554 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on English, the method formerly adopted was very much after this 

 fashion : The lexicographer studies in his own library the pronoun- 

 cing dictionary of everybody who has taken the pains to compile one, 

 whether he be an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotchman, or an Ameri- 

 can. He compares these several dictionaries and records their varia- 

 tions. From these he selects those pronunciations which, for any 

 special reason, commend themselves to his individual taste or judg- 

 ment. These are usually such pronunciations as he is accustomed to 

 hear or himself to use. These are published with the stamp of the 

 lexicographer's authority and approval, and the dictionary is sent out 

 into the world as so-and-so's record of the most approved usage. 



This was doubtless the way pronouncing dictionaries used to be 

 compiled. But we may believe that this method is not the course 

 ordinarily followed by the authors of our best modern dictionaries. If 

 our best standard dictionaries to-day were made in this fashion, their 

 authority would richly deserve to be heavily discounted for such care- 

 lessness of method. But greater efforts are made by the most recent 

 orthoepists, we may believe, to determine the accepted usage in polite 

 society. Yet, after all, the personal equation enters as an important 

 factor into the compilation of every pronouncing dictionary. The 

 author or authors who compile the dictionary naturally follow their 

 own preferences and prejudices in the matter of pronunciation; and 

 their results, even at best, repose on very restricted and imperfect ob- 

 servation. An orthoepist ought not to be cocksure and dogmatic. In- 

 deed, the proper attitude of the author of a dictionary is that of the 

 late Mr. Ellis. It was quite natural that a man of his superior scholar- 

 ship and rare orthoepical attainments should have been frequently 

 asked as to the proper pronunciation of a particular word. 



" It has not unfrequently happened," observes Mr. Ellis in his 

 monumental work on ' Early English Pronunciation,' in reference to 

 his practice, when appealed to as an authority, " It has not unfre- 

 quently happened that the present writer has been appealed to respecting 

 the pronunciation of a word. He generally replies that he is ac- 

 customed to pronounce it in such or such a way, and has often to add 

 that he has heard others pronounce it differently, but that he has no 

 means of deciding which pronunciation ought to be adopted, or even 

 of saying which is the more customary." 



This attitude will, no doubt, commend itself to the favor of the 

 reflecting and judicious man much more forcibly than that spirit of 

 assumed infallibility which is a sure sign, in an orthoepist, of in- 

 sufficient knowledge and lack of preparation for his work. The busi- 

 ness of a lexicographer is to record what good usage authorizes, not to 

 tell us what we shall not use. The orthoepist who goes farther, and 

 dogmatically asserts that a given pronunciation is correct and another 



