition to change. But in all their ranks cannot be found a single one who would be recognized by special students of English as entitled to speak with authority. Not a single one of the latter class has come forward in opposition. Some of them are very possibly indifferent; but so far as they have spoken—and many have spoken—they have pronounced in its favor. If there is among them one who entertains hostility, he is sufficiently in awe of his professional brethren to deem it wise to keep his opinion to the sanctity of private intercourse. No applause of the multitude could make up to him for the condemnation that would be his from his peers. By ranging himself among the opponents of spelling reform he would be well aware that he would distinctly lose caste. He would be placed in a dilemma on one of whose two horns he would be impaled. He would be looked upon as guilty either of lack of knowledge or of lack of judgment.

This is a state of things that could not well exist in the case of any other subject than language. Nor, indeed, could it well happen with any other race than the English, where on both sides of the Atlantic ignorance of our tongue and of its history has been sedulously cultivated for centuries. Accordingly, the raggedest of penny-a-liners or the callowest of story-tellers considers himself as much entitled to speak with authority on the subject as he who has devoted years of study to its consideration. Of course, this is a state of things that cannot continue permanently. In the long run the opinions of the few who know will triumph over the clamors of the many who do not know. Indeed, a distinct advance has already been achieved. The subject is no longer treated with indifference. It calls forth hostile criticism, ridicule, vituperation. Furthermore, certain things can no more be said which were once said with smug satisfaction. We are now a long way beyond that provincial faith in Worcester which permitted, fifty years ago, so eminent a man of letters as Oliver Wendell Holmes to remark that Boston had for one of its distinctions “its correct habit of spelling the English language.” In these days an author of his high grade would be saved by his inevitable association with English scholars from perpetrating an observation so singularly crude. Views of such a sort now find their home only in the congenial clime of the remote rural districts. For slow as has been the progress in this matter, it has been steady. In the immediate future it is destined to advance at a much more rapid rate. The leading universities of America are regularly sending out a small body of trained special students of our speech. In the face of this steadily increasing number of experts whose opinions are based upon adequate investigation and full knowledge, sciolists will in time conclude for their own safety to learn a little before they talk much.

Yet, neither now nor in the past has the advocacy of spelling reform been confined to the specialists in English study. It has embraced scholars of all lands who paid attention to our language or to some form of its literature. Long ago Grimm pointed out that the greatest obstacle to the predominating influence of the English tongue was the character of its orthography. But without going so far back, let us select as types of advocates of reform three representative men of the generation which has just passed away. They are Professor Max Müller, of Oxford; Professor Child, of Harvard; and Professor Whitney, of Yale. Of course, these scholars were cranks—“crazy cranks,” if you will. Much learning had made them mad—insanity from that cause being something from which the critics of their orthographical views feel the sense of absolute immunity. Of course, we know further that professors are a simple, guileless folk, constantly imposed upon by arguments whose speciousness is at once seen by the clearer vision of the men engaged in the struggle and turmoil of practical life. To them unhappily has never been given the easy omniscience which is enabled to understand the whole of a subject without mastering a single one of its details. Still, as a member of this unpractical fraternity, and sharing in its intellectual limitations, I cannot get over the impression that there are difficulties connected with English orthography which even the very youngest newspaper writer cannot settle summarily, and questions which he cannot answer satisfactorily offhand.

In truth, the real nature of our spelling and the real difficulties connected with its reformation are not in the least understood by the vast majority of the educated class. Otherwise it would be impossible for men, sometimes of genuine ability, to give public utterance to the views they entertain. One has only to read articles in magazines and communications sent to the newspapers to gain a view both vivid and depressing of the wide-spread ignorance that prevails. It is manifest, indeed, that the nature of these difficulties is not always understood, even by those who are earnest in their desire for reform of some kind. Accordingly, before the subject can be discussed intelligently, some knowledge of the general orthographic situation must be secured. The irrepressible conflict that goes on in our speech between spelling and pronunciation can never be really appreciated, save by him who has mastered a portion at least of the details in which that conflict has reached its highest degree of intensity.

To set these details forth is anything but an agreeable task. The subject of sounds and the methods taken to represent them cannot, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be termed exhilarating. But some notion of it must be gained by him who seeks to get any conception of what must be deemed the main trouble affecting English orthography. This is the reason, and to some must be the excuse, for presenting the results of a piece of drudgery as wearisome as it is thankless. The dose I shall try to make as palatable as possible; but there is no disguising the fact that it is a dose. But it is only by swallowing it, or something akin to it, that men can get any conception of the real evils that afflict English spelling, and of the methods that must be taken to palliate them; for in the present state of public opinion, it is hopeless to attempt to cure them. To a consideration of the orthographic situation the next chapter will therefore be devoted.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Swift. Journal to Stella, December 14, 1710.

CHAPTER III
THE ORTHOGRAPHIC SITUATION

I
THE PROBLEM

It is with a good deal of hesitation that I approach this part of my subject. To treat it fully, to consider it in all its details, would require a familiarity with the history of sounds, with their precise values, and with the proper way of representing these values, to which I can lay no claim. Though I have given some time to the study of this branch of the general question, I am well aware that my knowledge of it is not the knowledge of a professional, but of an amateur. It is only when I read the attempts of the assailants of spelling reform to write what they are pleased to call phonetically, that my own slender acquaintance with this field of research looms up momentarily before my eyes as endowed with colossal proportions. Fortunately, intimate familiarity with this particular part of the subject is not needed for the end had here in view. To point out the evils afflicting our present system is possible for him who is unable to prescribe a remedy. This is the special task which I set before myself in this section.

It is essential, in the first place, to have clearly before our minds the nature of the problem with which we are called upon to deal. The general statement about it may be and often is summarized in a few words. We are told that in English the same sound is represented by half a dozen signs, and the same sign is used to denote half a dozen sounds. This is all true. Unfortunately, to the vast majority of men it conveys no definite idea. It certainly would not bring clearly before them much conception of the real difficulty. Some of them would even be puzzled to explain what is meant here by the word sign. Most of them have no knowledge whatever of the number and quality of the sounds they use. This remark is not intended as a reproach. Their condition of ignorance is due to no fault of their own. The existing orthography does not content itself with hiding from the ordinary eye all knowledge of phonetic law; it puts a stumbling-block in the way of its acquisition. Accordingly, it does more than permit ignorance of the subject; it fosters it. Men are not led to consider even the most aggressively prominent facts of their own utterance. I have known intelligent young persons, of much more than ordinary ability, who had never learned as a matter of knowledge that the digraph th has two distinct sounds; that were thin pronounced as is then, or then as is thin, we should have in each case another word than the one we actually possess. They had never confused the two in their usage, but as little had they been in the habit of remarking the difference between them. Consequently, when it was brought directly to their attention, it came upon them as a sort of surprise. If a distinction which lies on the very surface could so easily escape notice, what hope can be entertained of gaining a realizing sense of those subtler ones which abound on every side?

The first point, therefore, to be made emphatic is that there is a large number of sounds in the speech and but a limited number of signs in the alphabet. The number of sounds has been variously estimated. It depends a good deal upon the extent to which the orthoepic investigator is disposed to recognize differences more or less subtle and the weight he assigns to each. In general, it may be said that usually the lowest number given is thirty-eight, and the highest forty-four. A very common estimate puts them at forty-two. Exactness on this point is not necessary for the purpose here aimed at, and for the sake of convenience the whole number of sounds will be temporarily assumed to be forty, more or less. To represent these forty sounds we have nominally twenty-six letters. Really we have but twenty-three. Either c or k is supernumerary, as are also x and q.

Here, then, lies the initial difficulty. The Roman alphabet we have adopted has not a sufficient number of letters to do the duty required of it. For us its inability has been further aggravated by the loss of two signs which the language had originally, or acquired early in its history. For the disappearance of these there was later in another quarter a partial compensation in the differentiation of i and j, and of u and v. Of the two vanished signs one was a Rune, called “thorn” or the “thorn letter,” þ, the other a crossed d, represented by ð. They were or could be used to represent the surd or hard initial sound heard in thin just mentioned, and the corresponding sonant or soft sound heard in then. These two letters, unknown to the Roman alphabet, were allowed to die out of general use in the fifteenth century. Of both the digraph th took the place. Yet in one way the so-called thorn letter has left behind a memorial of itself. Its form had something of a resemblance to the black-letter character y. Consequently, when “thorn” ceased to be used, y was at times substituted for it. Especially was this true in the case of the words the and that. These were frequently printed as yᵉ and yᵗ. This form of the latter word disappeared after a while, not merely from use, but practically from remembrance. Ye, however, in the sense of the, but with its initial letter given the sound of y, is fondly cherished and sometimes employed by certain persons, who indulge in the delusion that by so doing they are writing and talking Old English.

The use of this one digraph to represent these two distinct sounds inevitably tends to create uncertainty of pronunciation, if not to produce confusion. We can see this fact exemplified in the case of such words as tithe and path and oath and mouth. In these th has in the singular the surd sound, in the plural the sonant. The proper way of pronouncing them has therefore to be learned carefully in each individual instance, for there is nothing in the spelling to indicate it. Usage in truth is very fluctuating with respect to some of the words in which this digraph appears. In consequence, the question of their pronunciation begets at times much controversy. Still, compared with the uncertainty attending other signs, the perplexities caused by this are of slight importance.

The lack of a sufficient number of signs to indicate the sounds is therefore the first difficulty to be encountered. But this is a defect which English shares with several tongues which have adopted the Roman alphabet. There is another characteristic which belongs to our language exclusively. This is the progressive movement which has gone on in the case of some of the vowel-sounds. In the historic development of English pronunciation several of these have lost their original values. This has caused them not merely to deviate from the sounds they once had in our own speech, but has also brought them out of harmony with those of the cultivated tongues of modern Europe. In none of these have the original values experienced any such disturbance. Such a condition of things is so peculiar to our language, it complicates the whole orthographic situation so thoroughly, that it demands first consideration in any discussion of the various problems that need to be solved. Let us give briefly, then, the most important facts in regard to the changes which have taken place in the history of these sounds.

II
MOVEMENT OF VOWEL-SOUNDS

The first vowel-sound of the alphabet—the a heard in father and far—has been aptly styled “the fundamental vowel-tone of the human voice.” But the noticeable fact about it in English is that it has not only gone largely out of use already, but that it tends to go out of use more and more. Once the most common of articulate utterances, it has now become one of the rarest. In reducing the employment of it English has gone beyond all other modern cultivated tongues. The decline in its use has been steady. “In the Sanskrit,” says Whitney, “in its long and short forms it makes over seventy per cent. of the vowels and about thirty per cent. of the whole alphabet.” In examining his own utterance he rated the frequency of its occurrence at a little more than half of one per cent. This may be taken as fairly representative of the fortunes which have generally befallen the sound. Different parts of the English-speaking world preserve it, indeed, in different degrees. In Great Britain—if I can take as typical of all persons the pronunciation of it furnished to my own ears by a few—it is retained more fully than in the United States. But even there it has for a long period been disappearing. There is no reason to suppose that with our present orthography this process will not continue to go on.

The loss of this sound would assuredly be a great calamity to the speech. The coming of that day may be distant; it is to be hoped that it will never come at all. Yet owing to the incapacity of our orthography to represent pronunciation strictly, and therefore hold it fast permanently, the sound is certainly in danger of following to the very end the road on which it has long been travelling. It shows every sign of steady though slow disappearance. Once it was heard generally in many classes of words where it is now never heard at all. Such, for instance, was the case when a was followed by n, as in answer, chance, dance, plant; by f, as in after; by s, as in grass, glass, pass; by st, as in last and vast. More than a century ago the lexicographer Walker contended that this sound must formerly have been always heard in these and such like words, because it was “still the sound given to them by the vulgar, who are generally the last to alter the common pronunciation.” There can be little doubt of the fact. In truth, Doctor Johnson distinctly specified rather, fancy, congratulate, glass among others as having it. Walker added that “the short a in these words”—those mentioned above—“is now the general pronunciation of the polite and learned world.” Hence, he felt justified in asserting that the ancient sound “borders very closely on vulgarity.”

This same result is showing itself in the instances where the vowel is followed by other letters or combinations of letters. Before lf and th—which can be illustrated respectively by calf, half, and by path, bath—the original sound, once generally heard, has given way largely and is still giving way. There are certainly many parts of the English-speaking world where the older pronunciation of it would be the exception and not the rule. The most effective agent in retaining it is a following r. In this case the sound is heard in no small number of words, as may be seen, for illustration, in bar and car. Another agency working for its retention, though far less powerful than the preceding, is a following l, as in balm and calm. But in this second case the sound is even now threatened with extinction. It exhibits in many places weakness of hold upon the utterance. Hence, it may come to take the road already trodden by other words in which it once showed itself. In the case of some of these, as a result of diminishing use, the sound, when heard, for illustration, in words like half and calf, is already looked upon by many as an affectation. Should such a feeling about it come not only to exist but to prevail when the vowel is followed by lm, its doom would be sealed. To hear psalm pronounced as the proper name Sam is still hateful to the orthoepically pure. Such a usage can as yet be politely termed a provincialism, or, insultingly, a vulgarism. Yet against the levelling tendency of an orthography which does not protect pronunciation, it is possible that the earlier sound of a in these words may not be able to hold out forever.

So much for the first vowel of the alphabet. We are as badly off, though in a different way, when we come to the second. It emphasizes the degeneracy which has overtaken our whole orthographic and orthoepic system that the name we now give to the first vowel was originally and still is scientifically the long sound of the second. The respective short and long values of this are heard in the words met and mate. In them are indicated the two sounds which the second vowel once had with us, and which it still retains in other cultivated tongues. The short sound continues to exist in all its primitive vigor, but the long sound is now very generally denoted by a. E itself no longer has it, save in the exclamation eh, and in certain cases where it is followed by i or y, such as vein and rein, and they or obey. Perhaps, indeed, it would be better to say that, strictly speaking, this letter by itself never indicates the sound at all; for the digraphs ei and ey, as we shall see later, have various distinct values, and are therefore entitled to be considered independently.

A condition of things not essentially dissimilar can be reported of the next vowel. Its original corresponding short and long sounds would be exactly represented by those heard in the words fill and feel. But the same transition or progression which has waited upon the second vowel has also attended the third. Its proper long sound has now become the name by which we regularly designate the second vowel. The fortunes of i have accordingly been about the same as those of its predecessor e. Here again the genuine short sound has been preserved in its integrity and on a large scale. But the letter is now only occasionally used to denote the long sound it had originally. This employment of it occurs too mainly in comparatively recent words of foreign origin. These have brought with them to a greater or less extent the pronunciation they had in the tongue from which they came. Some of the most common of these words are caprice and police; fatigue and intrigue; profile; machine, magazine, marine, and routine; and antique, critique, oblique, and pique. Once too it belonged to oblige, and even to this day the pronunciation obleege is occasionally heard.

