Some of the first scholars of our country stepped out of the circle of
their classical studies with the patriotic design of inculcating the
possibility of creating a literary language. This was a generous effort
in those who had already secured their supremacy by their skill and
dexterity in the two languages consecrated by scholars. Many of the
learned engaged in the ambitious reform of our _orthography_, then
regulated by no certain laws; but while each indulged in some scheme
different from his predecessors, the language seemed only to be the more
disguised amid such difficult improvements and fantastic inventions.
A curious instance of the monstrous anomalies of our orthography in the
infancy of our literature, when a spelling-book was yet a precious thing
which had no existence, appears in this letter of the Duchess of Norfolk
to Cromwell, Earl of Essex.
"_My ffary gode lord--her I sand you in tokyn hoff the neweyer a
glasse hoff Setyl set in Sellfer gyld I pra you take hit (in) wort An
hy wer habel het showlde be bater I woll hit war wort a m crone._"
These lines were written by one of the most accomplished ladies of the
sixteenth century, "the friend of scholars and the patron of
literature." Dr. Nott, who has supplied this literary curiosity, has
modernized the passage word by word; and though the idiom of the times
is preserved, it no longer wears any appearance of vulgarity or of
illiteracy.
"My very good lord,--Here I send you, in token of the New Year, a glass
of setyll set in silver gilt; I pray you take it (in) worth. An I were
able, it should be better. I would it were worth a thousand crowns."
The domestic correspondence, as appears in letters of the times, seems
to indicate that the writers imagined that, by conferring larger
dimensions on their words by the duplication of redundant consonants,
they were augmenting the force, even of a monosyllable![1]
In such disorder lay our orthography, that writers, however peculiar in
their mode of spelling, did not even write the same words uniformly.
Elizabeth herself wrote one word, which assuredly she had constantly in
her mind, seven different ways, for thus has this queen written the word
_sovereign_. The royal mistress of eight languages seemed at a loss
which to choose for her command. The orthography of others eminent for
their learning was as remarkable, and sometimes more eruditely
whimsical, either in the attempt to retrace the etymology, or to modify
exotic words to a native origin; or, finally, to suit the popular
pronunciation. What system or method could be hoped for at a time when
there prevailed a strange discrepancy in the very names of persons, so
variously written not only by their friends but by their owners? Lord
Burleigh, when Secretary of State, daily signing despatches with the
favourite _Leicester_, yet spelt his name _Lecester_; and Leicester
himself has subscribed his own name eight different ways.[2]
At that period down to a much later, every one seems to have been at a
loss to write their own names. The name of _Villers_ is spelt fourteen
different ways in the deeds of that family. The simple dissyllabic but
illustrious name of _Percy_, the bishop found in family documents, they
had contrived to write in fifteen different ways.
This unsettled state of our _orthography_, and what it often depended
on, our _orthoepy_, was an inconvenience detected even at a very early
period. The learned Sir JOHN CHEKE, the most accomplished Greek scholar
of the age, descended from correcting the Greek pronunciation to invent
a system of English orthography. Cheke was no formal pedant; with an
enlarged notion of the vernacular language, he aimed to restore the
English of his day to what then he deemed to be its purity. He would
allow of no words but such as were true English, or of Saxon original;
admitting of no adoption of any foreign word into the English language,
which at this early period our scholar deemed sufficiently copious. He
objected to the English translation of the Bible, for its introduction
of many foreign words; and to prove them unnecessary he retranslated the
Gospel of St. Matthew, written on his own system of a new orthography.
His ear was nice, and his Attic taste had the singular merit of giving
concision to the perplexed periods of our early style. But his
orthography deterred the eyes of his readers; however the learned Cheke
was right in his abstract principle, it operated wrong when put in
practice, for every newly-spelt word seemed to require a peculiar
vocabulary.
When Secretaries of State were also men of literature, the learned Sir
THOMAS SMITH, under Elizabeth, composed his treatise on "The English
Commonwealth," both in Latin and in English--the worthy companion of the
great work of Fortescue. Not deterred by the fate of his friend, the
learned Cheke, he projected even a bolder system, to correct the writing
of English words. He designed to relieve the ear from the clash of
supernumerary consonants, and to liquify by a vowelly confluence. But
though the scholar exposed the absurdity of the general practice, where
in certain words the redundant letters became mutes, or do not
comprehend the sounds which are expressed, while in other words we have
no letters which can express the sounds by which they are spoken, he had
only ascertained the disease, for he was not equally fortunate in the
prevention. An enlargement of the alphabet, ten vowels instead of five,
and a fantastical mixture of the Roman, the Greek, and the Saxon
characters, required an Englishman to be a very learned man to read and
write his maternal language. This project was only substituting for one
difficulty another more strange.
