Origin and spirit of Phonography--William Bullokar the earliest
regular advocate of it--Charles Butler--Dr. Jones and his theory
examined.
I. The phonetic system of orthography, which may be regarded as empirical
and fallacious, only forms part of such an inquiry as the present by
reason of the presence in our earlier literature of a few books which were
apparently designed, more or less, for educational purposes.
The fundamental theory of the promoters of this principle, both in former
times and in our own, seems to have been that the sound should govern the
written character, and that all laws of philology and grammar should defer
to popular pronunciation. It is, of course, begging the question, in the
first place; and one of the warmest enthusiasts on the subject admits that
the very pronunciation, which is the product of sound, and on which he
relies, differs in different localities.
The writers on behalf of phonetics possessed, no doubt, their own honest
convictions; but they have at no period succeeded in carrying with them
any appreciable number of disciples. Between 1580 and 1634, William
Bullokar and Charles Butler endeavoured at various dates to establish
their peculiar creed; but it never gained footing or currency, and its
influence has left no trace on our language, except in the literary or
calligraphic essays of persons unable to read and write, or in one or two
isolated cases where the new heresy for the moment infected a man like
Churchyard, the old soldier-poet, for on no other hypothesis can we
explain the uncouth spelling of his little poem on the Irish Rebellion of
1598, which is an orthographical abortion, out of harmony with the usual
style of the author, and surpassing in foolishness the wildest suggestions
of the professed adherents and supporters of the doctrine.
Bullokar published his large Grammar in 1580, and his Brief one in 1586;
and he also put forth in 1585 a version of Æsop's Fables, the title of
which is a curiosity:--"Æsopz Fablz in Tru Ortography with Grammar-Notz.
Her-vntoo ar also iooined the Short Sentencz of the Wyz Cato: both of
which Autorz are translated out-of Latin intoo English by William
Bullokar.
Gev' God the praiz
That teacheth all waiz.
When Truth trieth,
Erroor flieth."
Butler became a convert in later life to the views previously entertained
and promulgated by Bullokar, bringing out a third edition of his _History
of Bees_ in 1634, adapted to the new standard; and in his _English
Grammar_, published a twelvemonth before, he enunciated the same
orthographical dogmas. He was of Magdalen College, Oxford, and prepared,
as early as 1600, a Latin text-book on Rhetoric for the use of his
College. This was more popular and successful than his phonetic excursus,
and is quoted even still now and again, because it contains a slight
allusion to Shakespear.
But perhaps the most strenuous and elaborate attempt to reform us in this
particular direction was made by Dr. Jones, who drew up a _Practical
Phonography_, "Or the New Art of Rightly Spelling and Writing Words by the
Sound thereof," for the use of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Queen Anne,
somewhere before 1701, in which year he communicated the fruit of his
researches to the public. His description of the art as a new one must be
interpreted by his ignorance of the previous labours of Bullokar and
Butler, and as a proof that the proposal had met with no response; and the
fact that the Doctor's own volume is almost unknown may be capable of a
similar explanation.
I have no means of judging what kind of reception was accorded to Dr.
Jones at the time; but the tone of that gentleman's Preface was certainly
not propitiatory or diffident; for he freely speaks of the miserable
ignorance of the world and of his own condescension to the undertaking, in
order to remove or enlighten it; and yet, from another point of view, he
addressed himself to the task of instituting a grammatical code based on
that very ignorance of which he complains. For you have not to travel
beyond the introductory remarks to stumble on the following directions for
the pronunciation and _ergo_ the spelling of half-a-dozen familiar words
and proper names:--_Aron_, _baut_ (bought), _Mair_, _Dixnary_, _pais_
(pays), and _Wooster_; and at the same time on the very threshold of his
text he allows "that English Speech is the Art of signifying the Mind by
human Voice, as it is commonly used in England, (particularly in London,
the Universities, or at Court)."
Dr. Jones was a learned and well read medical man, and the monument of his
erudition and scholarship lies before me in the shape of this portentous
volume of 144 pages, which, if the young Duke had not died from another
cause, might have proved fatal to him and to his royal mother's hopes of a
successor in the Stuart line.
That our national pronunciation is slovenly and against philological laws,
nobody will probably deny; but it would not be an improvement or a gain to
corrupt our written language by levelling it down to our spoken one.