What we call the third vowel is not a vowel, but a diphthong. We can see its sound and real character indicated in the Roman pronunciation of Cæsar, the German kaiser, or in the ae of the Spanish maestro. Against this general movement it can be said that the long and short sounds of the fourth vowel are much nearer their originals. This is by no means true, however, of the fifth. The genuine corresponding long and short sounds of it can be seen represented in the words fool and full. But we now almost universally apply the term “short u” to the neutral sound heard in but and burn. This sound occurs on the most extensive scale. It has, in fact, come to be one of the most common in our pronunciation, as to it all the vowels of the unaccented syllables are disposed to tend. Even the sound of u in accented syllables begins to show occasional traces of this degeneration. Who has not heard that provincial pronunciation of the verb put which gives it the exact value of the initial syllable of putty? With nothing in our orthography to give fixity to orthoepy, there is little limit to the possibilities lying before this so-called “short u” in the way of displacing other sounds.

Let us now summarize the facts of the situation. The primal sound of the first vowel is on the road to complete disappearance. The long sound of the second vowel has usurped the name and in part the proper functions of the first. The long sound of the third vowel has performed a similar office for the second. The third vowel, so-called, is a diphthong. On the other hand, the short sounds of these three vowels—seen in sat, set, sit—continue to exist in their original integrity. All of them are employed on an extensive scale. Furthermore, the regular long and short sounds of u have no longer the prominence they once had in connection with this vowel. To the popular apprehension the idea of it is supplied, as has just been said, by the neutral vowel-sound we call “short u.” This has largely taken the place of other vowel-sounds, and threatens to do so still more in the future.

The confusion in the use of the vowel-signs is itself reinforced by the condition of the alphabet. For the former, indeed, the latter is in no small measure responsible. Behind all the other agencies which have brought about the present wretched condition of our orthography stands out its one most glaring defect. The Roman alphabet we have adopted as our own is unequal to the demand made upon it. The three diphthongs being included in the consideration, we have at a low calculation fifteen vowel-sounds and but five characters to represent them. According to a more common calculation, we have eighteen vowel-sounds to be represented by this limited number. With the consonants we are a good deal better off. The supernumeraries being excluded, there are eighteen single characters for the twenty-four sounds to be denoted.

To make up for this deficiency of letters, two courses lay open to the users of English; rather, two courses were forced upon them. One was to have the same sign represent two or more sounds. This was at best a poor method of relief. Even had it been done correctly and systematically, so far as that result could be accomplished, it could not have failed to be unsatisfactory. It would have been an attempt to impose upon these few signs a burden they were unable to carry. But not even was this imperfect result achieved. Apparently it was not even aimed at. The sounds of the vowels have been so confused with one another that no fixed value can be attached to any vowel-sign. They are often used for each other in the most lawless fashion. So much is this the case that it is frequently impossible to tell from the spelling of a word what is the pronunciation of its vowel, or from the pronunciation of its vowel what is the spelling of the word.

There was another way followed to meet the difficulty. This second method was to make the best of the situation by that combination of vowels, or that combination of vowel and consonant, or of two consonants, to which we have given the name of digraphs. The first of these do not really constitute diphthongs, though such they have sometimes been termed. This method was far more sensible than the preceding. The task of making combinations of letters which should represent only particular sounds would have been, to be sure, a hard one. The lawlessness pervading our vowel-system would doubtless have prevented it from being carried out with thoroughness. But carried out imperfectly, it would have been a distinct improvement upon what we have now. But so far from any attempt having been made to accomplish it on even an imperfect scale, it can hardly be said to have been undertaken at all. There are two instances, indeed, in which such combinations have an invariable or nearly invariable value. One of these is aw, found in such words as bawl and lawn. This digraph never has any other sound than that of the so-called “broad a”—heard, for illustration, in fall and salt. The other is ee, seen in seen itself, as well as in a number of other words. With two or three exceptions, this combination has that sound of the third vowel we now ascribe to the second and call “long e.” But in both these instances the limitation of the digraph to the representation of a single sound was a result of accident rather than of design. These combinations were in truth left to run the same haphazard course which the letters composing them had usually followed. Accordingly, to them extended the lawlessness pervading the vowel-system. As a consequence, the pronunciation of the numerous digraphs became, as we shall see later, as varying and uncertain as that of the single vowels themselves.

We come now to the consideration of specific details upon which have been based the general statements just made. Not by any means all of them. There is no intention here of setting forth an exhaustive enumeration of the facts that could be presented. Even did I possess the phonetic knowledge, which I lack, sufficient to do this properly and fully, the undertaking would have lain outside of my plan. Furthermore, it would hinder the effect of the argument for most persons rather than help it. The mass of detail would be oppressive by its volume, and for that very reason less impressive. Accordingly, I throw out of consideration any representation of the variations of pronunciation to be found in unaccented syllables. In them indistinctness of sound, owing to the inability of our present orthography to denote precise values, has gone beyond that prevailing in the other cultivated tongues of modern Europe. Not only are the vowel-sounds in such syllables pronounced differently by different individuals, they are pronounced differently by the same individual at different times. In particular the precise pronunciation will be apt to vary with the speaker’s rapidity or slowness of utterance. In one case the exact sound will come out with perfect distinctness, in another it will be hard to tell by what vowel it is represented. It is enough to say here of the unaccented syllables that there is a strong tendency, especially in hasty utterance, to give to them generally the sound of that neutral vowel we commonly call “short u.”

It is accordingly in these unaccented syllables that so many were wont to trip in the spelling contests once so popular. It was not unusual to have the very best equipped contestant fail. He attempted to use his reason; to succeed, it was essential to discard that and trust instead to his memory. Take, for illustration, so common a verb as separate. Who, ignorant of the word, could tell from the ordinary pronunciation of it—even when that is reasonably distinct—what is the precise sound heard in the case of the second syllable? Should it be represented by an a or an e? The actual fact has to be learned, not through the agency of the ear, but through that of the eye. This is but a single instance out of hundreds that could be cited where a similar uncertainty must always prevail because the pronunciation cannot act as a clear guide to the present spelling.

In the following pages, therefore, attention shall be directed mainly to setting forth some of the most salient facts which reveal, in a way easily comprehensible, the confusion existing in our present orthography. For this purpose the discussion is intentionally confined almost entirely to those syllables upon which the principal accent falls. In a few instances some syllables will be included upon which rests the secondary accent. In both cases, however, the examples will be selected of words in which the distinction of sound is plainly apparent to all, and easily recognizable. This limits the discussion to but a section of the whole field. But though far from covering the ground, the absolute truth of the general statements about the condition of our orthography will appear distinctly manifest to him who has the patience to wade through the following dreary assemblage of facts, or perhaps it would be more proper to say, the following assemblage of dreary facts. Beginning with the vowel-system, the various letters or combinations of letters will be set forth which are used to indicate the same sound. In a number of instances these signs occur on a very small scale. Accordingly, three examples of every one will be invariably given when the sound heard is represented frequently by the spelling, or at least more or less frequently. When but one or two words are specified, this smaller number will denote that these are all the ordinary ones of that class—exclusive of derivatives and compounds—which are known to exist. At any rate, they are all that are known to exist to the writer. It is not unlikely that examples have been overlooked which will suggest themselves to the reader. We begin with the vowel-system.

III
THE VOWELS

The vowel a demands first attention. The sound of it, heard in father and far, has been spoken of as disappearing. The simple vowel usually represents it, so far as it continues to exist. Other signs, however, are occasionally employed. It is heard in the ua of guard and guardian, in the ea of heart, and also of hearken when so spelled; and finally in England in the e of clerk, sergeant, and a few other words. Once much more common, it has even there steadily given way before the advance of the so-called “short u” sound, occurring in such words as her. In the pronunciation of some it is further represented, for illustration, by the au of haunt and haunch. On the other hand, as contrasted with this declining use, the regular short sound of a, heard in man and mat, is preserved in its fullest vigor. In the large majority of instances it is indicated by the simple letter itself. The exceptions to this representation of it are merely sporadic. Such are the ua of guarantee and the ai of plaid.

But dismissing the consideration of these two sounds of this vowel, take those heard respectively in the words fare, fall, and fate. Let us begin with the first of these. Its sound is denoted in many words by the simple vowel, as can be seen in pare, care, declare. But it is also indicated by ai in pair, hair, stair; by ay in prayer; by e in there and where; and by ei in their and heir. The second of these is the au sound heard in all, warm, want. It is not unfrequently denominated “broad a.” But besides this vowel the sound is further represented by o in such words as oft, loss, song; by au in daub, haul, taught, and the like; similarly by aw in saw, drawn, bawl, and numerous others; by oa in broad; and by ou in sought, thought, bought.

It has already been pointed out that the so-called long sound of a does not strictly belong to it; that it is really an e sound. But as it has imposed its name upon the vowel, it is properly to be considered with it in any treatise which appeals to the general public. Its most usual representative is the letter itself, seen in pale, pane, page, and in scores of words in which the presence of an unpronounced final e has come to indicate generally, though not invariably, that the preceding vowel is long. But then again it is represented by ai in pail, pain, exclaim; by ay in lay, pay, day; by ea in great, steak, break; by ei in veil, vein, heinous; and by ey in they, obey and survey. In the interjection eh the vowel has for once its original sound. Again there are two instances in which a digraph with this sound occurs in but a single case. These two are the ao of gaol and the au of gauge.

In the case of the first of these words there were two ways of spelling it which existed from the fourteenth century. These are gaol and jail. The first form comes from the dialect of Normandy, the second from that of Paris. Both have been in use from the beginning. About both there has been to some extent controversy, at least in the past. The New Historical Dictionary, which contains a full history of the origin and use of these two forms, gives us a quotation bearing upon this point from Roger L’Estrange’s translation of the Visions of Quevedo. In this version, which appeared in 1668, English allusions were not unfrequently introduced. In one instance men are represented as being in a state of rage because they cannot come to a resolution as to whether they ought to say Goal (sic) or Jayl. Gaol is still the official form of the word in England. That fact has mainly contributed to its maintenance in literature, so far as it continues to be used. In the United States jail is both the official and the literary form. But the spelling gaol has to some a peculiar attraction of its own. Not a single letter in it save the final l is of use in indicating with certainty its right pronunciation. In truth, the orthography almost enforces a wrong one. There are those to whom this fact is the highest recommendation it can have.

The second word has varied between the spellings gauge and gage almost from its very entrance into the language in the fifteenth century. One gets the impression that there was a time when the latter was the preferred form. But with our present knowledge no statement of this sort can be made positively. “You shall not gage me by what we do to-night,” says Gratiano to Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. Modern editions, in defiance of the original, print gauge; for the folio and both the early quartos agree in having gage. Shakespeare’s use seems to be nothing but another illustration of his perverse preference for the so-called American spelling, or the American preference for Shakespeare’s spelling, just as one chooses to put it. Such an anomalous form as gauge proved at times too much for the tolerance of the orthographically much-enduring Englishman. Even him it has struck as peculiarly objectionable. So in the eighteenth century he set out to remove this particular blot upon the speech. But as he was in nowise tainted with the virus of reform, he exhibited the usual incurable aversion to having the spelling bear any relation to the pronunciation. Accordingly, he refused to take the natural as well as time-honored course of dropping the unnecessary and misleading u. Instead, he reversed the order of the letters of the digraph. The au became ua.

There have been in modern times men who advocated this method of spelling the word with all that fervor of faith which is so frequent an accompaniment of limited knowledge. On this point, for instance, the late Grant Allen felt called upon to bear his testimony. He was wont to make his novels a vehicle for conveying his linguistic views as well as those pertaining to religion, society, and politics. “Cynicus replied, with an ugly smile,” he wrote, “that nobody could ever guage anybody else’s nature.”[16] Then, with what might fairly be called an ugly smile of his own, Allen added in a parenthesis, “not gauge, a vile dictionary blunder.” There was no apparent reason for this lexical outburst; there was certainly no proof vouchsafed of the justice of the assertion. As the originals of the word were the Old French noun gauge and the verb gauger, it is hard to see how dictionaries could be held responsible for blunders, if blunders they were, which foreigners had perpetrated centuries before. There is, in truth, as little etymological justification for guage as there is phonetic for gauge. Gage, if it were not the most common way of spelling the word during the Elizabethan period, was certainly a common one. It is now, on the whole, the preferred form in the United States. Except in the nautical term weather-gage, the u is very generally retained in England. This is doubtless due to the desire of gratifying the ardent enthusiasm pervading the toiling millions of Great Britain for spellings which remind them of the Old French originals, from which were derived the words they employ.

In the case of the second vowel, the short e sound is properly shown in a large number of words of which let, felt, bed may be taken as representatives. These are all phonetically spelled. No educated man who saw them for the first time would have any hesitation about their pronunciation. Such a condition of things tends to chasten the feelings of that class of persons, not inconsiderable in number, who think it distinctively to the credit of the spelling that it should get as far away from the pronunciation as possible. They may be consoled, however, by the fact that this same sound is represented by a in any and many; by ea in a large number of words, such as health, endeavor, weather; by ai in said and again; by ay in says; by ei in heifer and nonpareil, and by eo in jeopard and leopard. There are those who give this short sound to leisure, rhyming it with pleasure, as did Milton,[17] instead of the more common long sound heard with us. Indeed, it is noticeable that preference is given to the former in the New Historical English Dictionary, though that pronunciation is absolutely ignored in some of the best American ones. The compilers of these last may have been touched by Walker’s pathetic plea for the long sound. “Leisure,” he wrote, “is sometimes pronounced as rhyming with pleasure; but in my opinion very improperly; for if it be allowed that custom is equally divided, we ought, in this case, to pronounce the diphthong long, as more expressive of the idea annexed to it.”

Any and many are now the only two words where a has the sound of short e. At one time it was heard in others, and was not unfrequently so represented in literature. It lingers, too, in some instances, and even, indeed, flourishes in spite of all the efforts of education to extirpate it. The present authorized pronunciation of catch, instead of ketch, is one of the comparatively few triumphs gained by the written word over the spoken. In days when devotion did not exist to orthography irrespective of the purpose it was designed to fulfil, the a assumed the spelling of e along with its sound. The earlier cag, for illustration, has been abandoned for the pure phonetic spelling keg. Apparently no serious harm has befallen the language in consequence. Even more distant from the remote Latin original, canalis, denoting the home of canis, ‘the dog,’ is the form kennel. This turns its back upon its primitive, and contents itself with simply representing the pronunciation. So much are we the creatures of habit and association in the matter of spelling that the most ardent believer in the doctrine of basing orthography upon derivation could in neither of the cases just mentioned be persuaded to revert to the form nearest to that in the original tongue.

The sound to which we give the name of “long e” belongs strictly, as has been pointed out, to i. A few of the words have also been given in which it still continues to be so indicated.[18] There are certain conditions under which it is represented by the simple letter itself. One is when it alone constitutes an accented syllable, as in equal, era, ecliptic. Another when it ends a monosyllable or an accented syllable, as in he, be, regal, cohesion. It appears finally with a good deal of frequency in words in which the sound of the simple vowel is lengthened by the artificial device of an appended mute e, as in theme, precede, complete. This last word, it may be said in passing, was once often spelled compleat. But as the letter itself represents much more usually the short sound of the vowel, the long sound has come to be indicated often by various digraphs. Of these, two are particularly prominent. One of them is ee, seen in a large number of words, such as meet, thee, proceed. The second digraph is ea, found in bean, meat, eagle, and a host of others. But the sound is not limited to these two combinations. It is represented by ei in receive, conceit, seize; by ie in believe, chief, fiend; by ey in key; by eo in people; by ay in quay; by æ in ægis, pæan, minutiæ; and several other words not fully naturalized.