Were we to course the wide fields which these early "rackers of
orthography" have run over, we should start, at every turn, some strange
"winged words;" but they would be fantastic monsters, neither birds with
wings nor hares with feet. Shakspeare sarcastically describes this
numerous race: "Now he is turned ORTHOGRAPHER his words are a very
fantastical banquet; just so many strange dishes." Some may amuse. One
affords a quaint definition of the combination of _orthoepy_ with
_orthography_, for he would teach "how to write or _paint the image of
man's voice_ like to the life or nature."[3] The most popular amender of
our defective orthography was probably BULLOKAR, for his work at least
was republished. He proposed a bold confusion, to fix the fugitive
sounds by recasting the whole alphabet, and enlarging its number from
twenty-four to more letters, giving two sounds to one letter, to some
three; at present no mark or difference shows how the sounded letters
should be sounded, while our speech (or orthography) so widely differed;
but the fault, says old Bullokar, is in the _picture_, that is, the
letters, not the speech. His scheme would have turned the language into
a sort of music-book, where the notes would have taught the tones.[4] I
extract from his address to his country a curious passage. "In true
orthographie, both the _eye_, the _voice_, and the _eare_ must consent
perfectly without any let, doubt, or maze. Which want of concord in the
eye, voice, and ear I did perceive almost thirtie yeares past by the
very voice of children, who, guided by the eye with the letter, and
giving voice according to the name thereof, as they were taught to name
letters, yielded the eare of the hearer a degree contrary sound to the
word looked for; hereby grewe quarrels in the teacher, and lothsomeness
in the learner, and great payne to both, and the conclusion was that
both teacher and learner must go by rote, or no rule could be followed,
when of 37 parts 31 kept no square, nor true joint."
All these reformers, with many subsequent ones, only continued to
disclose the uneasy state of the minds of the learned in respect to our
inveterate orthography; so difficult was it, and so long did it take to
teach the nation how to spell, an art in which we have never perfectly
succeeded. Even the learned Mulcaster, in his zealous labour to "the
right writing of the English tongue," failed, though his principle
seems one of the most obvious in simplicity. This scholar, a master of
St. Paul's school, freed from collegiate prejudices, maintained that
"words should be written as they were spoken." But where were we to seek
for the standard of our orthoepy? Who was to furnish the model of our
speech, in a land where the pronunciation varied from the court, the
capital, or the county, and as mutable from age to age? The same effort
was made among our neighbours. In 1570 the learned Joubert attempted to
introduce a new orthography, without, however, the aid of strange
characters. His rule was only to give those letters which yield the
proper pronunciation; thus he wrote, _oeuvres_, uvres; _francoise_,
fransaise; _temps_, tems.
Among the early reformers of our vernacular idiom, the name of RICHARD
MULCASTER has hardly reached posterity. Our philologer has dignified a
small volume ostensibly composed for "the training of children,"[5] by
the elevated view he opened of far distant times from his own of our
vernacular literature--and he had the glory of having made this noble
discovery when our literature was yet in its infancy.
This learned master of St. Paul's school developes the historical
progress of language, on the great philosophical principle that no
impediment existed to prevent the modern from rivalling the more perfect
ancient languages. In opposition to the many who contended that no
subject can be philosophically treated in the maternal English, he
maintained that no one language, naturally, is more refined than
another, but is made so by the industry of "eloquent speech" in the
writers themselves, and by the excellence of the matter; a native soil
becomes more genial in emulating a foreign. I preserve the pleasing
illustration of his argument in the purity of his own prose, and because
he was the prophet of our literature.
"The people of Athens thus beautified their speech and enriched their
tongue with all kinds of knowledge, both bred within Greece and borrowed
from without. The people of Rome having plotted (planned) their
government much like the Athenians, became enamoured of their
eloquence, and translated their learning wherewith they were in love.
The Roman authority first planted the Latin among us here, by force of
their conquest; the use thereof for matters of learning doth cause it
continue, though the conquest be expired. And, therefore, the learned
tongues, so termed of their store, may thank their own people both for
their fining (refinement) at home and their favour abroad. But did not
these tongues use even the same means to brave (adorn) themselves, ere
they proved so beautiful?
