betuen roomes. Nothing can change the sound of a voual but an other voual coalescing with it into one sound. . . . To illustrat this be the same exemples, saltare is to hop; sperare is to hoep; abies is fir; ignis fyr; or, if you will, fier: jubere is bid; manere byd or bied.-Of the Orthographie, &c., p. 21. 160. The fifteenth century is the period in which we adopted the French combination gu to express the retention of the hard G-sound before e or i. Chaucer has guerdon, which is a French word; but he did not apply this spelling to words of English origin, such as, guess, guest, guild, guilt. These in Chaucer are written without the u. Mr. Toulmin Smith spells gild throughout his book entitled English Gilds. In language we have an abnormal French spelling, which lost its footing with them, but established itself with us. Here the u has acquired a consonantal value as a consequence of the orthography. In Chaucer it is langage, but in the Promptorium (1440) we read 'Langage or langwage.' (168.) The form of tongue has been altered (119) through French imitation, probably by the attraction of French langue. Divers incidental variations. 161. Another fashion was the doubling of consonants, as in the case of ck. Many of these remained to a late date; and there are some few archaisms of this sort which have only just been disused. Such are poetick, ascetick, politick, catholick, instead of poetic, ascetic, politic, catholic. This was the constant orthography of Dr. Johnson: The next year (1713), in which Cato came upon the stage, was the grand climacterick of Addison's reputation.' When such exuberances are dismissed, it is quite usual to make an exception in favour of Proper names. There are very good and practical reasons why these should affect a spelling somewhat removed from the common habits of the lan guage, and accordingly we find that almost every discarded fashion of spelling lives on somewhere in Proper names. The orthography of Frederick has not been reformed, and the ck holds its ground advantageously against the timidly advancing fashion of writing Frederic. 162. To the same period belongs the practice of writing double at the end of such words as celestiall, mortall, faithfull, eternall, counsell, naturall, unequall, wakefull, cruell: also in such words as lilly, 152. It is a relic of this fashion that we still continue to write till, all, full, instead of til, al, ful, which were the forms of these words in Saxon. Spenser has an inclination to put French c for s (132), and y for i, thus bace desyre (Faery Queene, ii. 3. 23) for base desire. The vacillation between c and s terminated discriminatively in a few instances. Thus we have prophesy the verb and prophecy the noun, to practise and a practice. Less established, but often observed, is the differentiation of license the verb from licence the substantive, as— Licence they mean when they cry Liberty. John Milton, Sonnet xii. 11; ed. Tonson, 1725. 163. In the sixteenth century there appeared a fashion of writing certain words with initial sc- which before had simple s-. It was merely a way of writing the words, and was without any significance as to the sound. Hence the forms scent, scite, scituation: and Saxon side became scythe. It probably sprang from the analogy of such Latin forms as scene, science, sceptre. These cases are to be kept apart from those of 150. Scent is from the Latin sentire, French sentir, and is written sent in Spenser, Faery Queene, i. 1. 53. Scite seems to be returning to its natural orthography of site, as being derived from the Latin situs; and we once more write it as did Spenser and Ben Jonson. But there are still persons of authority who adhere to the seventeenth-century practice—the practice of Fuller, Burnet, and Drayton. 164. In the sixteenth century there was a great disposition to prefix a w before certain words beginning with an H or with an R. This seems to have been due to association. There was in the language an old group of words beginning with wh and wr; such as, whale, wharf, wheat, what, wheel, when, where, which, who, whither, wrath, wreak, wrestle, wretch, wright, wrist, write, wrong,-all familiar words, and some of them words of the first necessity. The contagion of these examples spread to words beginning with H or R simple, and the movement was perhaps aided in some measure by the desire to reassert the languishing gutturalism of H and (we may add) of R. This was the means of engendering some strange forms of orthography, which either became speedily extinct or maintained an obscure existence. For example, whot is found instead of hot, as He soone approched, panting, breathlesse, whot, Faery Queene, ii. 4. 37, and red-whot, iv. 5. 44; whome, instead of home; wrote instead of root. In Shakspeare, Troylus and Cressida, iii. 3. 23, wrest most probably belongs here, being an Elizabethan form of rest. In Sir W. Ralegh's Letters we find wrediness readiness. Ralegh's own name occurs in contemporary documents as Wrawlegh. The form wrapt, as quoted in 197, belongs here. Modern writers seem to have decided for rapt this is the only form in Tennyson, who has wrapt only in such phrases as 'wrapt in a cloak.' This is an instance in which it may be doubted whether the word does not lose a certain poetic haze by being so rigidly etymologized. In Dean Milman's History of the Jews, ed. 1868, it stands, 'Elijah had been wrapt to heaven in a car of fire.' 165. By this process was formed the vexed word wretchlessness in the seventeenth Article. To understand this word, we have only to look at it when divested of its initial w, as retchlessness; and then, according to principles already defined, to remember that an ancient Saxon c at the end of a syllable commonly developed into tch (147); and in this way we get back to the verb to reck, Anglo-Saxon recan, to care for. So that retch-less-ness is equivalent to care-nought-state of mind, that is to say, it is much the same thing as 'desperation.' The prefixed w has in this instance proved fatal to the word. The tch form of this root has fallen out of use, and probably it was the prefixing of this w that extinguished it. For it had the effect of creating a confusion between this word and wretch, a word totally distinct, and this is one of the greatest causes of words dying out, when they clash with others and promote confusion. We retain the verb to reck, and also reckless and recklessness, which means the same as wretchlessness. The Bible-translator, Myles Coverdale1 spelt raught (the preterite of reach, and equivalent of our reached) with a w. Speaking of Adam stretching forth his hand to pick the forbidden fruit, he says, 'he wrought life and died the death.' That is to say, he raught, or snatched at, life. But besides these obscure forms, one at least sprang up under the same influence, which has retained a place in standard English. The form whole stood for hole or hale, which sense it bears in the English New Testament, though 1 Writings of Myles Coverdale, Parker Society, The Old Faith, p. 17. it has since run off from the sense of hale, sound (integer), into that of complete (totus). In this case, the language has been accidentally enriched. A new word has been introduced, and one which has made for itself a place of the first importance in the language. For the expression the whole has obtained pronominal value in English. 166. One of the most remarkable instances of this change (remarkable because it was made in the pronunciation only and not in the writing of the word) is that of the numeral ONE. It used to be pronounced as written, very like the preposition on, a sound naturally derived from its original form in the Saxon numeral AN. But it has now long been pronounced as WUN or WON (in Devonshire woNN), and this change may with probability be placed at the close of the sixteenth century. It was apparently a west-country habit which got into standard English. In Somersetshire may be heard 'the wonn en the wother' for 'the one and the other.' In the eastern parts of England, and especially in London, it is well-known vernacular to say UN, commonly written 'un, as if a w had been elided; e. g. 'a good 'un.' In Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2. 80, it is plainly pronounced on or oon. One of the features of the Dorset dialect is the broad use of this initial w, both in the first numeral and in other words, such as woak for oak, wold for old, woats for oats. John Bloom he wer a jolly soul, A grinder o' the best o' meal, Bezide a river that did roll, Vrom week to week, to push his wheel. His flour were all a-meäde o' wheat, An' fit vor bread that vo'k mid eat; Vor he would starve avore he'd cheat. 'Tis pure,' woone woman cried; 'Ay, sure,' woone mwore replied; "You'll vind it nice. Buy woonce, buy twice,' M |