Once, indeed, this last method of indicating the sound was far more common. In many instances it has been supplanted by the simple e. It was not till a comparatively late period that such spellings as era and ether drove out in great measure the once prevalent æra and æther. As æ has with us strictly but one sound, the change cannot, from all points of view, be deemed an improvement. In the case of an unknown word first brought to the attention, no one could now be positive, under certain conditions, whether the vowel should be treated as long or short. Take, for illustration, encyclopedia, once often spelled encyclopædia. He who sees the word for the first time is as likely to pronounce the antepenultimate syllable pĕd as pēd. He certainly could not tell from the orthography employed how this particular syllable should be sounded. Still, for much more than a century the tendency of the users of the language has been steadily directed toward the discarding of the æ in all cases. As long ago as 1755 Dr. Johnson, in his dictionary, recommended its disuse. “Æ,” he wrote, “is sometimes found in Latin words not completely naturalized or assimilated, but is by no means an English diphthong, and is more properly expressed by single e, as Cesar, Eneas.” Dr. Johnson was hostile to spelling reform; but he could venture to sanction a spelling of these two Latin proper names, at which even the average spelling reformer would shudder.

Fortunately for those of us who believe that spelling exists for the sake of indicating pronunciation, the sound of short i, one of the most common vowel sounds in the language, is almost always represented by the letter itself. The exceptions are few, comparatively speaking. The only sign to take its place in any body of words sufficiently numerous to be entitled a class is y, as seen in syntax, abyss, system, and other words, generally of Greek origin. The instances where different signs are employed are purely sporadic. Most of them, however, are for various reasons remarkable. The sound is represented by e in the name of the language we speak and of the country where it came into being. It is further represented by the e of pretty, by the o of women, by the u of busy and business, by the ie of sieve, and by the ui of guild and guilt and build. Once in the speech of most men, and now in that of many, it is given to the ee of been, and regularly to that combination as found in breeches.

Gild is a variant spelling of guild, and represents the earlier form. The ui of the two additional examples given ought to be a saddening spectacle to the devout believer in derivation as the basis of orthography. The original form of guilt was gylt. So it remained with various spellings—of which gilt was naturally the most common—until the sixteenth century. But there was also an allied form, gult. These two undoubtedly represented distinct and easily recognizable pronunciations of the word. They were at last combined so as to create a spelling, of the pronunciation of which no one could now be certain until he was told. This did not take place on any scale worth mentioning until the latter part of the sixteenth century, though the combination had occasionally been seen much earlier. Essentially the same thing can be said of build. It originally appeared in various ways, of which byld, bild, and buld were the prominent types. At the end of the fifteenth century the practice began of recognizing both forms by writing build or buyld. In a measure this doubtless represented a then existing shade of pronunciation. The spelling, once established, has continued since. No one ever thinks of pronouncing the u; perhaps no one has ever thought of it since the combination was formed. Yet there is no question that intense sorrow would be occasioned to a certain class of persons were they to be deprived of the pleasure of inserting in the word this useless and now orthoepically misleading letter.

The so-called “long i” ought strictly to be treated under the diphthongs; but as it is popularly associated in the minds of men with the simple vowel, its diphthongal sound will be considered at this point. Its most usual representative is the letter itself. This presents little difficulty in the pronunciation if the words end with a mute e, as in mine, desire, bite. The distinction between thin and thine, for instance, is then easily made. But when it comes to such words as mind, child, and pint on the one hand, and lift, gild, and tint on the other, there is nothing in the spelling to indicate with certainty how the i of these words should be sounded. As no general rule can be laid down, the pronunciation of each has in consequence to be learned by itself. This uncertainty was perhaps one of the causes which led to the transition of the diphthongal sound of i in wind to the short sound wĭnd, which so aroused the wrath of Dean Swift. But besides i the sound is also indicated by the y of type, ally, thyme, and a number of words derived from the Greek; by ie, especially in monosyllables, such as die, lie, and tie; by ye in the noun lye; by ei in height and sleight, and according to one method of pronunciation in either and neither. It is further represented by the ai of aisle, by the ey of eye, and by the uy of buy.

The third vowel now demands attention. Orthoepists contend that there is no genuine short o in English utterance. Without entering into a discussion of this point, it is sufficient to say that the two sounds of the letter, which are ordinarily designated as short and long, are represented respectively in the words not and note. The former sound remains fairly faithful to this vowel. It is hardly indicated by any other sign. The a of what, squad, quarry is about the only one to take its place. Very different is it with the long sound heard in note. This is far from confining itself to any single letter. In no small number of words it is represented by oa, as in boat, groan, coal; by oe, as in foe, toe, hoe; by ou, as in pour, mould, shoulder; or again by ow, as seen in crow, snow, show. Less common, but still to be met with, is this sound heard in the combination ew, as seen in sew; as well as in shew and strew, as these words were once regularly and are now occasionally spelled; in oo, as in door and floor; in eau, in beau, bureau, and flambeau; and in the eo of yeoman.

This last word was once spelled at times yoman and at times yeman. These forms doubtless represented the two ways of pronouncing it that existed. The Toxophilus of Roger Ascham, for illustration, was dedicated to the use “of the gentlemen and yomen of Englande.” But the sound of the vowel of the first syllable wavered for a long period between the long o and the short e. Ben Jonson, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, observed of the word that “it were truer written yĕman.” In the latter half of the eighteenth century Doctor Johnson tells us that the eo of this word “is sounded like e short.” This was the view taken by perhaps the larger number of orthoepists, who immediately followed him. In spite of them the o pronunciation has triumphed. It has shown, however, a tender consideration for its defeated rival by allowing it to lead a useless existence in the syllable in which, in the utterance of many, it once represented the actual sound.

The corresponding short and long sounds of u are seen in the words full and rule. But o, either singly, or in combination with other letters, is a favorite way of indicating both. The short sound of this vowel, which is far from common, is represented by the o of bosom, woman, wolf; by the oo of good, foot, stood; by the ou of could, would, should. On the other hand, the corresponding long sound is also represented by the o of move, prove, lose; by the oe of shoe and canoe; by the oo of too, root, fool; by ou in such words as uncouth, routine, youth, and a number of others derived generally from the French. There has been and still is something of a tendency on the part of the users of language to change the long sound of oo into its short one. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his poem of Urania, represents Learning as giving a lesson on propriety of pronunciation. Among other points considered, occurred the following observations:

She pardoned one, our classic city’s boast,
That said at Cambridge mŏst instead of mōst,
But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot
To hear a Teacher call a rōot a rŏot.

This is perhaps as good an example as can be furnished of the waste of time and labor imposed by our present orthography in mastering distinctions of sounds in words when there is nothing in the sign employed to indicate which one is proper. To men not given up to slavish admiration of our present spelling, it would seem that Learning, instead of stamping her foot, would have been much more sensibly engaged in using her head to devise some method by which one and the same combination of letters should not be called upon to represent two distinct sounds in words so closely allied in form as foot and root; or distinct sounds in words with the same ending as toe and the shoe that covers it.

Another way of indicating the long sound of this vowel is either by the simple letter itself or by it in combination with other letters. For instance, it is represented by ue in such words as true, avenue, pursue; by ui in fruit, bruise, pursuit; by eu in neuter, deuce, pentateuch; by ew in brew, sewer, lewd; and by ieu in adieu, lieu, purlieu. But there is a peculiarity in the words containing this vowel, the consideration of which involves too much space to have little more than a reference here. We all recognize the difference of the sound of u as heard respectively in fortune and fortuitous, in annual and annuity, in volume and voluminous, in penury and penurious. In the first one of each of these pairs of words a y-element is introduced into the pronunciation; in the second the u has its absolutely pure long sound. Nor is this introduction of the y-element limited to the letter when used alone. We can find it exemplified in the ue of statue, value, tissue; in the eu of eulogy, euphony, Europe; in the ew of ewe, hew, few. This iotization, as it is called, is especially prevalent in words with the termination ture, as nature, furniture, sculpture, and agriculture. Now and then some one is heard giving, or attempting to give, to the u of this ending the pure sound; but such persons are usually regarded as possessed of “cultoor” and not culture.

The only word of this special class in which such a method of pronunciation can be said to have attained any recognition whatever is literature. The word itself is an old one in our speech. Once, however, it meant merely knowledge of literature. It did not mean that body of writings which constitute the production of a country or of a period. This sense of it, now the most common, is comparatively modern. The earliest instance I have chanced to meet of it—though it was doubtless used a good deal earlier—is in the correspondence of Southey and William Taylor of Norwich. There it occurs in a letter belonging to the year 1803, in which Southey tells his friend that he was expecting to undertake the editorship of a work dealing biographically and critically with “the history of English literature.”[19] Still, the pronunciation just mentioned of this word, differing as it does from the others of the same class, must even then have been occasionally heard. It was certainly made the subject of comment by Byron. He somewhere speaks—I have mislaid the reference—of a publisher who was in the habit of talking about literatoor. This peculiar pronunciation still comes at times from the lips of educated men.

But the regular long and short sounds of u yield in frequency of occurrence to that sound of it heard in but and burn. In common speech this has usurped with us the title of “short u.” By orthoepists it itself is divided into a long and a short sound, according as it is or is not followed by an r. Into it, as has been pointed out, the pronunciation of all unaccented syllables tends to run. Hence, in the case of these, there has come to exist the greatest possible variety of signs by which it is indicated. But even in the accented syllables there is a sufficient number of different ones to arrest the attention. Naturally the most usual representative of it is the vowel from which it has taken its name. But it is far from being limited to this sign. Its short sound is further represented by the o of such words as love, dove, and son; similarly by the ou of double, touch, and young; and by the oo of blood and flood. In vulgar speech soot would have to be added to the last two. Furthermore, it is represented by the sporadic example of the oe of does. The long sound runs through a still wider range of examples. Words containing it but denoted by various signs could be given by the score. It is represented by all the vowels except the first. The e of her, were, fern, stands for it. So does the i of fir, bird, virgin. So does the o of work, worship, worth. It is likewise largely represented by ea in such words as heard, learn, search; by ou in scourge, journal, flourish, and no small number of others containing this particular sign. In the single instance of tierce the sound is denoted also by ie. Were its use in unaccented syllables indicated, this list of signs would be largely extended. As it is, it will be seen that nine is the number employed in accented syllables to represent it.

So much for the simple vowels. We come now to the three diphthongs. The first of these, which is made up of the sound of the a of father and that of the e of they, has already been considered in treating what is called “long i.” Eight signs were given by which it was denoted.[20] This wealth of representation does not belong to the two other diphthongs. There are but two signs by which the sound of the second is indicated. These are the ou of south, found, about, and the ow of now, town, vowel. The third diphthong again has but two signs, the oi of boil, point, spoil, and the oy of boy, joy, destroy. Many of the words in which oi appears had once the pronunciation of the first mentioned diphthong. To the truth of this both the rymes of the poets and the assertions of the early orthoepists bear ample testimony. The statement is still further confirmed by the fact that the sound still lingers, or, rather, is prevalent, in the speech of the uneducated, the great conservators of past usage. The words given above as illustrative of this sign of the diphthong would have been pronounced by our fathers bīle, pīnt, spīle. So they are still pronounced by the illiterate. In one word, indeed, this sound has not passed entirely from the colloquial speech of the cultivated either in England or America. Roil is not merely heard as rīle, but is not unfrequently found so printed.

IV
THE DIGRAPHS

Up to this point we have been engaged in making manifest the numerous different ways in which the same vowel-sound is represented in our present orthography. Necessarily a reversal of the process would present an equally impressive showing, for examples just as impressive would make manifest how the same sign adds to the further confusion of English spelling by denoting a number of different vowel-sounds. But there is a limit to the endurance of the reader, to say nothing of that of the writer. Furthermore, there is little need of this addition in the case of the vowels. The facts about to be furnished will be more than sufficient to satisfy any demand for illustrations of the extent to which the same sign has been made to indicate a wide variety of different sounds, though in the sporadic instances the examples already given must be repeated. For we come now to the consideration of those combinations of letters, numerous in English spelling, to which has been given the name of digraphs. They are sometimes made up of a union of vowels, sometimes of a union of a vowel and a consonant, sometimes of a union of two consonants.

I have already adverted to the fact that had there been any system established in the employment of these combinations of letters, and had each of them been made to represent unvaryingly one particular sound, some of the worst evils of English orthography would have been largely mitigated, and in certain cases entirely relieved. But this was not to be. The opportunity of bringing about regularity of usage in the employment of these signs was either not seen, or if seen was not improved. The same variableness, the same irregularity, the same lawlessness which existed in the representation of the sounds of the vowels and diphthongs came to exist in the case of the digraphs also. They consequently did little more than add to the confusion prevailing in English orthography, and became as valueless for indicating pronunciation as are the single letters of which they are composed.

To this sweeping statement there are two partial exceptions. The first is aw. This is one of several representatives of the so-called broad sound of a heard in ball and fall. Whenever that digraph appears, its pronunciation is invariably the same. No such absolute assertion can be made of the digraph which represents the sound of “long e.” This is the combination ee. There are but two exceptions in common use to the pronunciation of it just given. The first is the word breeches. Its singular has the regular sound. The pronunciation as short i in the plural—used, too, there in a special sense—may perhaps be due to an extension to this form of that tendency, so prevalent in English speech, on the part of the derivative, to shorten the vowel of the primitive. The other is the participle been of the substantive verb. In usage the pronunciation of this word has long wavered and still wavers between the sounds heard respectively in sin and seen. Of this variation there will be occasion to speak later in detail.

These exceptions, however, affect but a limited number of words. They are hardly worth considering when their regularity is put in contrast with the irregularities of the other combinations. Let us begin with the digraph ai. Ordinarily it has the sound we are accustomed to call “long a,” as can be seen in fail, rain, and paid. In pair, fair, hair it has another sound. In said, again, against it has the sound of short e. In aisle it has the diphthongal sound called by us “long i.” This word furnishes an interesting illustration of the way in which much of our highly prized orthography came to have a being. Its present spelling is comparatively recent. Doctor Johnson recognized in it the lack of conformity to any possible derivation. He adopted it on the authority of Addison, though with manifest misgiving. He thought it ought to be written aile, but in deference to this author he inserted it in his dictionary as aisle.

“Thus,” he said, “the word is written by Addison, but perhaps improperly.”[21] Johnson’s action was followed without thought and without hesitation by his successors. There is no question, indeed, as to the impropriety of the present spelling from the point of view of both derivation and pronunciation. Equally there is no doubt as to the impropriety of its meaning from the former point of view. It came remotely from the Latin ala, ‘a wing.’ Therefore, it means really the wing part of the church on each side of the nave. In this sense it is still employed. But since the first half of the eighteenth century it has been made to denote also the passage between rows of seats. Strictly speaking, this is a particularly gross corruption, though, like so many in our speech, it has now been sanctioned by good usage. The proper word to indicate such a sense was alley, corresponding to the French allée, ‘a passage.’ This was once common and is still used in the North of England. Aisle itself was formerly spelled ile or yle. Confusing it with isle, originally spelled ile, men inserted an s about the end of the seventeenth century. Later an a was prefixed under the influence of the French aile. It was thus that this linguistic monster, defying any correct orthography or orthoepy, was created. In any sense of it the s is an unjustifiable intrusion, representing as the word does in one signification the Latin ala, ‘a wing,’ and in the other the French allée, ‘a passage.’