"There be two special considerations which keep the Latin and other
learned tongues, though chiefly the Latin, in great countenance among
us; the one is the knowledge which is registered in them; the other is
the conference which the learned of Europe do commonly use by them, both
in speaking and writing. We seek them for profit, and keep them for that
conference; but whatever else may be done in our tongue, either to serve
private use, or the beautifying our speech, I do not see but it may well
be admitted, _even though in the end it displaced the Latin_, as the
Latin did others, and furnished itself by the Latin learning. For is it
not indeed a marvellous bondage to become servants to one tongue for
learning sake, the most of our time, with loss of most time, whereas we
may have the very same treasure in our own tongue, with the gain of most
time? Our own, bearing the joyful title of our liberty and freedom; the
Latin tongue remembering us of our thraldom. I honour the Latin, but I
worship the English. I wish all were in ours which they had from others;
and by their own precedent, do let us understand how boldly we may
venture, notwithstanding the opinion of some of our people, as desire
rather to please themselves with a foreign tongue wherewith they are
acquainted, than to profit their country in her natural language, where
their acquaintance should be. The tongues which we study were not the
first getters, though by learned travel (labour) they prove good
keepers; but they are ready to return and discharge their trust when it
shall be demanded, in such a sort, as it was committed for term of
years, and not for inheritance."
"But it is objected," our learned Mulcaster proceeds, with his engaging
simplicity, that "the English tongue is of small reach, stretching no
further than this island of ours, nay not there over all. What tho'
(then)? It reigneth there, though it go not beyond sea. And be not
English folk finish (refined) as well as the foreign, I pray you? And
why not our tongue for speaking, and our pen for writing, as well as our
bodies for apparel, and our tastes for diet? But you say that we have no
cunning (knowledge) proper to our soil to cause foreigners to study it,
as a treasure of such store. What tho' (then)? Why raise not the English
wits, if they will bend their wills either, for matter or for method, in
their own tongue, TO BE IN TIME AS WELL SOUGHT TO BY FOREIGN STUDENTS
FOR INCREASE OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE, AS OUR SOIL IS SOUGHT TO AT THIS TIME
BY FOREIGN MERCHANTS FOR INCREASE OF THEIR WEALTH?"[6]
We, who have lived to verify the prediction, should not less esteem the
prophet; the pedagogue, MULCASTER, is a philosopher addressing men--a
genius who awakens a nation. His indeed was that "prophetic eye," which,
amid the rudeness of its own days, in its clear vision contemplated on
the futurity of the English language; and the day has arrived, when "_in
the end it displaced the Latin_," and "FOREIGN STUDENTS" learn our
language "FOR INCREASE OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE."
The design of Mulcaster to regulate orthography by orthoepy was revived
so late as in 1701, in a curious work, under the title of "Practical
Phonography," by John Jones, M.D. He proposed to write words as they are
"fashionably" sounded. He notices "the constant complaints which were
then rife in consequence of an unsettled orthography." He proclaims war
against "the visible letters," which, not sounded, occasion a faulty
pronunciation. I suspect we had not any spelling-books in 1701. I have
seen Dyche's of 1710, but I do not recollect whether this was the first
edition; this sage of practical orthography was compelled to submit to
custom, and taught his scholars to read by the _ear_, and not by the
_eye_. "Yet custom," he adds, "is not the truest way of speaking and
writing, from not regarding the originals whence words are derived;
hence, abundance of errors have crept both into the pronunciation and
writing, and English is grown a medley in both these respects." Such was
the lamentation of an honest pedagogue in 1710.
The "Phonography" of Dr. Jones was probably well received; for three
years after, in 1704, he returned to his "spelling," which, he observed,
"however mean, concerned the benefit of millions of persons." He had a
notion to "invent a universal language to excel all others, if he
thought that people would be induced to use it."[7]
Even the learned of our own times have indulged some of these
philological reveries. One would hardly have suspected that Dr.
FRANKLIN, whose genius was so wholly practical, contemplated to
revolutionise the English alphabet: words were to be spelt by the sounds
of their letters, which were to be regulated by six new characters, and
certain changes in the vowels. He seems to have revived old Bullokar.
PINKERTON has left us a ludicrous scheme of what he calls "an improved
language." Our vowel terminations amount but to one-fourth of the
language; all substantives closing in hard consonants were to have a
final vowel, and the consonant was to be omitted after the vowel. We
were to acquire the Italian euphony by this presumed melody for our
harsh terminations. In this disfigurement of the language, a _quack_
would be a _quaco_, and _that_ would be _tha_. Plurals were to
terminate in _a_: _pens_ would be _pena_; papers, _papera_. He has very
innocently printed the entire "Vision of Mirza" from the "Spectator," on
his own system; the ludicrous jargon at once annihilates itself. Not
many years ago, JAMES ELPHINSTONE, a scholar, and a very injudicious
one, performed an extraordinary experiment. He ventured to publish some
volumes of a literary correspondence, on the plan of writing the words
as they are pronounced. But this editor, being a Scotchman, had two
sorts of Scotticisms to encounter--in idiom and in sound.