There is another word containing this digraph which illustrates vividly the uncertainty of sound caused by the present spelling. This is plait, both as verb and substantive. About its pronunciation usage has long been conflicting. “Plait, a fold of cloth, is regular, and ought to be pronounced like plate, a dish,” said Walker, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. “Pronouncing it so as to rhyme with meat,” he added, “is a vulgarism, and ought to be avoided.” So say several later English dictionaries. So say the leading American ones. Webster, indeed, concedes that the pronunciation denounced by Walker is colloquially possible. It therefore does not necessarily relegate the user of it to the ranks of the vulgar. Now comes the New Historical English Dictionary, and gives the word not merely three distinct pronunciations, but holds up as only really proper that which has failed to gain the favor of most lexicographers. It is the one found “in living English use,” it says, when the word has the sense of ‘fold.’ Further we are assured that with this signification it is ordinarily written pleat. This would tend to justify still more the ryme with meat, which so shocked Walker. Then in its second sense of a ‘braid of hair or straw’ we are told that it has the sound of a in mat. This leaves the pronunciation of plait to ryme with plate hardly any support to stand on. It has merely the distinction of being mentioned first; but it is denied a real existence as a spoken word. Nothing could better illustrate the unlimited possibilities opened by our present orthography for discussions of propriety of pronunciation about which certainty can never be assured. All statements about general usage, no matter from what source coming, must necessarily be received with a good many grains of allowance, if not with a fair proportion of grains of distrust—at least, whenever our orthoepic doctors disagree. Do the best the most conscientious investigator can, he can never make himself familiar with the practice of but a limited number of educated men who have a right to be consulted. His conclusions, therefore, must always rest upon a more or less imperfect collection of facts.

The digraph ay is naturally subject to the same influences as ai. It is, however, much less used save at the end of words. Grief has, indeed, been felt and expressed, even by devout worshippers of our present orthography, at the arbitrary change of signs made in the inflection of certain verbs, like lay, pay, say. These, without any apparent reason for so doing, pass from the digraph ay in the present to ai in the preterite. Naturally there is no objectionable uniformity in the practice. That might tend to render slightly easier the acquisition of our spelling. Accordingly, lay and pay and say have in the past tense laid, paid, and said, while verbs with the same termination, such as play, pray, delay, have in this same past tense the forms played and prayed and delayed. Stay uses impartially staid and stayed. Much dissatisfaction has been expressed at the “wanton departure from analogy,” as it has been called, which has been manifested by the words of the first list given. As the characteristic of our spelling everywhere is a wanton departure from analogy, it hardly seems worth while to find fault with this particular exhibition of it.

In quay the digraph has the entirely distinct sound of “long e.” Of this word it may be added that the spelling is modern while the pronunciation is ancient. Originally it appeared as key or kay—of course, with the usual orthographic variations. In the earlier half of the eighteenth century, under the influence of the French quai, the present form of the word came in; toward the end of the century it had become the prevailing form. This gave the lexicographer, Walker, an opportunity to display his hostility to any sort of spelling which should engage in the reprehensible task of aiming to indicate pronunciation. Such a proceeding was in his eyes a radically vicious course of action. In the entire ignorance of the original form of the word he remarked that it “is now sometimes seen written key; for if we cannot bring the pronunciation to the spelling, it is looked upon as some improvement to bring the spelling to the pronunciation—a most pernicious practice in language.”

Key, as the spelling suggests, had originally the sound of ey in they and obey; later it passed into the sound of “long e.” This it has transmitted to its supplanter. In the scarcity of rymes in our tongue, it is always a little venturesome to infer from the evidence of verse the past pronunciation of words which have with us the same termination, but different sounds. This imparts a little uncertainty to the treatment of quay in two passages containing the word which are given by the New Historical Dictionary.

But now arrives the dismal day
She must return to Ormond-quay,

says Swift in his poem of Stella at Wood-Park. Does the ryme here represent an attempt to conform the pronunciation to the spelling? More likely it represents the survival of a pronunciation once more or less prevalent. The second extract from In Memoriam is under the circumstances more striking:

If one should bring me the report
That thou hadst touched the land to-day,
And I went down unto the quay,
And found thee lying in the port.

It certainly looks as if in this passage Tennyson had set out to make the pronunciation conform to the spelling.

Our next digraph is ea. This has a choice variety of sounds to represent. Most commonly it receives the pronunciation of “long e.” Of the scores of examples containing it, beast, hear, and deal may be taken as specimens. But while this is its most frequent sound, it is far from being the only one. Its most important rival is that of short e, which can be found in no small number of words like breath, breast, weather. In these and all other like cases the second vowel is absolutely superfluous as regards pronunciation. The unnecessary letter is in some instances due to derivation; in others it exists in defiance of it—as, for instance, in feather and endeavor. Its insertion was doubtless due to an attempt to represent a sound which is no longer heard in these words. In a large number of instances they were once spelled without the now unpronounced letter.

Common also is a third sound of this digraph—the one we call “short u.” It is heard in heard itself, in earth, in early, in learn, in search, and in a number of other words in which ea is followed by r. There is a fourth sound of it which may be represented by bear, swear, tear. A fifth sound of it occurs in the words heart, hearth, and hearken. Again, a sixth sound of it is represented by such words as great, break, steak. In all these cases it will be observed that certain of these words have in the course of their history tended to pass from one pronunciation of the digraph into another. Sometimes they have for a long time wavered between the two. Hearth, which contains the fifth sound just assigned to the combination, was often made to ryme with words containing the third sound, represented by earth. According to the New Historical Dictionary, this is true now of Scotland, and of the Northern English dialect. It is true also of certain parts of the United States, or, at any rate, of certain persons. It seems also to have been the pronunciation of Milton.

Far from all resort of mirth
Save the cricket on the hearth

are lines found in Il Penseroso. So also great once had often the first sound here given to the digraph, as if it were spelled greet. Both this sound as well as the one it now receives were so equally authorized in the eighteenth century that Dr. Johnson triumphantly cited the fact as a convincing proof of the impossibility of making a satisfactory pronouncing dictionary, just as we are now told that we cannot have a phonetic orthography because men pronounce the same word in different ways.

The digraph ee having already been considered, we pass on to ei. Its most frequent sound is that heard in such words as rein, veil, and neighbor. But it has also the sound of “long e” in conceit, seize, ceiling, and a few others. In heir and heiress and their it has the sound of a in fare. In height and sleight it has the sound of “long i.” In heifer and nonpareil it has the sound of short e. The allied digraph ey has no such range of sounds. In accented syllables it represents only the first one given to ei, as can be seen in they, grey, and survey. Key, with the sound of “long e,” seems to be the solitary exception.

It is already plainly apparent that there is nothing in the character of our present spelling to fit it to serve as a guide to pronunciation, the very office for which spelling was created. But its worthlessness in this respect, with the consequent uncertainty and anxiety attending the use of it, forms in the case of two words containing the digraph ei, one of the most amusing episodes in the history of English orthoepy. In modern times their pronunciation has given rise to controversy and heart-burnings as bitter as the matter itself is unimportant. These words are either and neither. Were they to adopt the most common pronunciation of the digraph they would have the sound heard in such words as eight, vein, and feint. This, in truth, they once had. To indicate that fact they have occasionally been written ayther and nayther. But this pronunciation, outside of Ireland at least, had largely disappeared by the latter part of the eighteenth century. So far as many orthoepists were concerned, it was ignored entirely. Those who mentioned it often accorded it scant favor. The affections of lexicographers were long divided between the sounds heard in receive and deceit, and that heard in height and sleight. For the former there was a very marked preference. Most of them did not even admit the existence of the “long i” sound; those who did, gave it generally a grudging recognition. The various pronunciations prevailing in the latter part of the eighteenth century were specified by Nares in his Elements of Orthoepy. “Either and neither,” he wrote, “are spoken by some with the sound of long i. I have heard even that of long a given to them; but as the regular way is also in use, I think it is preferable. These differences seem to have arisen from ignorance of the regular sound of ei.” As the regular sound of ei, if any one of them is entitled to that designation, is heard in such words as skein and freight, one gets the impression that Nares himself was ignorant of what it was.

Walker, the orthoepic lawgiver of our fathers, distinctly preferred the “long e” sound of either and neither. Both the practice of Garrick and analogy led him to maintain that they should be pronounced as if ryming “with breather, one who breathes.” He was compelled, however, to admit that the “long i” sound was heard so frequently that it was hardly possible in insist exclusively upon the other. He did the best he could, nevertheless, to ignore it and thereby banish it. While in the introduction to his dictionary he recognized the existence of both sounds, in the body of his work that of “long e” was the only one given. In this course he was followed by his reviser, Smart, who succeeded to his name, and up to a certain degree to his authority. Smart went even further than his predecessor. He was apparently ignorant of the fact—he certainly ignored it—that any other pronunciation of these words than that of “long e” was known to the English people. But in spite of its defiance of analogy and of the hostility of lexicographers, the sound of “long i” continued to make its way. The fact has sometimes excited the indignation of orthoepists. Yet it is hard to understand how any one who cherishes the vagaries of English spelling should get into a state of excitement about the vagaries of its pronunciation.

Neither the digraph eo nor eu is found often. The first, however, improves fully the opportunity presented of making it difficult, if not impossible, for the learner to get any idea of the pronunciation from the spelling. In people it has the sound of “long e”; in leopard and jeopard it has the sound of short e. In yeoman again it has the sound of long o. Eu has practically the same sound as ew, as can be exemplified in feud and few. This last digraph, however, represents the long sound of u as well as that in which iotization precedes the vowel. The difference in the pronunciation of drew and dew will make manifest the contrast. There is always a tendency, however, for the digraph to pass from the latter sound to the former in a tongue in which there is nothing in the orthography to fix a precise value upon the sign indicating both. “According to my v’oo,” Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his Elsie Venner, has one of his characters saying. “The unspeakable pronunciation of this word,” he adds in a parenthesis, “is the touchstone of New England Brahminism.” In another place in the same novel he still further enforces this point. “The Doctor,” he wrote, among his other recommendations to the hero, says to him, “you can pronounce the word view.” And yet in it the iotization is plainly indicated by the vowel itself, while in such words as hew and few and new there is nothing to fix definitely the sound. Finally, it remains to say of this digraph that shew and strew, two verbs once spelled with it, have now become show and strow, a form more in accordance with their pronunciation. There is no particular reason why sew should not follow their example in substituting an o for an e.

The digraph ie is represented but by three vowel sounds. The most common one is that of “long e”—seen, for example, in chief, grieve, believe. But the sound of “long i” is heard in no small number of words, especially monosyllabic words ending in ie, such as lie, die, tie. In one instance it has the sound of short e. Accordingly, in it the first vowel is distinctly superfluous. This is the word friend. Its Anglo-Saxon original is freónd, just as that of fiend is feónd or fiónd. One of the small jokes of the opponents of spelling reform is a professed unwillingness “to knock the eye out of a friend.” Disparaging remarks have been made about this as an argument—as it seems to me, with no justification. Compared with most of the objections brought against the efforts to wash the dirty face of our orthography and make it decently presentable, this particular argument against dropping the i out of friend is, as I look at it, the strongest that has been or can be adduced. It reminds one, indeed, of the objection the French writer made to the dropping of the h out of rhinoceros. The animal would lose his horn and become nothing more than a sheep.

As a matter of linguistic history, however, it was not until late in the sixteenth century that the i, though found long before, appeared in the word friend to an extent worth considering. There were several ways in which it had been spelled previously. Of these frend was naturally a common one in days when the belief still lingered that the office of orthography was to represent pronunciation and not to get as far away from it as possible. Take, as an illustration, the treatise entitled The Schoolmaster of the great English scholar, Roger Ascham. This appeared in 1570. In it the word friend occurs just twenty-five times. It is regularly spelled frend, with the exception of one instance, where the intruding i is found. So also frendly is invariably the form of the adjective, and frendship that of the derivative noun.[22]

Oa, the next digraph in order, comes very near attaining the distinction of being represented by a single sound. It occurs in a fairly large number of words which can be represented by oar, coat, loaf. It is saved, however, from the reproach of regularity by having the sound of the a of “ball” in the words broad, abroad, and groat. Oe is not so common, but, like its reverse eo, what it lacks in number of words it makes up in variety of pronunciation. In foe, hoe, and toe it has the sound of long o. In canoe and shoe it has the sound of long u. In these instances it forms the termination of words. Not so in does, where it has the sound we call “short u.” The use of this digraph, like that of ae, has been much restricted. For instance, the word we now spell fetid was once generally spelled fœtid. So, in truth, it continued to be till the nineteenth century. The digraph, indeed, still lingers in the name of the drug asafœtida, though in the instance of this word the long sound has given way to the short. Not unlike, in some particulars, has been the fortune of certain other terms. Take, for instance, the word economy. Its remote Greek original began with oi, which in English, as in Latin, appeared with the form œ, and sometimes erroneously æ. For these was found occasionally the simple e. In the nineteenth century this last displaced the two others, and gave to the first syllable the present standard form. One of the results, however, of this sort of substitution is that no one seems to be certain whether he ought to pronounce the initial e of economic as long or short.

The ordinary sound of oo, the next digraph to be considered, is that of long u, as we see it in moon, soon, food. But there are about half a dozen words—throwing derivatives out of consideration—in which it has the short sound of u. The difference can be plainly observed by contrasting the pronunciation of the digraph in the two words mood and wood. Furthermore, oo is to be credited with two more sounds. One is that of the “short u” seen in blood and flood. The other is the long sound of o in door and floor, anciently spelled dore and flore. Dore, for instance, can be found in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and even as late as Bunyan.

The digraph ou is perhaps the banner sign for the frequency of its occurrence and the variety of sounds it indicates. As it appears most commonly, it is a genuine diphthong, as seen in such words as loud, sour, mouth. But there is another large body of words in which the sign has a sound essentially distinct. It can be observed in such words as group, youth, tour. It gives one a peculiar idea of the worth of English orthography as a guide to pronunciation that in thou, the singular of the pronoun of the second person, ou has one value, and in its plural, you, it has a value altogether different. The same observation is true of the possessives our and your. There are two or three words in which these two signs have had for a long period a struggle for the ascendancy. Take the case of the substantive wound. One gets the impression from poetry that in this word the ou constitutes a genuine diphthong. There is no question that it rymes regularly with words containing the diphthongal sound here given. Perhaps that was a necessity; it had to ryme with such or not ryme at all. Still, the verse seems pretty surely to have represented the common pronunciation. In the couplets of Pope, the poetic authority of the eighteenth century, it is joined, for instance, with bound, found, ground. Yet this same pronunciation was unequivocally condemned by Walker at the end of the same century. “To wound,” he writes, “is sometimes pronounced so as to rhyme with found; but this is directly contrary to the best usage.”

This same uncertainty in the pronunciation of words in consequence of the uncertainty of the pronunciation of the signs employed to represent it may be further exemplified in the case of the noun route. Unlike wound, which is a pure native word, this is of French extraction. Following the analogy of most of the words so derived, it ought to have the second sound given here to the digraph. Yet it not unfrequently receives that of the first. Thus Walker graciously tells us that it is often pronounced so as to ryme with doubt “by respectable speakers.” A far more interesting case is that of pour. The majority of eighteenth century orthoepists—Johnston, Kenrick, Perry, Smith, and Walker—pronounced the word so as to ryme with power. Spenser so employed it. So did Pope, more than a century later. In the only two instances he uses the word in his regular poetry at the end of a line it has this sound. In his Messiah occurs the following couplet:

Ye Heavens! from high the dewy nectar pour:
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower.

Walker, indeed, declared unreservedly that the best pronunciation of it is “that similar to power.” Nares alone among eighteenth century orthoepists seems to have upheld what is now the customary pronunciation; yet even here the authority of some of the greatest of modern poets has been occasionally cast in favor of the once accepted sound. In his poem of The Poet’s Mind, Tennyson, for instance, writes:

Holy water will I pour
Into every spicy flower.

The digraph is far from being limited to the sounds heard respectively in thou and you. Another one is that of long o, found, for illustration, in dough, soul, mould. There is still another sound—that of the so-called “broad a”—which is heard in brought, ought, and wrought. A fifth sound represented is that of the regular short u seen in would, could, and should. In cough and trough, as pronounced by many, there is a sixth sound represented. In the course of its travels through the vowel sounds the sign reaches that which we commonly call “short u.” There is no small number of words in which this pronunciation of it appears. Country, journey, trouble, flourish may be given as examples. Ou, in truth, has a remarkable record, not so much by the number of sounds it represents—in this it is approached by two or three other digraphs—but by the comparative largeness of the body of words in which several of these different sounds appear. In the latter respect, but not at all in the former, is it rivalled by the analogous ow. This, common as it is, has but two sounds. The first and most frequent is that heard in brown, down, and vowel; the second is the long o sound heard in such words as blow, grow, and below.

We now reach the digraphs of which the vowel u is the first letter. In a large number of words this has, if pronounced, the sound of w. Especially is this true of syllables upon which no accent falls, or at most a secondary accent. Nothing of this characteristic is seen in the case of uy—in which the diphthongal sound of i is heard in the two words buy and guy—but it is noticeable in the case of the first four vowels. We can see it illustrated by the ua of assuage, persuade, language; by the ue of conquest, request, and desuetude; by the ui of anguish, languish, cuirass; and by the uo of quote, quota, quorum. In this last case the u strictly belongs with q. Of ua, the first of these digraphs, all that needs to be said is that in certain words, such as guard and guardian, the u is not pronounced at all. The same statement can be made of ue in guess, guest, guerdon. It is as useless as it is silent. A plea has been put forth in justification of its existence on the theory that it acts as a sort of servile instrument to protect the hard sound of g. If this digraph were invariably so employed, it may be conceded that there would be some sense in its existence. But he who expects to find either sense or consistency in English orthography has strayed beyond the limits of justifiable ignorance. There is a large number of instances in which the consonant g continues to exhibit its hard sound when followed directly by e. Get and geese and gewgaw and eager and anger are a few of the words which could be adduced to show that there has never been felt any necessity of the presence of a protecting u to indicate this pronunciation.

When at the end of a word the digraph ue has often the sound of long u, as in blue, pursue, true, and rue. But no small number of instances occur in which it is entirely silent. This is especially noticeable in words derived from the Greek which have the final syllables logue or gogue. Catalogue, prologue, dialogue, demagogue, pedagogue, and synagogue will serve as examples. But the list of words in which this digraph is silent is far from being confined to those with these two terminations. Antique, oblique, intrigue, colleague, fatigue, rogue, and plague will testify to the uselessness of it as far as pronunciation is concerned, unless it be maintained that it justifies its existence by indicating that the preceding vowel has a long sound. If this be true, it ought not to appear when the vowel is short. One sees so much of the results of freak and wantonness in our spelling that it is permissible to cherish the fancy that any intelligent principle has been sometime somewhere at work in it, and that a feeling of this kind was the unconscious motive that led to the adoption of packet in place of pacquet and of lackey for lacquey; at any rate, of risk for the once prevalent risque and of check for cheque. But no such reason can be assigned for the ue of tongue. Its original was tunge. The final e ceased to be pronounced, and in course of time to be printed. The insertion of a u in the ending, after the fashion of the French langue, was an act of combined ignorance and folly.

The digraph ui follows in general the course of ue. As in the case of the latter the u was found unneeded in guess and guest, so it is equally unnecessary in guide and guile. Here again a not dissimilar sort of defence for it has been set up. Its retention, we are told, is desirable in order to indicate the diphthongal sound of i in these words. The argument is as futile as in the case of the preceding digraph. It illustrates forcibly the capabilities of our spelling in the way of confusing pronunciation that the same combination which is responsible for “long i” in guide and guile and disguise is equally responsible for the short i of guilt, guinea, and build. With the statement that ui has still another sound in such words as fruit, bruise, and recruit, we leave the consideration of the vowels and vowel sounds. But after the survey of the subject which has just been made, no one is likely to pretend that the pronunciation he hears of any one of these in a strange word will furnish him the least surety that he will be able to reproduce its authorized form in writing.

V
THE CONSONANTS

So much for the vowels. When we come to the consonants we are approaching much more solid phonetic ground. In a general way, they have remained faithful to the sounds they were created to indicate. Not but that here also there is need of reform. This will be made sufficiently manifest when details are given in the case of individual letters. But the disorganization of the consonant-system is slight compared with that of the vowel-system. There is, indeed, a fundamental difference between the two. With the vowels conformity to any phonetic law whatever is the exception and not the rule. With the consonants the reverse is the case. Fortunate it is for the English-speaking race that such is the fact. Were it otherwise, were there with the consonants the same degree of irregularity which exists with the vowels, the same degree of variableness in the representation of sounds, the same widely prevalent indifference to analogy, knowledge of English spelling would not be delayed, as it is now, for no more than two or three years beyond the normal time of its acquisition; it would be the work of a lifetime. Mastery of it, under existing conditions never fully gained by some, would in such circumstances never be acquired by anybody who learned anything else.

There is one pervading characteristic of the consonants which differentiates their position in the orthography from that of the vowels. Wherever they appear they have ordinarily the pronunciation which is theirs by right. Ordinarily, not invariably. There are exceptions that demand full discussion. Still, the usual way in which consonants vary from the phonetic standard is not by being pronounced differently but by not being pronounced at all. In some instances the useless letter represents the derivation; in others it defies it. They have been retained in the spelling, though never pronounced, either because they are found in the primitive from which they came; or they have been introduced into it under the influence of a false analogy, or as a consequence of a false derivation. In any reform of the orthography it may not be desirable in some cases to drop—at all events at the outset—these now silent letters. It assuredly would not be so wherever the tendency manifests itself to resume them in pronunciation.

There are four of the consonants which practically do not vary from phonetic law. They are never silent; they always indicate the precise pronunciation which they purport to indicate. In the case of two of them there is in each a single instance in which the rule does not hold good. In the preposition of, f has the sound of v. In the matter of inflection the temptation to retain this letter in spite of the change of sound has been successfully resisted. So we very properly say calves and wolves instead of calfs and wolfs, though this course exhibits what some must feel to be a scandalous tendency toward phonetic spelling. The other letter is m. The only exception to its regular pronunciation is found in the word sometimes spelled comptroller. Here it has the sound of n. But this has already been pointed out as a well-known spurious form based upon a spurious derivation. Its first syllable was supposed to come from the French compter and not from its real original, the Latin contra. The affection for this corrupt form now felt by some is in curious contrast with the attitude taken toward count both as a verb and a noun. These words were once often spelled like the corresponding French compte and compter. There was justification for this. They all came from the remote Latin original computare, in which the p is found. Naturally this particular spelling was especially prevalent in the sixteenth century, when derivation ran rampant in the orthography; but the practice extended much later. Had compt continued in use and fastened itself upon the language, we can imagine, but we cannot adequately express, the indignation that would now be felt by many worthy people at the proposal of any reformer to substitute for it count, and the picture of ruin to the speech that would be drawn as a result of such a wanton defiance of the derivation.

Let us now consider the unpronounced consonants. In the remote past such letters when no longer wanted were regularly dropped. Now they are as regularly retained. They are retained not because they are needed, but because they have become familiar to the eye. They naturally fall into three classes, according as they appear at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle of a word. To the first class belong g and k when followed by n; w followed by ho or by r; and the aspirate h. The failure to pronounce this last in certain words is too well known to need here more than a reference. Elsewhere, too, I have given an account of the gradual resumption of the sound of this letter.[23]

There are about half a dozen words in which an initial g is silent. Of these gnaw and gnat may be taken as examples. There are more than double this number in which an initial k before the same letter n is not heard. These are adequately represented, with the different vowels following, by knave, knee, knife, know, and knuckle. Still more frequently unsounded is an initial w. There are fully two dozen and a half of words in which this letter is not pronounced. The class finds satisfactory exemplification in who, whole, wrap, wrest, wrist, wrong, and wry. In making up these numbers it must be kept in mind that neither derivatives nor compounds are taken into account. Were such to be included, the list would be largely swelled.

In the cases just considered a letter once sounded has disappeared from the spoken tongue. The fact of its disappearance from pronunciation has not, however, induced men, as was once the practice, to discard it from the written tongue. But there are instances in which the initial consonant has never been heard at all in the utterance of any speakers. The words to which they belong are of foreign origin. They come to us with the foreign spelling. In many cases, or rather in most, they are from the Greek. The conspicuous examples are the c of czar, now frequently spelled tsar with the t sounded, the p of psalm and pseudo and of several compounds in which the psi of the Hellenic alphabet furnishes the initial letter. The same uselessness extends to ph—seen, for illustration, in the form phthisic—and to the p of words of Greek origin beginning with pt. It may be remarked in passing that there is a curious blunder in the spelling of the name of the bird called the ptarmigan. This is a pure Celtic word, which begins with t. To it a p was prefixed, possibly because it was supposed to be of Greek origin.

The final consonants which are retained in the spelling but are not heard in the pronunciation are b, n, h, t, w, and x. The words possessing them may be divided into two classes. In one the useless letter has a sort of claim to existence. It was there originally. Let us begin with the unpronounced final b. The native words ending in it are climb, comb, dumb, and lamb. They are common to the various Teutonic languages. In all of these they terminated originally with this consonant. To the list may be added plumb, ‘perpendicular,’ coming remotely from the Latin plumbum, ‘lead.’ The spelling of these words underwent the usual variations common before a fixed orthography had fastened itself upon the speech. Naturally the unpronounced b was not unfrequently dropped. This was especially true of climb and dumb. Take as an illustration Spenser’s line, where he speaks of a castle-wall,

That was so high as foe might not it clime.[24]

But after the reign of Elizabeth the useless letter gradually but firmly fixed its hold upon the spelling in the case of all these words. In this respect English has had a different development from that of other Teutonic tongues. Take modern German, for instance. For the word corresponding to climb it has replaced the original chlimban by klimmen; for chamb, ‘comb,’ it has substituted kamm; for dumb in Old High German tumb, it has dumm; for lamb, in Old High German lamb, it has lamm. The dropping of the final b seems to have wrought no observable harm to the language nor occasioned any grief—at all events, any present grief—to its users.

Still, it may be maintained in justification of the present spelling of these words that they are entitled to the final b on the ground of derivation. But no such plea can be put up in the case of those now to be considered. These are crumb, limb, numb, and thumb. In all of these the last letter is not only useless, but according to the term one chooses to employ, it is either a blunder or a corruption. It did not exist in the original. In truth, this unnecessary consonant threatened at one time to fasten itself also upon the name of the fruit called the plum. Especially was this noticeable in the best literature of the eighteenth century. An attack of common sense, to which the users of our orthography have been occasionally liable, prevented this particular word from carrying about the burden of the unpronounced b. In the case of most of the others it was not until the sixteenth century that the practice began of appending the unauthorized and unneeded letter. It took something of a struggle to foist it upon these words; but not so much, indeed, as will be required to loose the hold it has now gained over the hearts of thousands.

There are a few words, almost all of Latin derivation, in which a final n appears unsounded. Kiln is perhaps the only one of English extraction in which this peculiarity appears. In the case of most of them the retention of the letter may be defended—at least it may be palliated—on the ground that in the derivatives its pronunciation is resumed. In autumn, column, condemn, hymn, and limn the n is silent, but it gives distinct evidence of its existence in words like autumnal, columnar, condemnation, hymnal, limner, and solemnity. In fact, this resumption of the sound has at times been made to appear in other parts of the verbs containing this silent letter. Especially has this been true of hymning and limning, the participles of hymn and limn. It was a practice which much grieved certain of the earlier orthoepists. They took the ground that analogy forbade any sound not belonging to the principal verb itself to be heard in any of its parts. The observation is only noticeable for its revelation of the fact that it should enter into the head of any advocate of the existing orthography to set up analogy as a convincing reason for pronouncing any English word in a particular way.

Three of these final unpronounced letters do not need protracted consideration. In the digraph ow, ending such words as low, flow, and sow, the w serves no particular use. According to some it justifies its existence by indicating the quality of the preceding vowel. Its value in this respect may be estimated by comparing the pronunciation of bow, a missile weapon for discharging an arrow, with bow, an inclination of the head, or bow, the fore-end of a boat. The next letter t, when a final consonant, is invariably heard, save in some imperfectly naturalized words. Of these eclat and billet-doux may be taken as examples. In England, however—not in the United States—there is a single and singular survival of the original French pronunciation in the case of a word received into full citizenship. This is the noun trait, which came into the language in the eighteenth century. Naturally its final letter was at first not sounded. The tendency so to do, however, soon showed itself. Lexicographers authorized it, indeed favored it; but for some inexplicable reason Englishmen have never taken kindly to the complete naturalization of the word. “The t,” said Walker, at the end of the eighteenth century, “begins to be pronounced.” Had he been living at the end of the nineteenth, he would have been justified in saying precisely the same thing as regards England. It was beginning then; it is beginning now; but it is only beginning.

A final h is not pronounced when preceded by a vowel; when preceded by the consonant g it forms a digraph which will be considered later. There are fewer than a dozen words of the former class in which it appears. Among these are the interjections, ah, eh, and oh. Here again, as in the case of w, the existence of the letter is defended on the ground that it indicates the quality of the preceding vowel. Yet for this purpose it can hardly be deemed a necessity. We use it in the case of ah; but we get along very well without it in the case of ha. This, too, was formerly sometimes spelled hah. Oh, likewise, was once widely found in the very instances and the very senses where we now use the single letter O. In two other words, Messiah and hallelujah, the h may be retained because of the sacredness of associations which have gathered about them. Yet the former word was itself a sixteenth-century alteration of the previous Messias.