Notwithstanding the agreeable subjects of a literary correspondence, it
is not probable that any one ever conquered a single perusal of pages,
which tortured the eye, if they did not the understanding.
We may smile at these repeated attempts of the learned English, in their
inventions of alphabets, to establish the correspondence of
pronunciation with orthography, and at their vowelly conceits to
melodise our orthoepy. All these, however, demonstrate that our language
has never been written as it ought to have been. All our writers have
experienced this inconvenience. Considerable changes in spelling were
introduced at various periods, by way of experiment; this liberty was
used by the Elizabethan writers, for an improvement on the orthography
of Gower and Chaucer. Since the days of Anne we have further deviated,
yet after all our efforts we are constrained to read words not as they
are written, and to write different words with the same letters, which
leaves them ambiguous. And now, no reform shall ever happen, short of
one by "the omnipotence of parliament," which the great luminary of law
is pleased to affirm, "can do anything except making a man a woman."
Customary errors are more tolerable than the perplexing innovations of
the most perverse ingenuity.[8] The eye bewildered in such uncouth pages
as are here recorded, found the most capricious orthography in popular
use always less perplexing than the attempt to write words according to
their pronunciation, which every one regulated by the sounds familiar
to his own ear, and usually to his own county. Even the dismemberment of
words, omitting or changing letters, distracts attention;[9] and modern
readers have often been deterred from the study of our early writers by
their unsettled orthography. Our later literary antiquaries have,
therefore, with equal taste and sagacity, modernised their text, by
printing the words as the writers, were they now living, would have
transcribed them.
Such have been the impracticable efforts to paint the voice to the eye,
or to chain by syllables airy sounds. The imperfections for which such
reforms were designed in great part still perplex us. Our written
language still remains to the utter confusion of the eye and the ear of
the baffled foreigner, who often discovers that what is written is not
spoken, and what is spoken is not written. The orthography of some words
leads to their false pronunciation. Hence originated that peculiar
invention of our own, that odd-looking monster in philology, "a
pronouncing dictionary," which offends our eyes by this unhappy attempt
to write down sounds. They whose eyes have run over Sheridan, Walker,
and other orthoepists, must often have smiled at their arbitrary
disfigurements of the English language. These ludicrous attempts are
after all inefficient, while they compel us to recollect, if the thing
indeed be possible, a polysyllabic combination as barbarous as the
language of the Cherokees.[10]
We may sympathise with the disconcerted foreigner who is a learner of
the English language. All words ending in _ugh_ must confound him: for
instance, _though_, _through_, and _enough_, alike written, are each
differently pronounced; and should he give us _bough_ rightly, he may be
forgiven should he blunder at _cough_; if he escape in safety from
_though_, the same wind will blow him out of _thought_. What can the
foreigner hope when he discovers that good judges of their language
pronounce words differently? A mere English scholar who holds little
intercourse with society, however familiar in his closet be his
acquaintance with the words, and even their derivations, might fail in a
material point, when using them in conversation or in a public speech. A
list of names of places and of persons might be given, in which not a
single syllable is pronounced of those that stand written.
That a language should be written as it is spoken we see has been
considered desirable by the most intelligent scholars. Some have
laudably persevered in writing the past tense _red_, as a distinction
from the present _read_, and anciently I have found it printed _redde_.
Lord Byron has even retained the ancient mode in his Diary. By not
distinguishing the tenses, an audible reader has often unwarily contused
the times. _G_ before _I_ ungrammatical orthoepists declare is sounded
hard, but so numerous are the exceptions, that the exceptions might
equally be adopted for the rule. It is true that the pedantry of
scholarship has put its sovereign veto against the practice of writing
words as they are spoken, even could the orthoepy ever have been settled
by an unquestioned standard. When it was proposed to omit the mute _b_
in _doubt_ and _debt_, it was objected that by this castration of a
superfluous letter in the pronunciation, we should lose sight of their
Latin original. The same circumstance occurred in the reform of the
French orthography: it was objected to the innovators, that when they
wrote _tems_, rejecting the _p_ in _temps_, they wholly lost sight of
the Latin original, _tempus_. Milton seems to have laid down certain
principles of orthography, anxiously observed in his own editions
printed when the poet was blind. An orthography which would be more
natural to an unlearned reader is rejected by the etymologist, whose
pride and pomp exult in tracing the legitimacy of words to their
primitives, and delight to write them as near as may be according to the
analogy of languages.