The unpronounced final k belongs strictly to the class of double letters of which it is not my purpose to treat. It invariably follows c, and is really nothing but a duplicate of it. Still, as the sign is a different representation of the same sound, it may be well to bestow upon it a brief attention. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century it was dropped, after a warm contest, from words of Latin derivation. But the reform did not extend to those of native origin. In many cases a k has been added to words which originally ended in c. Especially was this true of monosyllables. Thus the earliest form of back was bæc, of sack was sac, of sick was seoc. This was the case not only with a good many monosyllables to which a k is now appended, but to a certain extent with dissyllables also. The fact is best exemplified in the words which have the ending ock. This sometimes represents the early English diminutive uc, which became later oc or ok. From the point of view of derivation the modern spelling is distinctly improper. Thus, for illustration, bullock, haddock, hassock, hillock, and mattock were in their earliest known forms bulluc, haddoc, hassuc, hilloc, and mattuc. Several words not of native origin have also adopted this ending. Hammock, from the Spanish hamaca, itself of Carib origin, has conformed to it. It has supplied itself with a final k. During the last century havoc managed to get rid of this consonant, with which it had been encumbered, without exciting any special remark. But now that the uselessness of a letter has become to many one of the chief recommendations of the spelling, the dropping of an unnecessary k from any of the other words of this class would bring unspeakable anguish to thousands.

There are more consonants which are unpronounced in the middle of words than at the beginning or the end. They are b, c, l, g, h, p, s, t, w, and z. In the case of some of them—the two last, for instance—the words in which the unpronounced letter appears are very few. In rendezvous z is not sounded. It is the only instance in which this consonant is not heard, and this is due to the fact that it is not heard in its French original. Again, it is only in answer, sword, and two that the medial w is silent. Unpronounced consonants are more frequent in the case of the other letters, but, after all, they are not numerous in themselves. Still, their presence has its usual effect. In every instance it raises a stumbling-block in the way of the proper pronunciation. Furthermore, it has in some cases either hidden the right derivation entirely or given a wrong idea of it.

Take the example of the medial b in debt and doubt. These words, coming originally from the French, were introduced into the language with the spelling, dette, det, and doute, dout. So for a long time they were spelled. Deference to the remote Latin original, which sprang up with the revival of learning, introduced the unauthorized b into the world. It has already been pointed out that this has given an opportunity, which has been fully improved, for the devotees of derivation to exhibit their usual inconsistency. When the presence of unpronounced letters in the case of other words presents an obstacle to correct pronunciation, then its retention is insisted upon as essential to our knowledge of its immediate origin, to the purity of the language itself, and to the happiness of those speaking it. But no advocate of the existing orthography could be induced to part with the b of debt and doubt, though its presence comes into direct conflict with the views he is championing in the case of other words. At times attempts were apparently made to pronounce the inserted b. In the full Latinized form debit, which was early in use, there was no difficulty. Indeed, it was a necessity. Not so in the form debt. Yet it is evident from Love’s Labour’s Lost that there were men who sought to accomplish this feat. It is difficult to ascertain whether speaker or hearer suffered more in consequence of this effort. If unsuccessful, it was the speaker; if successful, the pain was transferred to the hearer.

One curious blunder has been foisted upon our spelling by the desire of men to go back to the Latin original of these words instead of contenting themselves with the immediate French one. The insertion of b is bad enough in redoubted and redoubtable. These came to us from the latter tongue, and at first appeared in English in the forms redouted and redoutable. Later the classical influence made itself felt and the b was inserted. Palliation for it could be pleaded on the ground that the letter belonged to the remote original. But no defence of this sort could be of avail in the case of the word denoting the military outwork called a redoubt. This has not the slightest connection either in sense or origin with the two adjectives just specified. It comes directly from the French redout and remotely from the Latin reductus, ‘withdrawn,’ ‘retired,’ which received at a later period the meaning of ‘a place of refuge.’ But it was ignorantly supposed that it came from the same source as the verb redoubt and its past participle redoubted. So from the beginning of the introduction of the word into the language, in the early part of the seventeenth century, an unauthorized b was made part of it. It is now dear to the hearts of millions. What the blundering of one age perpetrated the superstition of succeeding ages has invested with peculiar sanctity.

The cases in which c follows s present several choice examples of the vagaries which make English orthography a wonder to those who study its history, and a perpetual joy and boast to those who in this matter succeed in keeping the purity of their ignorance from being denied by the slightest stain of knowledge. In the words scene, scepter, and sciatica, coming directly or remotely from the Greek, the letter represents an original k. So, useless as it is, its retention may be defended on the ground that if it be not the same letter, it ought to be, since it has the same value. The similar apology of respect for derivation may be urged for the unpronounced c of science, scintilla, and sciolist. But in the case of scent, scion, scimitar, scissors, and scythe, no such plea can be made. In the instance of all these there is not the slightest justification for the unnecessary c. Scent comes from the Latin sent-ire, ‘to perceive.’ Until the seventeenth century it was regularly spelled sent. Scythe, from the Anglo-Saxon sîthe, once frequently and now occasionally has its strictly correct etymological form. Scion is from the old French sion. Scimitar and scissors have had a wide variety of spellings during the course of their history. English orthography has exhibited, as is not unusual, a perverse preference for the ones which depart furthest from the pronunciation.

The instances where g is silent within a word are those in which it is found preceding m or n. Its presence it owes, in most instances, to derivation. Examples of it can be found in a number of words of Greek extraction, of which paradigm, diaphragm, and phlegm may be given. With a following n it can be represented by campaign, feign, sign, and impugn. As has been the case with the final n of certain words, so also the pronunciation of the g is resumed in the derivatives. That may be deemed by some a justification for its retention in the primitive—at least, for the time being. With sign we have signify, with malign we have malignity, with phlegm we have phlegmatic. But the g is a particularly ridiculous intruder in the words foreign and sovereign. The former is from the Old French forein, which itself comes from the popular Latin foraneus, and this in turn comes from the classical Latin foras, ‘out of doors.’ Sovereign is a spelling just as bad. It comes from the Old French sovrain, the Low Latin superanus, ‘supreme,’ which was formed upon the preposition super, ‘above.’ The insertion of a g was a blunder for which our race has the sole responsibility.

There are two kinds of words in which h is silent following an initial letter. This is invariably true of words of Greek extraction beginning with rh. Rhetoric, rheumatic, and rhubarb may serve as specimens. In these, as in those like them, the h was wanting in Old French. Consequently, it was at first wanting in English also. But the deference to derivation which prevailed among the classically educated after the revival of learning, raised havoc here with the spelling as it did in so many other instances. The unpronounced h was inserted into all these words. This began in the sixteenth century. It gradually established itself firmly in the orthography. There it has remained ever since, though no one pretends that it serves any purpose save that of indicating to the few, who do not need to be informed, that the aspirate existed in the original from which these words were derived. But even this pitiable reason cannot be pleaded in the case of the noticeable words in which h follows an initial g. These are ghastly and aghast, ghost, and gherkin. In not one of them, except the last, did h appear till many hundred years after the words had been in existence. To not one of them does the useless letter belong by right. Indeed, it was apparently not till the nineteenth century that it was foisted into gherkin as the regular spelling, though it had cropped up before. There would be just as much sense in spelling German as Gherman, and goat as ghoat, as there is in the intrusion of the h into the words just mentioned. This is equally true of anchor.

There is, however, one further peculiarity about this letter. In the spelling of certain words it follows w, in the pronunciation of them it precedes it. But the fashion of suppressing the sound of the aspirate in the combination wh is very characteristic of the speech of England, at least of some parts of it. The prevalence of this sort of pronunciation which makes no distinction, for example, between where and wear, between Whig and wig, between while and wile, was a subject of great, and it may be added, of justifiable grief to the earlier orthoepists. Walker complained bitterly of the extent of its use in London. He was anxious that men should “avoid this feeble Cockney pronunciation which is so disagreeable to a correct ear.” Fortunately for the speech this suppression of the aspirate has not extended much beyond the southern half of England. In America it rarely takes place. There is, therefore, every likelihood of this pronunciation being eventually crushed, not so much because of its own inherent viciousness as by the mere weight of numbers.

There is a limited body of words in which l and p are silent. The former letter in such cases as balm and calm, for instance, may perhaps have been effective in preserving the sound of the preceding vowel. The most signal example of its appearance, where it has no justification for its existence, is in the word could. This takes the place of the earlier and more correct coude, coud. The l was introduced by a false analogy with would and should. These two last words, it may be added, at times dropped this letter, to which etymologically they were entitled, out of deference to the pronunciation, just as could, though not entitled to it, assumed it in defiance of the pronunciation.

The most noticeable instances in which p is not pronounced are when it follows m and is itself followed by t. Empty, tempt, prompt, and sumptuous will supply a sufficient number of illustrations. In most of these cases the letter still appears because it was in the original. In empty, however, it is a later insertion. There are two or three sporadic instances in which a p is present but fails to be called upon for duty. Such are raspberry and receipt. In the first of these two rasberry seems to have been for a long time the preferred spelling. Unless there is a prospect that the sound of the letter will be resumed in the pronunciation, there is no apparent reason why we should not go back to the once more common form. But receipt, with the allied conceit and deceit, furnishes as good an illustration as can well be offered of the vagaries of English orthography, and of the system which has prevailed in and the sense which has presided over its development. These three words all come remotely from the three closely allied participial forms receptus, conceptus, and deceptus. The earlier most common spelling of the first was receit or receyt. While the form with the inserted p existed previously, it was not till the Elizabethan period that it began to be much in evidence. Furthermore, it was not till the latter part of the seventeenth century that the unnecessary letter established itself in the unfortunate word. Conceit and deceit went through what was in many respects the same experience. The forms conceipt and deceipt were found not unfrequently. But in them the p failed to maintain itself. So words from a common Latin root have developed two different ways of spelling, with not the slightest reason in the nature of things why any distinction whatever should be made between them.

The silence of s in some few words, such as isle, aisle, and island, has already been mentioned. In viscount it is also suppressed, doubtless in deference to the French original. But in the middle of words t is far more frequently left unpronounced than s. This is especially noticeable when it is followed by le on the one hand, as can be seen in castle, wrestle, thistle, ostler, and rustle; on the other hand, when followed by en, as in fasten, hasten, listen, and moisten. There are a few other words besides those with these endings in which it is silent. Such are Christmas, chestnut, mortgage, bankruptcy. That it should not be heard in words of French origin like billet-doux and hautbois is not hard to understand; they have never been fully naturalized.

This exhausts the list of simple consonants that are found in the written language, but are not heard in the spoken. There remains, however, a digraph which is encountered too frequently not to receive brief mention. This is gh, both at the end and in the middle of words. In these positions it once stood for something. It had, therefore, originally a right to the place in which it now appears. But the guttural sound it indicated disappeared long ago from the usage of all of us. Even the knowledge that it had ever existed has disappeared from the memory of most of us, if it was ever found there. Accordingly it serves now no other purpose than to act as a sort of tombstone to mark the place where lie the unsightly remains of a dead and forgotten pronunciation. The useless digraph is still seen at the end of numerous words of which weigh, high, and dough may be taken as examples. Again an unpronounced medial gh is seen in neighbor and a large number of words ending in ght, such as caught, height, fight, and thought. In many of these words the digraph was frequently dropped in those earlier days when there was a perverse propensity to make the spelling show some respect to the pronunciation. High, for instance, often appeared in the forms hye, hy; nigh in the forms nye, ny. This is now all changed. The disposition to pander to any sneaking desire to bring about a scandalous conformity between orthography and orthoepy is steadily frowned upon by those who have been good enough to take upon their shoulders the burden of preserving what they are pleased to call the purity of the English language.

This survey of the subject, brief as it is, brings out distinctly the superiority of the consonant system over the vowel, in the matter of unpronounced letters. Far from perfect as is the former, it shines by contrast with the latter. The useless consonant appears in but a few words, where the useless vowel appears in scores. But when we pass on to the cases in which the sign is represented by any but its legitimate sound, the contrast between the two classes of letters becomes far more noticeable. It is the superiority in this particular which alone makes our present spelling endurable. Most of the consonants, if pronounced at all, have in all cases one and the same sound. Any possible acquisition of the speech in the term of a man’s natural life has depended upon the fact that these members of the alphabet are in general really phonetic. Their faithfulness to their legitimate sounds stands in sharpest contrast to the almost hopeless disorganization which has overtaken the vowels. In the case of some of the consonants there is never any variation from their proper pronunciation. In the case of others the exceptions to the regular practice are purely sporadic. The p of cupboard, for instance, has the sound of b, the j of hallelujah has the sound of y. Even these exceptions which have prevailed in the past there has been a tendency to reduce, owing to the operation of agencies of which there will be occasion to speak later.

This last statement needs modification in the case of one letter. In modern times there has been a tendency to represent the sound of t in the preterite and past participle by d, or, rather, ed. As compared with the usage of the past, this practice has made a good deal of headway. It is the substitution of a formal regularity of spelling which appeals to the eye over its proper use to indicate the sound to the ear. We have not yet got so far as to write sleeped for slept or feeled for felt, but we have frequently dwelled for dwelt and builded for built. This is all proper enough if the d sound is given to the ending by pronouncing the word, as is often done, as a dissylable. But no reason can be pleaded for it if t is heard as the termination. In this matter we are far behind our fathers.

Take the usage of Spenser, as illustrated on this point in the first canto of the first book of the Faerie Queene. This contains about five hundred lines. In every case whenever a preterite or past participle has the sound of t, it is spelled with t. In this one canto—and it fairly represents all the others—can be found the preterites advaunst, approcht, chaunst, enhaunst, forst, glaunst, grypt, knockt, lept, lookt, nurst, pusht, y-rockt, stopt, and tost. Along with these are to be seen as past participles accurst, enforst, mixt, past, promist, stretcht, vanquisht, and wrapt. Now, to a certain extent this is an unfair illustration. No one can read the Faerie Queene without becoming aware that Spenser was a good deal of a spelling reformer. Necessarily, he was largely dominated by the ignoble idea that orthography should have a close connection with the pronunciation. Still, though in certain particulars he took very advanced ground, he only practiced on a large scale what on a small scale was followed by very many of his contemporaries and immediate successors.

We pass on now to the consideration of the six sounds for which the alphabet has no special sign whatever. Two of them are the surd and sonant sounds, already considered, for which the digraph th has become the common representative. It may be right to add that this same digraph is also equivalent in a few cases to the simple t, as in thyme and Thames. The four other sounds can be recognized perhaps most easily in the ch of church, the ng of bring, the sh of ship, and the s of pleasure. But here, as elsewhere in our orthography, reigns the usual lawlessness. The signs here given represent other sounds than those just specified. Take the case of ng. Any one can detect at once the difference in the pronunciation of this digraph by contrasting it as heard in singer and as heard in finger. Nor has ch been limited to the sound indicated in chair, cheer, child, choose, and churn. It has another, perhaps more frequently denoted by sh in the beginning, middle, and end of words, as, for illustration, in chaise, machine, and bench. It has likewise the sound of k in many words, especially in those of Greek origin, such as character, mechanic, monarch. The uncertainty caused by this variety of pronunciation is particularly noticeable in words in which arch appears as the initial syllable. In archangel, for instance, ch has one pronunciation, in archbishop it has another. The difference between the two must therefore be painfully learned. There is, furthermore, the sporadic example of choir, in which ch has the sound of kw, ordinarily represented by qu. But choir was a late seventeenth-century importation into the language. Though to some extent it has replaced the original form quire, it has invariably retained the pronunciation of that word.

Finally, there are the two sounds specified above, as denoted by the s of pleasure and the sh of ship. The former has a respectable number of signs to indicate it. Besides the s found in such words as measure, usury, enclosure, it is represented by si, as seen in decision, evasion, occasion; by z, as in azure, razure, seizure; by zi, as in glazier, grazier, vizier. It is, however, the second of these sounds that has the greatest variety of signs to denote it. In this respect it rivals many of the vowels or vowel combinations, and surpasses some of them. It is heard in the ce of ocean, and in particular in no small number of words mainly scientific, with the ending aceous, such as cretaceous and cetaceous; in the ci of words like social, gracious, suspicion; in the s of sure, sugar, censure, nauseate; in the t of satiate, expatiate, substantiate; in the ti of martial, patient, nation, and the vast number of words which have the termination tion; in xi in anxious, obnoxious, complexion; in sci in conscience, prescience; in si, as seen in no small number of words, such as mansion, vision, explosion. Finally, to illustrate the confusion which in the case of these signs has been still further confounded, we may instance the ci of social with the pronunciation just indicated, and the ci of the related word society with a pronunciation entirely different. A precisely similar observation could be made of ti in the case of the words satiate and satiety.

Enough has certainly now been said to put beyond question the fact of the irrepressible conflict which goes on in our language between orthography and orthoepy, and to make clear its nature. The treatment of the subject has, indeed, been far from complete. Nothing whatever has been said on the large subject of the representation of sounds in the unaccented syllables. No account has been given of the usage of some of the letters or combinations of letters. In particular, in the matter of doubling the letters both in accented and unaccented syllables, contradictions and incongruities abound with us on a scale which ought to bring peculiar happiness to those devotees of the present orthography who believe that the worse a language is spelled the more distinctly it is to its credit. Still, of this characteristic there has been no consideration. Furthermore, page after page could have been taken up with illustrative examples of the anarchy of all sorts which reigns in every nook and corner of our spelling. We write, for instance, knowledge with a d; but the place with the same terminating syllable where we go presumably to acquire it, which we call a college, we are careful to write without a d. In the past one finds at times the forms knowlege and colledge. It is nothing but an accident of usage that we are not employing them now instead of the ones we have adopted.

It would be easy to go on multiplying examples of these inconsistencies. But though all that could be said is far from having been said, surely enough has been given to prove beyond possibility of denial the existence of the chaotic condition which prevails. Furthermore, while the subject has been by no means exhausted, the same statement cannot safely be made of the patience of the reader, to say nothing of that of the writer. If any one of the former body finds it tedious to wade through the account of the situation which has been given in the preceding pages, let him bear in mind how much more tedious it was for the author to prepare it. If he finds it exceedingly tedious, let him take to himself a sort of consolation in the reflection of how easily it could have been made even more so. Instead, therefore, of complaining of the abundance of minute detail which I have supplied, he ought to be thankful to me for keeping back so much of it as I have done. Moreover, as Heine pointed out long ago, the reader has at his command a resource to which he can always betake himself when his powers of endurance give out. He can skip. This is a blessed privilege denied to the writer.

Incomplete, however, as has been the survey of the subject, it has been sufficient to give a fairly satisfactory idea of the way in which the orthography represents, or rather misrepresents, the pronunciation. It makes manifest beyond dispute the truth of the intimation conveyed at the outset that the form of a particular word is often, with us, little more than a fortuitous concourse of unrelated letters in which neither they nor the combinations into which they enter can be relied upon to indicate any particular sound. In addition, hundreds of those which appear in the spelling have no office in the pronunciation. Genuine derivation has led to the retention of some, spurious derivation to the introduction of others. There are, consequently, few of the common words of our language which cannot be spelled with perfect propriety in different ways, sometimes in half a dozen different ways, if the analogy be followed of words similarly formed and pronounced. Our orthography is, therefore, often a matter of contention and always a matter of study. Knowledge of the accepted form of words must be gained in each case independently, for there exists no general principle, the observance of which will guide the learner to a correct conclusion.

As an inevitable result, the acquisition of spelling never calls into exercise, with us, the reasoning faculties. On the contrary, its direct effect is to keep them in abeyance. The ability to spell properly is an intellectual act only to the extent that attention and recollection are intellectual acts. It can and not unfrequently does characterize persons who are very far from being gifted with much mental power. All who attain proficiency in it are compelled to spend time which, under proper conditions, could have been far more profitably employed. There are men who do not attain it at an early age, and some even who never attain it at all. Moore, for illustration, speaking of Byron, tells us that spelling was “a very late accomplishment with him.”[25] The case of William Morris was far worse. This poet never learned to spell at all. The fact is recorded by his biographer. In speaking of the beauty of his handwriting, he had to admit the failure of his orthography to reach the standard set by it. “The subsidiary art of spelling,” he writes, “was always one in which he was liable to make curious lapses. ‘I remember,’ the poet once said, ‘being taught to spell and standing on a chair with my shoes off because I made so many mistakes.’ In later years several sheets of The Life and Death of Jason had to be cancelled and reprinted because of a mistake in the spelling of a perfectly common English word; a word, indeed, so common that the printer’s reader had left it as it was in the manuscript, thinking that Morris’ spelling must be an intentional peculiarity.”[26]

The ignorance which exists in regard to the orthographic situation is bad enough; but the superstition which has been born of it is still worse. It is assumed to have come down to us pure and perfect from a remote past. Hence, it must be religiously preserved in all its assumed sacredness and genuine uncouthness. Even improvements which could be made with little difficulty, which would have no other result than bringing about with the least possible friction uniformity in certain classes of words—these slight alterations are assailed with almost as much earnestness and virulence as would be encountered by sweeping changes designed to make the spelling really phonetic.

As men are more apt to be interested in particular illustrations than in general discussion, it may be worth while to follow up the survey of the situation which has just been given with an account in detail of the history of a special class of words. In this once prevailed the tendency to bring about absolute uniformity. The movement was arrested before the desired result was attained. It left a few over thirty examples as exceptions to the general practice. In the derivatives of some of these it went back to the regular rule and consequently contributed exceptions to the exceptions. This condition of things has endeared these anomalies to the hearts of thousands. The class itself consists of the words ending in or or our. About the proper way of spelling this termination controversy has raged for more than a hundred years. The examination of the whole class can be best carried on by selecting one of the words belonging to it as typical of all. To its story the next chapter will be largely confined.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Duchess of Powysland, chap. x.

[17]

And add to these retired leisure
That in trim garden takes his pleasure.
—Il Penseroso.

[18] See [page 105].

[19] Memoir of the Life and Writings of the late William Taylor of Norwich. London, 1843. Southey to Taylor, July 13, 1803, vol. i, p. 466.

[20] See [page 125].

[21] “The church is one huge nef with a double Aisle to it.”—Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, etc. First edition, 1705, p. 493.

[22] In Professor Arber’s accurate reprint of the original edition, the word, spelled as frend, can be found on pages, 20, 21, 22, 24, 43, 73, 75, 87, 89, 90, 91, 94, 99, 113, 121, 140, 149, 154, and 158. In some instances the word appears two or more times on the page. On pages 23 (twice) and 113 is found frendly, and on page 140 frendship. Nowhere does the i appear in these last two words. The solitary instance of the spelling friend is on page 112.

[23] Standard of Pronunciation in English, pp. 191-202.

[24] Faerie Queene, Book II, canto ix, st. 21.

[25] Moore’s Diary, vol. v, p. 249.

[26] The Life of William Morris, by J. W. Mackail, London, 1899, vol. i, p. 8.

CHAPTER IV
THE QUESTION OF HONOR

“Well, honor is the subject of my story,” says Cassius to Brutus, in his effort to persuade his friend to join the conspiracy against the dictator. It was h-o-n-o-r however that he spoke of, not h-o-n-o-u-r. So the word appeared in the folio of 1623, in which the play of Julius Cæsar was published for the first time. Unfortunately, the spelling of Shakespeare has not escaped the tampering to which that of nearly all our authors has been subjected by unscrupulous modern editors and publishers. Take the following speech of Brutus, found shortly before the line already quoted, as it is printed in the original edition:

Set Honor in one eye and Death i’ th’ other,
And I will looke on both indifferently;
For let the Gods so speed mee, as I loue
The name of Honor, more then I feare death.

In defiance of the authority of Shakespeare, so far as it is represented by the folio of 1623, honor in the passages cited above appears in modern editions as honour. This spelling did not make its appearance in them until comparatively late. In the second folio of 1632 the word was still honor. So it remained in the third folio of 1663-64. It was not till the edition of 1685, the last and poorest of the folios, that the corrupt form honour displaced in these passages the original form honor. There it has since been generally, if not universally, retained.

It is fair to say that in this method of spelling the word the usage of Shakespeare was far from invariable. Either one of the two forms just given seems to have been used by him indifferently, just as they were by his contemporaries. In his writings honor, either as a verb or noun, occurs very nearly seven hundred times. According to the sufficient authority of the New Historical English Dictionary, the spelling honor in the folio of 1623 was “about twice as frequent as honour.” This confirms my own impressions; but these were based merely upon the examination of only about a hundred passages of the seven hundred in which the word occurs. Furthermore, Shakespeare’s practice varied widely in the use of individual words of this class, as exemplified in the two poems he himself published. Humor appears in them twice. In both instances it is without the u—once in Venus and Adonis,[27] once in The Rape of Lucrece.[28] Such also is the spelling of the word the two times it is found in the Sonnets,[29] but there this fact does not make certain the practice of the poet. On the other hand, labor, either as a noun or verb appears seven times in the two pieces just mentioned. Six times out of the seven it is spelled labour.[30] Color also appears invariably as colour in the ten times the word is found in these same poems.

The words with the terminations or or our number now several hundred in our speech. Many of them go back to that early period when the French element was first introduced into English. Many others have been added at various periods since. In the case of those of earlier introduction both terminations are found. Still, it is the impression produced upon me by my comparatively little reading that there was at first a distinct preference for the ending our. This, if true, was due largely, if not mainly, to the fact that it reflected more accurately the then prevailing pronunciation. The accent fell upon the end of the word. It was not, as now, thrown back upon the penult or antepenult, with the result of placing only the slightest of stress upon the final syllable. However this may be, many words were once often spelled with the termination our, which have now replaced it by the termination or. The ryme-index to Chaucer’s poetry shows that he uses about forty words with this ending at the close of a line. Some are obsolete, but most are still in current use. Among these latter so spelled are ambassadour, confessour, emperour, governour, mirrour, senatour, servitour, successour, and traitour. These in modern English have replaced the ending our by or. Again other words with this same terminations which he employs have now substituted for it er. Such are reportour, revelour, and riotour. In truth, each one of the words belonging to the class has a history of its own. But honor is in most respects typical of them all. Accordingly, while there is no purpose to neglect the others, upon it the attention will be mainly fixed.

It was in the fourteenth century that the wholesale irruption of the French element into our vocabulary took place. But before the great invasion in which words came into the speech by battalions, single words had already entered, as if to prepare the way. One of these earlier adventurers was the term under consideration. It made its appearance in the language as early, at least, as the beginning of the thirteenth century. Unlike most of its class, its first syllable demands attention as well as its last. As a foreign word, it naturally exhibited at its original introduction the forms that belonged to it in the tongue from which it was derived. There was no prejudice in those days in favor of a fixed orthography. Each author did what was right in his own eyes; or perhaps it would be more correct to say, what was right to his own ears. In the Romance tongues the hostility to the aspirate, which has animated the hearts of so large a share of the race, had caused it to be dropped in pronunciation. As a result, writers being then phonetically inclined, discarded it from the spelling. Hence, honor presented itself in our language without the initial h. Its first recorded appearance is in a work, the manuscript of which is ascribed to the neighborhood of 1200 A.D. In that it was written onur, just as hour sometimes appeared as ure. It hardly needs to be said that the vowel in these cases does not represent the now common sound we call “short u.”

It is not always easy to discover the motives which influence men in the choice of spellings. But it is no difficult matter to detect the reason for the change which here took place. Before the minds of the writers of this early period was always the Latin original. In that tongue the word began with h. Derivation is always dear to the hearts of the scholastically inclined. In those days it was only men of this class who did any writing at all. Hence, both in Old French and in Old English, it was not long before the letter h came to be prefixed regularly to the word. It was not sounded. But it was soon adopted universally in the spelling, and, once established there, it never lost its hold. In the case of several other words which have had essentially the same history, the pronunciation of the aspirate has been resumed under the influence of the printed page. But honor is one of four which up to this time have held out unflinchingly against any such tendency.

So much for the initial letter. As regards the termination, the word made its appearance in several forms. Only three of them need be mentioned here, for they were the ones much the most common. These were honor, honour, honur. The last was the first to go. It left the field to the other two forms, which have flourished side by side from that day to this. Were I to trust to the impressions produced by my own reading, I should say that from the middle of the fourteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth the form in our was much the more common. But, in the New Historical English Dictionary, Dr. Murray asserts distinctly that “honor and honour continued to be equally frequent down to the seventeenth century.” One accordingly must defer to the authority of a generalization which is based upon a much fuller array of facts than it is in the power of an individual to get together.

By the time we reach the sixteenth century, and especially the Elizabethan age, it is pretty plain that something of the orthographic controversy which has been raging ever since had already begun to make itself heard. The little we know about it we learn from brief remarks in books, or chance allusions in plays. The discussion, such as it was, seems to have had little regard to orthoepy, but was based almost entirely upon considerations of etymology. It was in the sixteenth century more particularly that derivation began to work havoc with the spelling. Sometimes it simplified it; full as frequently, if not more frequently, it perverted what little phonetic character words had possessed originally or had been enabled to retain. For the classical influence was then at its height. Consequently, a disposition was apt to manifest itself to go back to the Latin form and insert letters which had been dropped from the spelling because they had been dropped from the pronunciation.

It seems inevitable that the etymological bias so prevalent in the sixteenth century should have exerted some influence, and perhaps a good deal of influence, in causing a preference to be given by many to the forms in or. Old French had been forgotten by the community generally, and met the eyes of lawyers only. Modern French had not then so much vogue as Italian. But Latin was familiar to every educated man. It was accordingly natural that the spelling of the words of the class under consideration should show a tendency to go back to the forms employed in that tongue. This inference may seem to be borne out by the few specific data which have been collected. In the case of Shakespeare the existence of a concordance to his writings enables us to furnish certain positive statements with comparative ease. Mention has been made of the fact that in the folio of 1623 the spelling honor occurs twice as often as honour. Of course, in a work printed so long after his death, this is no positive evidence as to the dramatist’s own usage. But whatever preference he felt, it seems right to infer, was indicated in the two poems published in his lifetime. Of these the proofs must have passed under his own eye. In The Rape of Lucrece, which came out in 1594, the word occurs just twenty times: in seventeen instances it is spelled honor; in three, honour. In Venus and Adonis it is found but twice. In both instances honor is the spelling employed.

A generalization, however, based upon isolated facts is always liable to be misleading. Whatever value attaches to those just given is due mainly to the eminence of the author. No statement of universal, or even of common usage can be safely based upon them.[31] The examination of other books would in all likelihood show divergence in many instances from the practice here indicated. Furthermore, we must not forget that English orthography is not due to scholars or men of letters, but to typesetters. The spellings found in any book of the Elizabethan period are as likely to be those of the printing-house as of the author. This, in fact, is not unfrequently true of our own age. It is likewise clear that these same printing-houses exhibited a fine impartiality in the use of these terminations. Volume after volume can be taken up, on different pages of which we can find honor and honour, humor, and humour, labor and labour, and so on through the list. In truth, the book would be an exception where absolute uniformity prevailed.

An interesting example of this variableness of usage may be observed in the dozen lines in which Shakespeare dedicated, in 1593, his poem of Venus and Adonis to the Earl of Southampton. The inscription is to the “Right Honorable Henrie Wriothesley”; the address itself begins with “Right Honourable.” Throughout these few lines the phrase “your honor” occurs just three times. Twice it is spelled honor, once honour. Modern editions entirely ignore this variation of usage. In every instance they insert the u in the word, thus giving, as usual, to the modern reader an entirely false impression of Shakespeare’s practice.

In this matter the only incontrovertible fact to be found is that in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries both honor and honour exist side by side. Which form occurs more frequently in the period could not be told without an exhaustive investigation of its whole literature. As a result of my own necessarily incomplete observation, I should say that from the middle of the seventeenth century there was a growing sentiment in favor of the ending our in the majority of dissyllabic words. This tendency became distinctly stronger after the Restoration. On the other hand, the disposition to use the form in or became increasingly prevalent in words of more than two syllables. To both these statements there are exceptions, perhaps numerous exceptions, especially in the case of the latter. Individual preferences, too counted for a great deal in an age when the idolatrous devotion to our present orthography had not begun to manifest itself. But the statements just given may be taken as a near approach to the truth, if not the precise truth itself.

Assuredly the tendency to use the forms in our increased in the latter half of the seventeenth century. This was true in particular of dissyllabic words. In the years which followed the Restoration it seems to have become dominant. Such a conclusion is apparently supported by the dictionaries of the time. Let us go back for evidence to our title-word. The spelling honour is the only one authorized in the dictionaries of Phillips, Kersey, Coles, Fenning, and Martin, which appeared during the latter part of the seventeenth century or the earlier part of the eighteenth. It has already been mentioned that before the publication of Doctor Johnson’s, the two leading authorities were Bailey’s and Dyche and Pardon’s. Of the two, the latter was probably the less widely used. Bailey gave to these now disputed words the ending in our. He did not even recognize the existence of that in or. On the other hand, Dyche, in the case of certain of them, authorized both forms. He put down, for example, honor and honour, error and errour, humor and humour. Furthermore, in each of these instances he gave the preference to the first. Of course, he was not thorough-going in his practice. He would have been unfaithful to the national spirit had he been consistent. Accordingly, in other words of this class, such as favor and labor, he recognized only the spelling in our.

But as in every period there are found those who cherish with peculiar affection whatever is anomalous or incongruous or irrational, and cling to it through good report and evil report, so there always spring up a pestilent crowd of men who have an abiding hostility to whatever displays these characteristics. The attention of certain restless beings of this sort began to be directed toward this very class of words. By the middle of the eighteenth century their influence was making itself felt. A perceptible disposition was manifested to do away with the irregularities that had come to prevail. It does not seem to have been based upon any phonetic grounds. It apparently owed little or nothing to the desire to conform to the Latin original. The aim seems simply to have been to simplify orthography by reducing all the words of this class to a uniform termination. At this time polysyllables belonging to it—the trisyllables being included under that term—had largely come to drop the u. So had a respectable number of dissyllables. Why not make the rule universal? Why add to the difficulty inherent in English orthography the further difficulty of an arbitrary distinction which serves no useful purpose? No particular reason seemed to exist why author and error should be spelled without u, and honor and favor and color with it. So they argued. The movement for dropping the vowel made distinct headway; it actually accomplished a good deal, and might have accomplished everything had it not met the powerful opposition of Doctor Johnson. In 1755 came out his dictionary. It did not drive out of circulation other works of the same kind, but it largely deprived them of authority with the educated. It practically gained the position of a court of final appeal.

Johnson knew very little about orthoepy and its relation to orthography; but on account of the deference paid to him, not only by his contemporaries, who knew nothing whatever about either, but also by later lexicographers, especially the two most prominent, Sheridan and Walker, his work is of very great importance for the influence it has had upon English spelling. Toward most of what he recommended a sort of religious respect was soon exhibited by many. This attitude may be said to have characterized for a long time the English people. He set himself against the processes of simplification that were going on. He laid down the dictum that the true orthography must always be regarded as dependent upon the derivation. It must, therefore, be determined by its immediate original. He did not conform to his own theory; he could not conform to it. But men accepted his assertions without paying any special heed to his practice. In consequence, his authority exerted a distinct influence toward retaining many spellings which in his time were tending to go out of use.

Especially was this true of the words of the class under consideration. At the time Johnson was engaged in the preparation of his dictionary the forms in or had come to be in a distinct majority. Usage was variable, it is true, depending as it did on individual likes or dislikes. But on the whole a preference was beginning to manifest itself for the termination or, at least outside of certain words. Still, it would have been then possible to bring about uniformity by the adoption of either ending to the exclusion of the other. From the orthographical point of view of that period, no serious objection would have been offered by the large majority of men to that course of action. But such a proceeding would, in the eyes of many, have been attended with one fatal defect. It would have made the termination of all the words of this class uniform, and therefore easy to understand and to master. This would have brought the result into conflict with the cherished though unavowed ideal we hold, which is to make the spelling as difficult of acquisition as possible. In this feeling Johnson himself unconsciously shared. He had to the full that love of the illogical and anomalous and unreasonable, with the contributing fondness for half-measures, which is so characteristic of our race as contrasted with the French. This attitude was reflected in his treatment of this particular class of words. He compromised the controversy between the two endings in the case of about a hundred of the most common of them by impartially spelling about half with or and the other half with our.

Furthermore, in regard to the particular class of words under discussion, both Johnson’s theory and practice must be taken into consideration. Between these there was wide divergence, and oftentimes contradiction. In theory he set himself resolutely against the efforts of those who were seeking to bring about uniformity. He pointed out that “our is frequently used in the last syllable of words which in Latin end in or, and are made English as honour, labour, favour, for honor, labor, favor.” He then set out to give the reasons for his own choice of the form he had adopted. “Some late innovators,” he wrote, “have ejected the u, not considering that the last syllable gives the sound neither of o nor u, but a sound between them, if not compounded of both.” The just observation contained in one part of this sentence is rendered nugatory by the unfounded assertion at the end and the extraordinary conclusion drawn. Johnson’s argument really amounts to this: Neither o nor u represents the actual vowel sound heard in the last syllable. In each case there would be only an approach to it. Therefore, let us not think of employing either one of the vowels which represent the sound only imperfectly, but a vowel combination which does not represent it at all.

His cautiously guarded utterance shows that Johnson was vaguely conscious of the weakness of the position he had taken if not of its absurdity. Hence, he felt the need of furnishing it additional support. So he abandoned phonetics and resorted to derivation. He proceeded to suggest a reason which since his day has played the most important of parts in all the attempts which have been made to explain the cause of the retention of our in the spelling of these words. “Besides that,” he continued, “they are probably derived from the French nouns in eur, as honeur (sic), faveur.” Johnson had not that courage of his ignorance which distinguishes the assertions of later men who employ his argument. He spoke hesitatingly of the derivation as a probability. As it was erroneous, this course was wise. His followers, however, from that day to this, have invariably stated it as a fact. He repeated, nevertheless, his general view in the grammar with which he prefaced the dictionary. “Some ingenious men,” he remarked, sarcastically, “have endeavored to deserve well of their country by writing honor and labor for honour and labour.”

Such was Johnson’s attitude in theory; his action was distinctly different. Like the rest of us, he was governed entirely by sentiment working independently of knowledge or reason. He preferred the spelling, as do we all, which he himself was wont to use. He judged it to be the proper spelling because he was familiar with it. The utter lack of any intelligent or even intelligible principle he was actuated by in his choice can be illustrated by two or three examples. Anterior was spelled by him with the ending our; posterior with the ending or. The termination of interior was our; that of exterior was or. This is not the reign of law, but of lawlessness. The only explanation I have been able to devise of the motives, outside of association, which may have unconsciously led him to adopt the ending he did in any particular case, was a possible feeling on his part that when the word denoted the agent it should have the termination or; but our when it denoted state or condition. This is not a satisfactory reason for making a difference; but it has a glimmering of sense. Yet while in general this course is true of Johnson’s practice, it is, unfortunately, not universally true. Stupor and torpor appeared, for illustration, in his dictionary without the u; while on the other hand with it are found ambassadour, emperour, governour, and warriour.

It is certain that Johnson himself, in the spellings he authorized, never conformed to the principle of derivation, which he held out to us as the all-sufficient guide. Several of the words which appear in his dictionary with the intruding vowel had come to us directly from the Latin. Accordingly, the form he gave them was in direct defiance of the principles which he had laid down. Of these candor is so striking an example that it is worth while to give some account of it in detail. The word came into our language in the fourteenth century, but as a pure Latin word. When used in the black-letter period, after the invention of printing, it appeared in Roman type, to indicate that it was still a foreigner, just as we now indicate a borrowed term by italics. In the early seventeenth century it had become naturalized. Accordingly, it was at first spelled like its original. About the middle of the seventeenth century u was occasionally inserted. This way of spelling it increased after the Restoration. Necessarily, such a usage not only defied but disguised the real original. For a long time the correct and incorrect forms flourished side by side. It was Johnson’s adoption of the ending our for the word which fixed this erroneous spelling upon the English people. Men now tell you with all the intense earnestness of ignorance that candor should be spelled with a u because it came from a foreign word which has no direct connection with it whatever. Yet the very same men who insist upon retaining a u in honor, because, as they fancy, it was derived from the French honneur, cling just as tenaciously to the form candour, and will cling to it after they have learned to know that it was derived directly from the Latin candor.

Not only, indeed, in his preaching, but in his personal practice, Johnson may be said to have been inconsistent in his inconsistency. Of this there is a most singular illustration. In the dictionary itself author was given as here spelled. Not even a hint was conveyed of the existence of another form. But in the preface to the dictionary this same word was employed by him just fourteen times. In every instance it was spelled authour. Nor could this have been the fault of the type-setter. So far was it from exciting remonstrance or reprehension on his part that the form is not only found in the first edition of 1755, but also in the fourth edition of 1773, the last which appeared in his lifetime, and which underwent some slight revision at his hands. Had Johnson chanced to adopt in the body of the work the spelling of this word as it appeared in his preface to it, the form with u would in all probability have continued to maintain itself. Men would be found at this day to insist that the very safety of the language depended upon its permanent retention. There would, indeed, be authors who would fail to recognize themselves as authors unless this unnecessary u was inserted into the word denoting their profession.

But though the weight of Johnson’s authority was impaired by his practice, there is no question that his words did more to prevent the universal adoption of the ending or than any other single agency. For that purpose they were timely. There had then begun to be something of an effort to correct certain of the most striking errors and inconsistencies of English orthography. With this, Hume, for one, sympathized. That this assumed enemy of the faith should be favorably inclined to any movement of the sort, and to some extent should conform to it, was enough of itself to set Doctor Johnson against it. That author, in the first edition of his History, had followed what was then sometimes called the new method of spelling. As regards the particular class of words here under consideration, he used several such forms as ardor, flavor, labor, vigor, and splendor. But Hume had no vital interest in the matter. His reason told him what was proper and analogical; but he was little disposed to fight convention on this point. Therefore, he wavered at intervals between spellings which he recognized as sensible and those which had the approval of the printing-house and consequently that of the general public. “I had once an intention of changing the orthography in some particulars,” he wrote, in 1758, to Strahan, on the occasion of bringing out a new edition of his History, “but on reflection I find that this new method of spelling (which is certainly the best and most conformable to analogy) has been followed in the quarto volume of my philosophical writings lately published; and, therefore, I think it will be better for you to continue the spelling as it is.”[32]

In truth, the moment that Doctor Johnson had set the example of attacking the pestilent disturbers of orthographic peace, a host of imitators were sure to follow in his footsteps. One of these was the physician John Armstrong, who dabbled also, to some extent, in literature. Among other things, he produced one of those ponderous poems in which the eighteenth century abounded, and with which the extremely conscientious student of English literature feels himself under obligation to struggle. He also tried his hand at a volume of short Sketches and Essays, as they were called, which came out anonymously. Among them was one on the Modern Art of Spelling. In it he attacked with vigor the so-called reformers who were employing the forms honor, favor, labor. Indeed, he apprised us—what otherwise we should hardly have known—that there were then misguided beings who threw out one of the vowels in the termination of words not belonging strictly to the class we are discussing, and wrote neighbor, behavior, and endeavur. Armstrong’s little work appeared in 1757; it might have been written yesterday. It displays the same misunderstanding and misconception of the whole subject which characterizes the men of our day, who have the advantage of being heirs to the accumulated ignorance of the past. In places, too, he was as amusing as they. Nothing, he told us, did so much to distinguish his own “as an unmanly age”—the italics are his—“as this very aversion to the honest vowel u.”

Hume’s attitude of indifference is manifested in his comments on this volume. He evidently considered himself as one of the men aimed at in its animadversions upon the reformers. In June, 1758, he spoke about the work in a letter to his publisher, Andrew Millar. “I have read,” he wrote, “a small pamphlet called Sketches, which, from the style, I take to be Doctor Armstrong’s, though the public voice gives it to Allan Ramsay. I find the ingenious author, whoever he be, ridicules the new method of spelling, as he calls it; but that method of spelling honor, instead of honour, was Lord Bolingbroke’s, Doctor Middleton’s, and Mr. Pope’s, besides many other eminent writers. However, to tell truth, I hate to be in any way particular in a trifle; and, therefore, if Mr. Strahan has not printed off above ten or twelve sheets, I should not be displeased if you told him to follow the usual—that is, his own—way of spelling throughout; we shall make the other volumes conformable to it: if he be advanced farther, there is no great matter.”[33] This is by no means a solitary instance of the way in which authors have submitted their own convictions to the practices of printing-houses and thereby caused this creation of type-setters we call English orthography, to be an object of reverent worship to thousands, who contribute large sums to convert those bowing down to gods of wood and stone.

Great, however, as was Johnson’s authority, there was not paid to it at the time unquestioning assent. The glaring inconsistency between his principles and his practice made many indisposed to accept him as an infallible guide. Dissent came from two quarters. There were those who accepted fully his views as to the propriety of following the form of the assumed immediate original. These not unreasonably looked with disfavor upon his dereliction in the case of many words. Among the recalcitrants was his devoted disciple Boswell. In 1768 this author brought out the journal of his tour in Corsica. In the preface to it he expressed the feelings of many in his comments upon his master’s course in this matter. “It may be necessary,” he wrote, “to say something in defense of my orthography. Of late it has become the fashion to render our language more neat and trim by leaving out k after c, and u in the last syllable of words which used to end in our. The illustrious Mr. Samuel Johnson, who has alone executed in England what was the task of whole academies in other countries, has been careful in his dictionary to preserve the k as a mark of the Saxon original. He has for the most part, too, been careful to preserve the u, but he has also omitted it in several words. I have retained the k, and have taken upon me to follow a general rule with regard to words ending in our. Wherever a word originally Latin has been transmitted to us through the medium of the French, I have written it with the characteristic u. An attention to this may appear trivial. But I own I am one of those who are curious in the formation of language in its various modes, and therefore wish that the affinity of English with other tongues may not be forgotten.”